I feel like there's this bizarre tendency for people here to come up with convoluted, borderline-conspiracy theory explanations for anything the Patriots do. The Patriots 100% might be screwing up here, but the thought process behind their decisions seems incredibly straightforward.
Belichick got fired because he stopped winning. The NFL is a "What have you done for me lately?" business, and Bill himself has been one of the most cold-blooded practitioners of whacking people the second he thinks the return on investment is about to go the wrong way, regardless of prior performance. While Bill seemingly wanted to stay and might have thought he had a little more slack to turn it around, I don't think he's so delusional to think he could keep failing to win and coast on past performance forever. Action talks and BS walks. As Parcells said, "You are what your record says you are." Kraft acted accordingly.
Kraft and Belichick have had friction before, but when the team won 12+ games every year nobody gave a crap. The losing is the difference.
He wasn't fired for his coaching. He was fired for turning the offensive roster into a trash fire and showing zero signs he'd figured out how to turn it around. Losing Bill the coach was collateral damage of feeling like Bill the GM was killing them. They didn't take away his GM powers and keep him as HC either because he wouldn't actually do it (regardless of how people read the tea leaves from his Monday press conference), or becuase they thought it wouldn't actually work and would just make a dysfunctional drama crapshow between him and the new GM the second they disagreed.
Mayo isn't expected to be a better tactician than 2001-2018 Belichick. That's insane and I can (almost) guarantee nobody believes it. They think he can develop into a GOOD coach, and that combined with a GM who can build a better roster than 2019-2023 Belichick could manage (especially on offense) will add up to being overall better for the team than what 2020-present Belichick has actually delivered. They might be full of crap about Mayo and/or the future GM being the right people to do that, but the basic logic isn't some whackadoo hambanannas madness that requires Telenovela-level behind the scenes melodrama to explain away.
Mayo was hired right off the jump because they had a succession plan already in place, and he was it. The Patriots did the thing they didn't do with Brady that pissed everyone off - they had prepared for the changeover in advance. They had a plan and followed through.
They didn't bother with doing a bunch of HC interviews becuase he's been there for years, they've been evaluating him that entire time, and they think they know what they have. Again, they might be wrong, Mayo might stink to high heaven as a head coach. But if they think he's the guy, why waste everyone's time? Why delay rebuilding the organization and leave everyone twisting in the wind for longer than you have to if you think you have the answer already?
But what about hiring the head coach before the GM? BLASPHEMY! CATASTROPHE! LOUD NOISES!
Well, maybe.
If they end up flopping around a long time because they hired Mayo first and nobody wants to play GM with him, I'll 100% say that was a big mistake. The GM improving the roster is going to make this whole thing sink or swim in the next 2-3 years. I'm a lot more worried about the new GM upgrading the talent over the long haul than the first post-Belichick head coach if I'm honest. The roster is just that bad and the personnel side of things has just been terrifyingly aimless for years.
My GUESS (yes, this part is me just guessing, sue me), is they already know who the next GM is and they haven't announced it yet because they have to jump through all the hoops with league rules first before making it official, and that guy is already onboard with Mayo as HC. My GUESS is they whack Groh for being too much of a Bill puppet and hire Wolf, who actually had a track record working in personnel outside the Patriots from 2004-2019. So he's in the organization, but his career hasn't been just as a Belichick guy like Groh.
tl,dr: RLKAG
