When did Kraft know that he wanted to can Mayo?

Well, that happened fast. I was thinking of writing that Jerod Mayo was fired before many fans even made it out of the parking lot at Gillette Stadium after New England's win (loss?) over Buffalo in the season finale. Typically, that statement would have been true. Not this year. One bright spot of this abomination of a season is that it has never been easier to get in and out of Gillette on game day.

If you had bought tickets to the game before the season started, odds are you were, most likely, at home when you got the news that Mayo had been fired. Maybe you had sold the tickets for ten cents on the dollar. Maybe you just decided to stay home rather than brave the elements in December to watch the worst team in football – one primed to get the first overall pick in 2025 NFL's draft. At least Patriots' fans could hang their hat on that. Much more on that later.

If you had gone to the game, you were. probably, one of the majority of Patriots' fans at the game cheering when Buffalo recovered the ball after a botched handoff by Joe Milton to Antonio Gibson deep in their own territory to start the third quarter which led to a Buffalo touchdown, giving the Bills the lead.

You were also, probably, one of those same fans that booed when your kicker, Joey Slye, kicked a 41-yard field goal at the end of the third quarter to give your team a, 17-16, lead against the team, and your divisional rival, many believe might make it to the Super Bowl this year.

If you were at the game, you could also look around after Slye's made field goal and see all the empty seats in the stadium. Mind you – the Patriots had just taken a one-point lead against the rival Buffalo Bills with one quarter left in the regular season finale ... and the stadium was more than half empty. When had that last happened prior to a couple of years ago?

If you took a closer look, and you weren't too hammered by this point to realize, you'd look around your section and notice all the fans wearing Buffalo Bills' jerseys and waving Buffalo Bills' signs.

If you took your binoculars out and looked at the sideline, you'd see Jerod Mayo walking up and down the sideline, covering up a wry smile as he spoke to some co-conspirator in his headset. When has Mayo ever smiled like that this season? It was the smile you make when you sneak a cookie out of a cookie jar. It looked like he was up to something.

If you then turned your binoculars up to the owner's suite, you might be able to see owner Robert Kraft all bundled up and slumped in his seat. He would appear disinterested and eager to see the season end. He was, very likely, noticing all the empty seats in the stadium just like you were. Maybe he was doing the math in his head of how much money he was losing on ticket sales, concessions, and parking tickets.

You'd see his son, Jonathan Kraft, leaning forward, still watching the game, intently. He would look disgusted and angry. Maybe you'd see him throw his arms in the air and point out something on the field to his dad. The elder Kraft would be distracted looking at the two drunk Patriots' fans wearing no shirts being shown on his $250 million video board that he had put in just two years ago.

Odds are, if you were at the game, you didn't stay until the end. If you did, you had no issues with getting out of the parking lots or travelling down route 6. Ordinarily, that might take a fan two or three hours. Not today.

That's why I started by writing that – ordinarily, after any home game over the last three decades – you would still be stuck in traffic in the parking lot after the game, listening to one of the two Boston sports talk stations, when you got word that Jerod Mayo had been fired.

Robert Kraft had already released a lengthy statement. It said something about him feeling less the owner of a team, but rather more "a custodian of a public asset." He was as disappointed as anyone.

He knows how important the Patriots' team is to their fans. He apologized and took the blame for the embarrassing product he was responsible for putting on the field this year. He didn't blame Jerod Mayo for the failure of the team. He blamed himself for putting Mayo in an untenable position. Kraft's gut feeling had failed him, miserably, in this instance.

Kraft also, for whatever reason, confirmed what many had believed to be true. Kraft had made an agreement, years ago, with Jerod Mayo that he would be Bill Belichick's successor when the time came.

"When other teams started requesting to interview him, I feared I would lose him and committed to making him our next head coach."

Should you really have included that, Robert? Who proofreads these things? Whoever does should also be fired. Surely, that must violate some sort of rule like the Rooney one. There were no other real candidates for the job. I know Kraft's intention was to make an excuse, but it just makes him look bad.

I pinky swore. What else could I do?

The statement is also very pertinent to the current situation. The relevant word Kraft used was "feared." Kraft feared losing Mayo to another team.

Kraft never anticipated that a proven, successful head coach with incredibly strong New England ties would be available not once, but twice, when the Patriots were in need of a head coach. This guy didn't just have strong New England ties, he is a member of the Patriots Hall of Fame. In fact, this guy may have lost his head coaching job with his former employer, solely, based on his professed profound love for the Patriots during that induction speech.

And that person just had an interview this week with the divisional rival New York Jets for their head coach vacancy. There is no way Kraft would be able to spend the rest of his days on this earth watching one of his adopted sons dominate his division while coaching the hated J-E-T-S, JETS, JETS, JETS.

Not that Kraft needed any more reasons to dismiss Mayo, but the availability of Mike Vrabel looms large over this whole situation. Even more so, the fear of losing him to the Jets looms even larger.

Vrabel knows that. It is that sort of conniving thinking that makes him so appealing as a head coach. He wants to be in New England. There is no way he wants to wear those ugly green sweatshirts or jackets. There is no way he would want to help a franchise, that he had been trained his whole life to despise, succeed.

But there will be plenty of time to talk about "Vrabes." I do wonder if he has any cute nicknames for Kraft, though. I think we may soon find out.

I wrote there are many reasons Mayo should have been fired. The final straw, however, was winning on Sunday. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone who has watched or listened to Mayo this season.

Despite the Patriots having the number one draft pick all locked up in a vault going into the last game of the year, Mayo preached all week long that he was coaching to win against the Bills. If players were healthy, they were going to play.

