Less than 24 hours after the New England Patriots season came to a close and the subsequent firing of first-year head coach Jerod Mayo, owner Robert Kraft met with the media to address his decision to move his club in a different direction. In doing so, Kraft took full accountability for not putting Mayo, his hand-picked successor to Bill Belichick, in the proper position to succeed.
“This whole situation is on me,” Kraft said in his opening statement. “I feel terrible for Jerod because I put him in an untenable situation. I know that he has all the tools as a head coach to be successful in this league. He just needed more time before taking the job. In the end, I’m a fan of this team first and now I have to go out and find a coach who can get us back to the playoffs and hopefully championships.”
When asked about what led him to make the switch away from Mayo after just a lone season on the job, Kraft acknowledged that the team’s regression over the final month proved to be a catalyst in this decision.
“I guess the main thing for me is I felt we regressed,” Kraft said. “The high point of everything was winning in the Cincinnati game [in Week 1], and in the midseason I just think we started to regress.”
He later added: “I don’t like losing. I don’t like the way we lost. Just things were not developing the way we would have liked and it was time to move on.”
Kraft has been on record in the past highlighting that he had identified Mayo as the heir apparent to Belichick five years ago, and had made Mayo’s ascension to head coach a deeply personal transaction. With that in mind, the decision to move on from him so quickly, as he described Monday, was difficult to say the least.
“He was a man,” Kraft said when asked how Mayo took the news. “Look, it was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do in my life cause I had such affection for him and I believe in him and I really do believe he will go on as he gets more experience, he’ll be successful. It was not easy. He was a gentleman and accepted it that way.”
One of the questions in the aftermath of Mayo’s firing is the status of the front office, particularly vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf. During the presser, Kraft not only illustrated that Wolf’s job is safe, but noted that he, along with personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith, will help lead the team in their head coaching search.
“They will be staying on,” Kraft said of the front office.
With the head coaching search beginning in earnest, Mike Vrabel — who is one of the top coaching candidates this cycle — has been widely linked to the Patriots given his ties to the organization as a player, which includes enshrinement in the team’s Hall of Fame. When asked about the possibility of bringing Vrabel in, Kraft did not comment, saying that he is looking forward to learning about all of the eligible candidates.
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