FOXBORO, Mass. — Owner Robert Kraft said he felt “guilty” for putting Jerod Mayo in an “untenable” position during his first and only season as the New England Patriots’ head coach, a situation that led to a 4-13 season and Mayo’s firing about an hour after Sunday’s season finale. He said the untenable situation was in part because Mayo needed more time to develop before becoming a head coach.
“The whole situation is on me,” Kraft said Monday afternoon in explaining the move.
Kraft said executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf and senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith, two of the top-ranking members of the front office, will aid in the Patriots’ coaching search and participate in interviews. Kraft said the team will put out several interview requests, but declined to comment specifically about Mike Vrabel, who seems like the front-runner for the job.
GO DEEPER
Mike Vrabel, Brian Flores and the top candidates to be the Patriots’ next head coach
“I don’t like losing and I don’t like losing the way we lost,” Kraft said in explaining his decision to fire Mayo. “Things were not developing the way we would’ve liked. It was time to move on.”
The Patriots have gone 4-13 in back-to-back seasons — they struggled in Bill Belichick’s final season in New England as well — and are now beginning a search for a third head coach in three seasons.
“I don’t want to go through this next year,” Kraft said, “and we’re going to do what we’ve got to do to fix it.”
Required reading
• Jerod Mayo firing was as much about his command off the field as the Patriots’ play on it
• Making sense of Jerod Mayo’s firing and what comes next for the Patriots
• Jerod Mayo becomes the latest one-and-done NFL head coach after Patriots firing
(Photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
