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“I’m going to be very brief here and say this whole situation is on me.”
— Robert Kraft, Chairman and CEO, New England Patriots
Kraft wasted no time exchanging pleasantries and other little how-do-you-do’s when he walked into the media room at Gillette Stadium early Monday afternoon. Instead, he sat himself down and got right to work as though a factory whistle had gone off.
“This whole situation,” as Kraft put it, was his decision to fire Jerod Mayo as head coach after just one season — one very bad season in which the Patriots went 4-13, same as they were in 2023 during Bill Belichick’s last season as coach. Kraft went on to say, “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.”
Robert Kraft on the decision to move on from Head Coach Jerod Mayo. pic.twitter.com/zTADw2lrui
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) January 6, 2025
Good on Kraft for being so out-front and on point. He could easily have used this news conference to dish out some blame pie, which is what the late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner would do when he’d say he had relied on “my baseball people” after this or that move had gone bad. Kraft didn’t go there. He’s owning this one.
And yet while it was an admission, it was also an acknowledgment — an acknowledgment from the top guy that the Patriots no longer are a crown-jewel NFL franchise. Yes, there was a time when an argument could be made that the Patriots had the best owner, the best coach and the best quarterback, as well as being the best bet to win the Super Bowl. Now they are a team that hasn’t won a playoff game in six seasons and has won eight games over the last two seasons. The attendance at Gillette Stadium on Sunday was reminiscent of a 1965 game between the Boston Red Sox and Kansas Athletics at Fenway Park.
And now the Patriots are poised to hire their second head coach in two seasons.
Everybody outside 1 Patriot Place knows what a mess the Patriots have become. Now, with Kraft taking the blame for the Mayo hiring, it’s as though everyone inside the building knows it too.
GO DEEPER
Patriots owner Robert Kraft takes blame for Jerod Mayo’s struggles
Make no mistake: Kraft’s tenure as owner of the Patriots has been remarkable. He took a franchise that always seemed to be in disarray — the empty seats, the makeshift playing facilities, the ceaseless rumors the operation would soon be packed up and relocated to a new city — and turned it into gold. Such was Kraft’s touch that Gillette Stadium was being built behind Foxboro Stadium before Belichick and Hall of Fame-bound quarterback Tom Brady ever won a Super Bowl. That’s a point that doesn’t get made enough. It was Kraft, Bill Parcells and Drew Bledsoe who built Gillette Stadium, not Belichick and Brady.
But that’s all in the past and Patriots management needs to stop living there. Want an example of living in the past? As recently as last year, the Patriots put their muscle behind “The Dynasty,” a 10-part television miniseries that, to boil it all down, made Kraft look very good and Belichick look very bad.
As if that public relations catastrophe wasn’t bad enough, the 2024 Patriots, with Mayo and rookie quarterback Drake Maye, went out and won four games. It’s too late to divert everybody’s attention from that train wreck by rolling out a hagiographic TV miniseries. The Pats already tried that trick. And Kraft can’t deploy a series of winks and nods to suggest other people were responsible for the Mayo hiring, not when a year ago he lavished so much parental praise on his newly minted coach, right down to talking about how they bonded during a trip to Israel a few years earlier.
So Kraft did the only thing he could do, and it was the right thing to do. To be sure, there are unanswered questions. The Patriots can’t bring in a new coach, whether it’s former Tennessee Titans coach (and former Patriots linebacker) Mike Vrabel or Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, and expect him to co-exist with the current front office that’s headed up by vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf. The new coach will want his people running football operations, and Kraft hinted at that on Monday when he said, “We’ll wait until we bring that coach in. Obviously, he’s going to have big input on who the players are and who the coaches are. It’ll be his decision.”
GO DEEPER
Making sense of Jerod Mayo’s firing and what comes next for the Patriots
That could mean a complete rebuild of football operations … or a farfetched situation in which Wolf and members of his staff remain in place but with a higher-up recruited by the new coach. But something needs to happen with the front office. If Monday’s news conference teaches us anything, it’s that Kraft, who turns 84 in June, is indeed ready to be pulled out of the past and pointed to the future. Either that, or he’s ready to ease into an emeritus role and hand off the heavy lifting to son Jonathan, assuming that hasn’t already happened off the books.
“The Patriot Way is dead and gone” @ChrisCanty99 after the firing of Jerod Mayo | @UnSportsESPN on ESPN Radio pic.twitter.com/0ube40CUJS
— ESPN Radio (@ESPNRadio) January 6, 2025
Belichick has gone on with his life, what with his grab bag of well-compensated media appearances and, now, as coach of the University of North Carolina program. Coaching the Tar Heels probably wasn’t at the top of Belichick’s wish list, but what matters is he’s not sitting at home on Nantucket gazing at his Super Bowl rings.
Brady, too, has moved on. He debuted as a Fox analyst this past season, but, more importantly, he’s stepping into his role as a part owner of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Kraft’s many successes as owner of the New England Patriots have yet to earn him induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That’s unfair, though the suspicion here is that all the lobbying hasn’t helped. But what could put Kraft over the top and on his way to Canton is leaving a rebuilt, well-run franchise as a legacy.
The dynasty is over and “The Dynasty” was an embarrassment. Sitting at that table on Monday was a humbled NFL owner who admits he was wrong and is willing to roll up his sleeves and make things right.
(Photo of Robert Kraft, left, and Jonathan Kraft: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
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