Just 355 days ago, Robert Kraft sat beside his hand-picked head coach brimming with confidence.

“I have that same conviction when I hired Bill Belichick,” the New England Patriots team owner said then. “A decision that many questioned at the time and told me I was making a major error.”

Monday afternoon, in the wake of firing Jerod Mayo after one season, Kraft decided this error was his.

“This whole situation is on me,” Kraft said. “I feel terrible for Jerod because I put him in an untenable situation. I know that he has all the tools as a head coach to be successful in the league. He just needed more time before taking the job.”

Kraft said Mayo’s short leash wasn’t about the final season record or the statistical production from a roster the league viewed as incapable of meaningfully competing. The Patriots’ finale win over a partial-strength Buffalo Bills team pushed them to a 4-13 season finish.

But Kraft said firing Mayo wasn’t about record alone. Rather, the Patriots lost six straight games before their season finale. Kraft felt Mayo’s team was trending in the wrong direction. So in recent weeks, Kraft began to ponder a difficult conversation with a man who had played and coached with the franchise 14 of the past 17 years.

“In the important decisions in my life, I always say I measure nine times and cut once,” Kraft said. “And this was one of those situations. The main thing for me was I felt like we regressed. The high point was winning in the Cincinnati game [in Week 1]. And then midseason, I just think we started to regress.

“I don’t like losing. I don’t like losing the way we lost.”

This developing story will be updated.