Robert Kraft must have smirked. I am sure he believed he didn't have to come out, explicitly, and order the Code Red to Mayo to lose against the Bills. He must have felt the two had a certain mental telepathy between the two of them. They were good at making secret, backroom non-verbal agreements. He was the young Thundercat, after all.

But Kraft must never have believed that Mayo would follow through on trying to win the game. Sure, Mayo started Drake Maye like he said he would. He was healthy, he played. That's what Mayo said he would do, but Mayo, dutifully, took the franchise quarterback out of the game after the first drive.

Attaboy, Jerod – the Krafts must have been thinking.

But at some point, the Krafts must have crushed their styrofoam cups filled with hot chocolate when they saw Joe Milton complete pass after pass or Joey Slye make kick after kick. Buffalo's kicker knew to miss an extra point. Why wasn't Mayo communicating the same sort of stuff to his players? What was he doing?

Maybe that explains the Krafts not waiting until Monday morning to fire Mayo. The Monday following the regular season finale is commonly referred to as "Black Monday" in the NFL as that is when teams, typically, meet with their head coaches to inform them they have been fired.

Robert Kraft fired Mayo, barely, an hour after the game. That is unheard of. Which begs the question – when did Kraft know he was going to fire Mayo?

The follow up question would then be – Why was Mayo allowed to coach an incredibly important game which could help expedite the Patriots' return to relevance?

Those are the two most important questions I need answered. I'm sorry, but there is no way the Kraft firing statement was crafted, pardon the pun, in the short time period after the game until it was released. There is no way it could have even have been prepared during the game. It was too well thought out.

Kraft's press conference on Monday offered a little insight, but not much. He mentioned one of the biggest reasons for Mayo's dismissal was that the team regressed over the course of the season. He mentioned, rightfully so, that the team's high point of the season was their Week One victory over the Bengals.

He also mentioned that he had gone back and forth for the last month on whether or not to keep Mayo. It is also important to note that Kraft has been unwavering, since the Mayo firing, in saying that Eliot Wolf will remain in charge of personnel decisions. Why would Wolf be given more time and not Mayo? Didn't Kraft keep talking about how strong of a personal relationship he had with Mayo and how much he loved him?

That is why I believe Jerod Mayo was, ultimately, fired for being insubordinate and stabbing the Kraft family in the back by coaching to, and ultimately, winning the game against the Bills and costing the Patriots the number one draft pick. Insubordination is nothing new to this Patriots team as I, firmly, believe offensive coordinator, Alex Van Pelt, ignored his head coach the week prior by putting Rhamondre Stevenson out on the field for the opening drive against the Chargers when Mayo had gone around telling everyone that Antonio Gibson would get the start due to Stevenson's fumbling problems.

It was a selfish gesture on Mayo's part in order, I believe, to pad his resume. Mayo coached the whole season to try to make himself look good. It was all about image with him. He didn't coach to try and win games, but, instead, he coached to not lose games by too much. He didn't want to get blown out. That would be embarrassing.

Mayo coached in a manner in which he could say at the end of the year, which he did, "Hey, we were in every game. We only lost by one score. If it wasn't for that one long run or that one long touchdown pass, we were right there."

Mayo defended himself against criticism about the team's play and execution, midway through the season, by saying that once the players stepped on the field, they were on their own. He was inferring that he was doing a great job preparing the team for the games. It wasn't his fault if his team committed a penalty on every play once it stepped on the field on Sunday. It wasn't his fault if his offensive linemen couldn't block the guy in front of him. It wasn't his fault if a wide receiver ran a wrong route.

In the words of that great philosopher, Gisele, he couldn't throw the ball and catch it, too.

Despite Mayo constantly saying, week after week, that he was the head coach of the team and that the buck stopped with him, he never really took the blame for anything. He'd say it, but he never meant it. It just sounded good. It sounded like something a true leader would say.

He, blatantly, threw his offensive coordinator under the bus. He, coyly, deflected a reporter who questioned Alex Van Pelt's play calling by saying, "You said it, not me."

He called his team – the team he was in charge of – "soft." He once responded to a question about being called a "player's coach" by saying that he just wants to be referred to as a "great coach."

Mayo saw the opportunity to get another win under his coach's belt against a Buffalo Bills team that was resting all of its starters and had nothing to play for. On top of that, Buffalo wanted the Patriots to win so New England wouldn't get the number one overall pick.

This victory was a lay up for Mayo... if he wanted it. It was a cookie just dangling there right in front of his nose. And he took it and gobbled it up. He wanted to be able to say his team ended on a high note.

Hey, we won our last game. We are trending in the right direction. Boutte had the first 100-yard receiving game for the Patriots in a couple of years. Look, I benched Rhamondre Stevenson for fumbling all year. See, everyone says I am a "player's coach," but I can be a hard ass disciplinarian.

He didn't fool anybody. Kraft is right – it wasn't Mayo's fault. He wasn't ready. It is not easy to replace a legend. I'm not sure if former NFL quarterback and now WFAN sports talk show host, Boomer Esiason, was the first to say it, but I've heard him, numerous times, point out that you never want to be the guy replacing a legend. You want to be the guy taking over for the guy who took over for the legend.

I think I may have first heard Esiason make that observation in relation to the Patriots' quarterback situation in recent years. You don't want to be Mac Jones trying to replace Tom Brady. You want to be Drake Maye trying to replace Mac Jones. But it also applies to the current head coaching situation with the Patriots.

Kraft was right – he did put inexperienced Jerod Mayo in an untenable situation trying to replace Bill Belichick and all his Super Bowl rings. Now, Mike Vrabel will have the opportunity to ride in on his white horse and play savior.