Jerod Mayo explains Patriots’ ‘take them to the hill’ rallying cry

"The guys that started saying, ‘take them to the hill’ during that fourth quarter. I love it."

The Patriots appeared to be the tougher, better conditioned football team during Sunday’s season-opening win against the Bengals.

New England overcame its lack of star power and delivered a close, gritty victory.

After the game, coach Jerod Mayo revealed that some of the Patriots players were yelling “take them to the hill” on the sideline during the fourth quarter.

The phrase is a nod to the conditioning work that Mayo had them do after practice during training camp, running up a hill near the Gillette Stadium practice field.

On Wednesday, Mayo added a little more context about the hill during his press conference.

“We talked about artificially creating adversity during practice,” Mayo said. “One of those ways is to go to the hill after a two hour and 15 minute practice where you go one or two ways. One way is like, ‘oh man, I got to go to the hill.’ The other way is, ‘all right, we’ve got to break down through this wall, and push our bodies.’

“Most of the time, and I tell the guys this all the time, your mind is going to give up before your body gives up,” Mayo added. “Being able to go to the hill or take them to the deep water, as we like to say, because we do have a lot of faith in our conditioning and what we’ve gone through throughout the summer. The guys that started saying, ‘take them to the hill’ during that fourth quarter. I love it. That was from the players.”

Defensive tackle Davon Godchaux said quarterback Jacoby Brissett brought the saying up and that others followed. It won’t be the last time the Patriots use it as a rallying cry, Godchaux said.

“Guys don’t feel like doing it, but it prepares us for times like Cincinnati where we’re trying to make a late push to try to take over the lead. A couple guys in the locker room said ‘take them to the hill’ and we already knew what time it was. It was time to finish the game. Going forward, I guess that will be the saying especially in tight ball games.”

Mayo recalled his time running the hill as a player under coach Bill Belichick. He said the experienced help strengthen his desire to prove coaches wrong the way he did in college at Tennessee.

“Yeah, I did,” Mayo said. “One thing I would say is, at least from my perspective, it was always one of those times where I’m just going to prove everybody wrong anyway.

“In college, I remember making coaches so mad because what they would do, if someone was late, they would get the whole team up and we would have to run, and that one guy wouldn’t run.”

“I used to make the coaches mad because I would just keep running. I’d be laughing the entire time. Being able to do that in tough times is definitely a good thing.”