New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft "felt guilty" about how the situation with now-fired head coach Jerod Mayo ended up, Kraft said Monday at a season-ending news conference.
He shared more details with the media about how he decided to end Mayo's tenure after just one season, including:
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- Kraft went "back and forth" over the decision over the past month, but found the team was "not developing the way we would have liked."
- Mayo did not know he would be fired going into the final game of the season, which Kraft didn't give input on handling, but that the coach "was a gentleman" about the conversation.
- Kraft understands fans' feelings about Mayo.
- As for who will next coach the Patriots, Kraft said, "We want to interview as many people as we can who we think can help us get to that position that we want to be in" — playoff contention — and that he wants to move fast, with Alonzo Highsmith, Eliot Wolf and Jonathan Kraft among those helping to make the decision.
- Kraft is planning to keep his front office intact, noting that the Patriots have made changes to their grading system following NFL Drafts that "have not been good for a while."
Kraft took the blame for how the coaching situation with his hand-picked successor to Bill Belichick panned out, echoing what he said in the letter announcing that Mayo was leaving the team, in which he called it one of the hardest decisions he's had to make.
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They have a 17-year-long relationship, which Kraft said made it harder than it would otherwise have been. He said that, if it didn't involve a football team he sees as owned by the fans, he might not have made the same decision to let Mayo go.
"I felt guilty to put him in that position," Kraft said.
He didn't share much more about what, specifically, led him decide it was time to bring in a new voice.
"I don't like losing the way we lost," the owner said. "There's things not developing the way we would have liked. It was time to move on."
More on the Patriots' coaching change
The last Patriots head coach to be fired after a single season was Rod Rust in 1990.
The announcement that Mayo was out came less than five hours after New England defeated the Buffalo Bills in their season finale — a victory that, paradoxically, could have been the nail in the coffin behind the decision to fire Mayo.
The 23–16 win felt more like a loss, in that the Patriots now no longer have the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. Barring a trade, New England will pick fourth.
