A porous Patriots defense is imploding at the worst time

"I feel like a lot of guys think too highly of themselves, and have to check their ego and come in and just play as a team."

Jerod Mayo didn’t mince words last week when asked about the Patriots’ lackluster performance on defense against the Texans.

“Defensively I would say just the fundamentals of just tackling, our run fits have to improve,” Mayo said last Sunday after New England’s 41-21 loss to Houston. “They have to improve. I told all those guys, I said, ‘You should feel like crap today. You should feel like crap.’ You take away those two long runs, we [allowed] two runs over 50 yards. That’s just not winning football.”

Mayo didn’t deviate from his stern messaging towards his defense throughout the week — pledging lineup changes ahead of Sunday’s matchup against the Jaguars at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Veteran linebacker Jahlani Tavai agreed with his coach’s sentiment.

“People have been running over 100 yards on us,” Tavai said Wednesday after Houston shredded New England for 192 rushing yards. “We’ve got to take that personally. So I take it personally, and I know the defensive guys are.”

But both Mayo and Tavai’s words ultimately rang hollow in London — prompting both New England’s head coach and linebacker to stick to the same exasperated script following another lopsided loss.

“We’re a soft football team across the board,” Mayo bemoaned after New England’s 32-16 loss to Jacksonville.

“He said it well,” Tavai said of Mayo’s sharp criticism. “And we gotta look in the mirror and we gotta understand what he’s saying. And if we’re okay with being soft, then some people will fall off, and the rest of us who want to prove that wrong will step up and make sure that this doesn’t happen.”

Despite Tavai’s optimism, New England’s defense has continued to crater over these last few weeks.

Once viewed as one of the few foundations of strength on New England’s rebuilding roster, the Patriots’ defense has eroded at the worst possible time — especially following Drake Maye’s ascension as the team’s QB1.

Despite another promising day for Maye (26-of-37, 276 yards, two touchdowns, zero turnovers), it did little to reverse New England’s fortunes across the pond — not with New England’s defense’s paper-thin fortitude up front.

A Jaguars team entering Sunday’s game with an identical 1-5 record looked like a well-oiled machine on offense Sunday against New England — gaining 364 total yards of offense, including 171 rushing yards.

According to Boston Sports Info, the Patriots have now surrendered at least 170 rushing yards in three straight games — a “feat” in defensive failure that they have not achieved since 1993.

“I will say it’s a mentality, it’s an attitude,” Mayo said. “I mean, the players … we’ve just got to play better. We got to play better technique. Got to lock our guy out in front of us and really just, I mean, that’s what it comes down to, locking the guy out in front of you, dominating him and making a tackle.”

Be it New England’s inability to slow down Jacksonville on the ground or through the air (a 58-yard catch from Brian Thomas Jr. with Christian Gonzalez in coverage helped set up one of Jacksonville’s TDs in a disastrous second quarter), the Patriots struggled to get the Jags off the field all afternoon in London.

Beyond Jacksonville landing several punches against New England’s defense, the Jags’ ability to run the ball with little resistance also helped keep the ball out of Maye’s hands — limiting New England’s chances of orchestrating a comeback.

After the Patriots led in time of possession (11:30 to 3:30) in the first quarter, the Jaguars held the ball for almost two full quarters (29:45 to 15:15) the rest of the way. Maye and the Patriots only ran five total plays in the third quarter.

At one point, Jacksonville reeled off a 17-play, 84-yard drive that took a whopping 11:24 off the clock — standing as the longest drive in the NFL since 2022 in terms of time of possession.

As noted by 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Alex Barth, it was the longest drive surrendered by the Patriots since at least 2001 (when Pro Football Reference began tracking data).

With New England unable to slow down the likes of Tank Bigsby (26 rushes, 118 yards), the Jaguars continued to sap away time down the stretch — at one point running the ball on 17 straight plays in the second half.

As evidenced by Maye’s six-play, 94-yard touchdown drive in the fourth quarter that was completed in under three minutes, New England’s energized offense has the means to march down the field and claw back into games.

But those chances will be few and far between if the team’s defense can’t get off the field.

“Jerod just said (post-game) everybody gotta check their ego when they come in,” Patriots defensive tackle Daniel Ekuale told the Boston Herald’s Andrew Callahan. “And I agree with him. I feel like a lot of guys think too highly of themselves, and have to check their ego and come in and just play as a team. I feel like if we play as a team nobody can stop us.

“But if we go out there and do our own thing, and play outside of the scheme, that’s when we get beat.”

The Patriots’ defense was inevitably going to take the hit in the run game, especially without Ja’Whaun Bentley, Christian Barmore, and Jabrill Peppers solidifying all three levels of New England’s structure.

But even without those three playmakers in place, New England’s defensive drop-off over the last month has been startling — sullying a stretch of the season where optimism should be abundant following Maye’s arrival.

“It’s 11 guys on the field,” Tavai noted. “It takes one person in the defense to mess up a whole play. We have to be consistent. You can’t do your job one play and then take off another. So all 11 guys on the field who are out there at the time just got to do our job.”

Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.