Jerod Mayo reportedly could have saved Patriots job by doing this 

It took a little over an hour after the Patriots’ 2024 season ended for the team to announce it had fired head coach Jerod Mayo.

Such a decisive move by Robert Kraft and the Patriots’ top brass signaled that the team’s decision was made up well before New England squandered a shot at the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft by beating the Bills in Week 18. 

But could Mayo have potentially saved his job with a stronger showing earlier in December? 

According to a new feature from Andrew Callahan and Doug Kyed of the Boston Herald, the jury on New England’s head coach was seemingly still out entering the final stretch of the 2024 campaign. 

“A source familiar with Kraft’s thinking believes had the Patriots flipped one of their December blowout losses to Arizona and later the Chargers, Mayo might have kept his job,” Callahan and Kyed wrote Thursday. 

While it felt like a given that the 2024 Patriots were going to be in the midst of a rebuilding year, a strong end to a miserable campaign would have at least offered hope to Kraft and a beleaguered fanbase that a roster short on talent was moving in the right direction.

But things managed to bottom out over the final month of the season, with New England emerging out of the bye week and dropping an uncompetitive 30-17 loss to the Cardinals on the road in Week 15.

Mayo’s postgame comments in Arizona where he presumably threw offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt under the bus, coupled with a report that Mayo was taking part in card games with players on the plane ride home instead of reviewing film, raised even more concerns about Mayo’s command of the team. 

Add in a lopsided 40-7 loss to the Chargers at Gillette Stadium on Dec. 28 — with cheers of “Fire Mayo!” raining down from the stands in Foxborough — and it looked as though Mayo’s fate was sealed before New England closed out the year with that win over the Bills’ backups. 

Speaking on Monday after making the call to fire Mayo, Kraft stressed that New England’s continued regression throughout the 2024 season prompted the team to make a move. 

“In the important decisions in my life, I’ve always said that I measure nine times and cut once and this was one of those situations,” Kraft said. “I guess the main thing for me is, I felt that we regressed. The high point of everything for me was the Cincinnati game, and then mid-season I just think we started to regress.”

 

Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.