The Patriots have their new head coach, but it remains unclear who their general manager will be.
Bill Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach the Patriots parted ways with last week, was the franchise’s de facto general manager during his 24 seasons in Foxborough, and owner Robert Kraft didn’t provide any clarity Wednesday on who will be making personnel decisions upon introducing Jerod Mayo as the team’s new coach.
“This is the first time in a quarter of a century that we’ve had to make major changes,” Kraft said, dancing around the question of whether he’ll hire a GM.
“We want to see what we have in-house, look [at] what’s out there in the marketplace and then do what we think is right. I know people have ideas, but I can just assure you, any decision we make at this time will be to try to give the support to Jerod and put the organization in the best place it can [be] to win games. We don’t have a fixed formula. We know what’s worked for us in the past, and that’s what we’re gonna do here in the future.”
The Patriots enter a massive offseason after coming off a miserable 4-13 campaign that led to Kraft and Belichick breaking up.
They hold the No. 3 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, their lowest pick since they took quarterback Drew Bledsoe No. 1 overall in 1993, and they may have to take a quarterback this time around after Mac Jones fizzled out in his third season, getting benched for Bailey Zappe.
New England’s last top-10 pick was actually Mayo, the former linebacker whom the team selected No. 10 overall in 2008.
Who will be making that critical draft pick in three months?
“What we know, we have a lot of people internally who’ve had a chance to train and learn under the greatest coach of all-time, a man whose football intellect is very special,” Kraft said, referencing Belichick. “In the short term, we’re looking for collaboration as our team has a tremendous opportunity to position itself right, given our salary-cap space and, you know, we’ve never drafted, in my 30 years of ownership, we’ve never been drafting as low as we’re drafting [this year].
“So we’re counting on our internal people, whom we’re still learning and evaluating. So we’re gonna let that evolve and develop, and before the key decisions have to be made, we will appoint someone. And at the same time, we’ll probably start doing interviews and looking at people from the outside. But my bias has always been, in all my family companies, to try to develop a culture from within where we all understand one another.”
Aside from Kraft and son Jonathan — the team president who was not present Wednesday because he had to deal with a “critical” issue with another of the family’s companies — the only person listed on the Patriots’ front-office roster on the team website is Matt Groh, the director of player personnel.
Eliot Wolf, the team’s director of scouting and son of former Packers GM Ron Wolf, was previously an assistant general manager for the Browns.