Head Coach Jerod Mayo 9/9: "As soon as you cross the white lines, all the noise has to disappear"

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Let's start with Chris Vino, come back to Phil Perry.

Jerod Mayo (0:02)

Phil, see you later, Phil. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

SPEAKER_1 (0:07)

Hey, Jerod, you have me?

Jerod Mayo (0:08)

I got you, Chris.

Matt (0:10)

Hey, I just want to start off with the offensive line. Obviously, there's a lot of discussion about them going into the game against Cincinnati. What did you see from them as a group, and what are some of the adaptations you felt you made in order to get good pass protection, good run game going?

Jerod Mayo (0:27)

You know, I've been saying it for a long time. I think the whole offensive line conversation has been overblown. Every game, every preseason game, those guys have done a good job moving, moving bodies and establishing toughness in the line of scrimmage. And they did that yesterday. So I'm not I'm not really too concerned with the offensive line. Those guys are going to be better every week.

Matt (0:48)

I also want to ask you about games from Duggar and...

SPEAKER_1 (0:51)

Chris, I'm going to jump in on that. Just if every we got a lot of hands raised here, so we're going to go through and let everybody answer ask one question first. We'll come back to you. Raise your hand again if you want to come back to a second question. We'll go back to Phil Perry and see if we've corrected the...

Jerod Mayo (1:08)

No, you better not, Phil, you better not mess this up. You better not mess it up.

SPEAKER_1 (1:18)

Okay, we can't get Phil.

Phil Perry (1:19)

I think I gotta take a pen.

SPEAKER_1 (1:20)

Here we go, here we go. I can hear Phil.

Phil Perry (1:22)

You got me now?

SPEAKER_1 (1:25)

Yes, we got you now. Go ahead.

Phil Perry (1:26)

All right, I was gonna bail out. Jerod, a number of players last night mentioned the camp that you guys had and the difficulty of it, and they felt like they were really ready for that game yesterday because of the struggles that they went through there. As you guys were going through that, did you feel like you had to explain why you were doing some of the things you were doing as the head coach to help them buy into having that difficult camp that you guys had?

Jerod Mayo (1:58)

That's a great question, Phil. I would say, you know, as a coach, from my perspective, you have to artificially kind of put barriers in front of these guys. And we always talk about taking the hard route. And so, yesterday in the fourth quarter, I heard guys on the sidelines saying, you know, take them to the hill. Take them to the hill. Because at the end of the training camp, we would go over to the hill and those guys would run. And I mean, that's what you have to do. And I was so excited. Just even just hearing that from the players, take them to the hill, it meant a lot. And that just means taking them to the deep water and all the extra things that we do.

It pays off. It pays off in the long term. And it's hard for sometimes people to see in the short term how that stuff really affects the Alcamo Games.

Phil Perry (2:47)

Thank you. Thank you for your patience, everyone.

Jerod Mayo (2:49)

Thank you. You got a new microphone. It's nice.

SPEAKER_1 (2:52)

Next question, Sophie Weller, followed by Andrew Callahan.

Sophie Weller (2:56)

Hi, Jerod. I just want to first off say congratulations on the win. First game as head coach.

I wanted to ask about that Bermondre Stevenson touchdown, specifically Leaden Robinson. He had that block to kind of get Stevenson in. I was just curious what you saw from him specifically on that play, but also just in his first regular season game.

Jerod Mayo (3:18)

Yeah, there was a point in time during training camp where not only myself, but I think the other coaches saw it, that we said, you know what? Leaden Robinson has an opportunity to be a special player in this league. He's tough, he'll move guys off to line of scrimmage. He could do it all. And just his overall effort and mentality is something that when you think about changing the culture, he's definitely one of those guys that fits into that box. And he did a great job. Now, in saying that it's only one game, we'll see how that continues to progress going forward.

Sophie Weller (3:50)

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_1 (3:51)

I think so. Next question, Andrew Callahan followed by Doug Khyde.