FOXBORO — As the Patriots move into the Jerod Mayo era, an important question looms over the franchise in their rebuilding process: Who will have final say on roster decisions?

Patriots owner Robert Kraft said Wednesday their front office structure is a work in progress, but acknowledged the team will eventually conduct interviews to determine who will lead their football operations following the departure of Bill Belichick, who was the de facto general manager since his hiring in 2000. The organization has many critical roster-building decisions to make, including the No. 3 overall pick in April’s NFL Draft, their highest selection in Kraft’s 30 years as owner.

“Well, this is a day we want to celebrate Jerod taking this position,” Kraft said when asked who will have final say on roster decisions. “What we know, we have a lot of people internally who have had a chance to train and learn under the greatest coach of all time and a man who is a football intellect who’s very special. So, in the short term, we’re looking for collaboration. Our team has a tremendous opportunity to position itself right given our salary cap space and we’ve never drafted, in my 30 years of ownership, we’ve never been drafting as low as we’re drafting. …

“So we’re counting on our internal people who we’re still learning and evaluating, so we’re going to let that evolve and develop and before the key decisions have to be made, we will appoint someone,” Kraft continued. “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 our family companies, is to try to develop a culture from within where we understand one another. …

“We like to get continuity in our company, get the most competent people and then try to build stability. So before we just rush and hire people, we want to understand what we have internally. It’s a long answer, but an important question.”

When asked if the Patriots intend to hire a general manager, Kraft reiterated there will be a process of evaluating who they have internally and looking for outside voices if needed.

“As I said, this is the first time in a quarter of a century that we’ve had to make major changes,” Kraft said. “And we want to see what we have in-house, look what’s out there on 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 to win games. So we don’t have a fixed formula, we know what’s worked for us in the past and that’s what we’re going to do here in the future.”

In the meantime, it appears director of player personnel Matt Groh and director of scouting Eliot Wolf are in control of football decisions. Both were present at Mayo’s introductory press conference.

Mayo leaned on the theme of collaboration when asked what his role would be in roster building.

“One thing with collaboration, also, there are experts,” Mayo said. “I believe in leaning on experts in their field. Now, will we always do what that expert advises us to do? No, absolutely not. But at the same time I’m going to go into this thing with no expectations, and I said this as a rookie, I wanted to be a sponge and learn as much as I can. We have a lot of people in this building that I can learn from in those regards.”

Kraft said ownership’s involvement in football operations won’t change. His son Jonathan, the team’s president, was not present at Wednesday’s press conference because Kraft said something came up with one of the Kraft Group’s companies that was “really important” that Jonathan had to attend to. He said Jonathan’s role in the organization is “like an equal partner to me in the running of the operations strategically” and that he is not involved in day to day operations.

As for football decisions, Kraft said he’ll leave that to the front office executives they’ve hired to make them.

“We try to hire the best people we can find and let them do their job and hold them accountable,” Kraft said. “If you get involved, then tell them what to do or try to influence then you can’t hold them responsible and have them accountable. It’ll be within the people’s discretion who are the decision-makers to do it and if we hired the wrong people, then we’ll have to make a change. But we’re going to try to enjoy it as fans.”