What led Kraft to fire Jerod Mayo? Analyzing Patriots owner's comments

At the very least, Robert Kraft is aware of how the past 12 months in New England look from the outside.

"This whole situation is on me," the Patriots owner told reporters during a press conference at Gillette Stadium on Monday, one day after firing first-year head coach Jerod Mayo in the wake of the team's Week 18 win over the Buffalo Bills.

"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 January 2024, Kraft hand-picked Mayo to succeed Bill Belichick, replacing the legendary head coach with the 38-year-old former Patriots linebacker despite Mayo having just five years of coaching experience as an inside linebackers coach.

Expectations were low, but the 2024 season went even worse than expected; Mayo made several public missteps as his team stumbled to a 4-13 record that included a 1-6 stretch to end the campaign.

According to Kraft, the team's lack of improvement down the stretch was a big reason why he decided to pull the plug on Mayo.

"The main thing for me is, I felt we regressed," Kraft said. "The high point of everything for me was winning in the Cincinnati game (in Week 1). And then in midseason, I just think we started to regress."

Mayo appeared to be on solid ground midway through the season, as the Krafts understood New England's rebuild would take time with a talent-deprived roster. But our Phil Perry noticed a mood change inside the walls at Gillette Stadium following a 40-7 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 17 that was "embarrassing on multiple levels."

On Monday, Kraft admitted how the Patriots lost some of their games played a role in his decision to fire Mayo.

"I don't like losing. I don't like losing the way we lost," Kraft said. "And I just -- things were not developing the way we would have liked, and it was time to move on."

The Patriots are now 33-51 since Tom Brady's departure in 2020 free agency, with just one postseason appearance during that span. They've won four games or fewer in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1968 and 1969, when they were the Boston Patriots playing in the AFL.

To borrow a phrase from Kraft, that level of losing was "untenable" for the Patriots owner, to the point where he moved on from his head coach heir apparent after just one season.

"We had a rough year last year (in 2023), and going through two years like that and then seeing where we were this year -- especially the second half of the year -- just made me feel we weren't going in the right direction.

"I don't want to go through this next year, and we're going to do what we've got to do to fix it."

You could argue Mayo was a victim of circumstance -- an in-over-his-head former assistant tasked with coaxing wins out of a barren roster and showing progress after Belichick's dysfunctional final season in 2023. But that didn't stop Kraft from making the difficult decision to cut his losses with Mayo and start from square one.

"I'm the biggest fan, so I understand," Kraft said when asked how fan reactions impacted his decision to fire Mayo.

"... We don't own this team. It's owned by the fans of this region, and we're custodians of a very special asset of the community. And that's why that helps me try to make decisions that, if it was just personal, would be different."