“Fire Mayo” chants rang out at Gillette Stadium during the resounding loss to the Chargers

During the fourth quarter of an ugly loss to the Chargers on Saturday, many of the few who stayed for a garbage game made their preferences known about the team’s first-year head coach.

“Fire Mayo!” was the chant that emerged.

“You hear these things” coach Jerod Mayo said after the game, via Mike Reiss of ESPN.com. “But at the same time they have paid to sit in the seats and we have to play better. If we play better, we won’t have to listen to this.”

He’s right, but the problem is the game. And the coach is responsible for that.

Of course the squad has something to do with it. And the roster Bill Belichick left for Mayo wasn’t good. In Belichick’s final two years with the Patriots, the greatest coach in football history (as UNC recruits hear all the time) managed just 12 overall wins in 34 total games.

For years, coach Belichick had to compensate for the failings of personnel guru Belichick. After Tom Brady left, everything caught up with Belichick. And the stench of bad personnel decisions remains.

That doesn’t mean Mayo should be guaranteed a second season. At times this year it felt like Mayo was trying to talk his way out of his job. For example when he called his team “soft”. And it was odd, to say the least, to learn Saturday that Mayo had said running back Rhamondre Stevenson wouldn’t start the game due to ongoing fumbling issues — before Stevenson had actually started the game.

Success as an NFL coach is evident in big moments. Survival is shown in small things. Too many times this year Mayo has stumbled over these little things. And it raises the question of whether the owners did the wrong thing by creating a contractual succession plan that gave Mayo the job before Bill Belichick was asked to leave.

Now the question is: What will Robert Kraft do? Firing Mayo so quickly could be interpreted as an admission that Mayo should never have been hired. And there’s a chance Mayo simply needs more time to grow and develop into the role.

But only dysfunctional teams deal with mistakes by doubling down. The smart teams recognize their mistakes and make changes.

Following Belichick was never going to be easy. And if Mayo were fired after just one season in Belichick’s long shadow, the next coach would end up lurking in him as well.

On the one hand, it is part of the prize for two decades of excellence. On the other hand, a simple question must be asked. Can Mayo ever match the excellence Belichick has shown? If the prognosis is that he cannot and does not want to do it, it makes sense to think about a change.

Especially since former Belichick assistant Brian Flores may be on the verge of becoming a head coach again if there is an owner willing to ignore his pending lawsuit against the NFL and four franchises.