AFC Notes: Bills, Patriots, JuJu Smith-Schuster

JuJu Smith-Schuster

Patriots new WR JuJu Smith-Schuster said he’s looking forward to working with QB Mac Jones and thinks the quarterback is a team leader. 

“I have not thrown with Mac yet. But just watching film and just watching him, that dude loves, breathes New England,” Smith-Schuster said, via Nick O’Malley of MassLive. “He’s the definition of a Patriot. Even in my short time, my 24 hours of being in New England, he was there, constantly working out with the guys, just getting after it, getting in the books. I mean, he’s a rookie Pro Bowler. So they do have a lot of potential and I can’t wait to get right with him.”

Smith-Schuster wants to perfect his timing on route-running with Jones. 

“Coming to a place where timing is perfection and getting that down is something I can play with and I can get used to and he has that potential,” Smith-Schuster said.

Patriots

Patriots LB coach Jerod Mayo turned down interviews for a head coaching position with the Panthers this offseason, leading many former teammates such as Rob Ninkovich and Brandon Spikes to speak out about the team grooming Mayo to be their next head coach after the retirement of HC Bill Belichick. 

“They definitely know they have something here and don’t want to let him go,” Ninkovich said, via Chad Graff of The Athletic. “With his mind and the knowledge he has, it was just a given that he’d get into coaching because it’s teaching. As far as on-field quickness, he is the smartest guy that I had ever been around. His ability to decipher formations and bark out calls and get people lined up — he was by far the fastest and best that I’ve ever been around. They know what they have. So why let that leave if you can keep that within the organization?”

Spikes believes that Mayo was already a coach during his time as a player with the Patriots and found that he was sitting in on coaching meetings at six in the morning.

“Some people, I don’t know what it is, have that it factor. And he’s got it,” Spikes said. “He makes everyone around him better. He’s a perfect human being. If I had a son, I’d want him to be just like Jerod Mayo. When they talk of the ‘Patriot Way,’ I think of Jerod Mayo. That guy never left for vacations in the offseason. He was the first one in the building and the last one out.”

“Even though we were playing next to each other, Jerod was my coach,” Spikes added. “I knew I could go to him and get the details for what we were trying to get done, and he could deliver it to me just as Belichick would. Even as a player, he was already a coach. I’m not lying. He was in the staff meetings. For real. I thought I loved the game — like really loved it. And then I met Jerod and Tom. And then I was like, OK, maybe I just really like it. I don’t love it like them. They just eat and sleep football. He’s Bill Belichick 2.0. They speak the same language. He could just manage everything. I was like, ‘You’ve just got this life thing figured out.’”