Former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski once shared a locker room with Jerod Mayo. He recently told Ryan Morik of Fox News Digital he thought that Patriots owner Robert Kraft firing Mayo after just a single season was “kind of an ugly situation” because “it wasn’t enough time to evaluate” Mayo as a head coach.
Former defensive back and current NFL analyst Logan Ryan also played alongside Mayo with the Patriots and echoed Gronkowski’s take.
“The Patriots were not going to have a good year based on [their] roster and they weren’t spending a lot of money to save up money here,” Ryan said during a recent appearance on the “Awful Announcing Podcast,” Sam Neumann of Awful Announcing shared. “I’m a fan of Jerod’s. I thought he should’ve been given another year. Definitely a lot of us [former] players — you saw Gronk was ’bout to say a lot on Fox there. So, I think a lot of us felt the same. It kind of felt like, why pick him if that’s the situation he got? He didn’t get another year to right that wrong.”
The Patriots went 4-13 under Mayo after he reportedly failed to receive needed mentorship while working under former New England head coach Bill Belichick. Months before Kraft confirmed the Mayo decision, numerous stories named one-time Associated Press Coach of the Year Award winner and Patriots Hall of Famer Mike Vrabel as a potential candidate for the New England gig.
Vrabel is now considered “the heavy favorite” for the job, and Ryan noted that he thinks Robert Kraft and team president Jonathan Kraft “had something up their sleeve” even before Week 18 concluded.
“I think [Robert Kraft is] a smart person and might have a Vrabel in his sleeve,” Ryan said during the podcast interview. “Still, for the fact of Jerod’s case, I’m not a fan of that and definitely support Jerod.”
Multiple other clubs are expected to heavily pursue Vrabel, including a Las Vegas Raiders side that features former New England quarterback Tom Brady as a minority owner. Even if the Krafts land Vrabel and he proves to be an upgrade, it sounds like some who previously played with Mayo won’t forget how he was treated over the past 12 months.
