Robert Kraft took direct shot at Bill Belichick in Jerod Mayo firing, perhaps unintentionally

The New England Patriots sent shockwaves around the NFL, and they didn't even wait until Black Monday to do it. On Sunday night, just hours after a win over the Bills in Buffalo cost them the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, the Pats opted to fire head coach Jerod Mayo — sending him packing after just one year in the top job.

In fairness, the Patriots were awful in 2024, and Mayo's often-questionable game management decisions didn't help matters. Plus, there were extenuating circumstances: Namely, the opportunity to bring Mike Vrabel back home, a head coach with the sort of track record that doesn't come available all that often.

Still, considering how long Mayo had been with the organization — eight years as a player and six as an assistant coach — and how little the Patriots roster gave him to work with, firing him after just one season is an awfully nasty bit of business. And to Kraft's credit, he seemed to acknowledge as much in his Monday press conference, expressing dismay at how he treated one of his longest-tenured employees. Except, well, he managed to do it in about as curious a way as possible.

Robert Kraft's latest comments sure seem like a shot at Bill Belichick

Asked about how difficult it was to tell Mayo that he was fired after an entirely predictable losing season — and in the wake of a stirring win, no less — Kraft seemed visibly upset, calling the decision "the hardest ... I've ever had to make."

Which is all well and good; I have no doubt that firing Mayo was personally unpleasant, and not something that Kraft took lightly. There's just one problem: Mayo got the job in the first place in the wake of Kraft choosing to fire Bill Belichick, quite possibly the greatest head coach in football history.

And yet, that apparently wasn't as difficult a call as this one. Of course, it's entirely possible that Kraft was just speaking off the cuff, and that the words slipped out before he really had a chance to grasp their full meaning and how they'd be received. But given how frosty things were between he and Belichick toward the end of the latter's time in New England, it's not hard to read between the lines here.