The Patriots fired head coach Jerod Mayo after their 4-13 season came to an end on Sunday, but executive vice president Eliot Wolf will be back for a second year.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft confirmed that Wolf will remain with the team at a Monday press conference and said that Wolf and senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith will be involved in the head coaching search.
Quarterback Drake Maye had a strong season, but the Patriots didn’t get much out of the rest of the draft class. Kraft said it was part of a trend that extend to the final years of Bill Belichick’s tenure and he’d like to see it end this year.
“I think that the department evolved a lot, and a lot of things were changed,” Kraft said, via a transcript from the team. “We changed our grading system this year and have done things. Our drafts have not been good for a while. If you want to compete long term and be good in this league, you’ve got to have good drafts because those rookie contracts allow you to go out and get the people you need to surround people. It looks like we lucked out; we maybe have two quarterbacks. But I think we’ll hopefully see a big improvement this year.”
The Patriots have been linked to Mike Vrabel, who played for New England, and they’ve requested an interview with Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. Kraft didn’t comment on Vrabel, but said the team wants to “interview as many people as we can that we think can help us get to that position that we want to be in.” That’s not a process they went through with Mayo and any choice is going to need the personnel department to do a better job of supplying the team with players.
