The Patriots didn’t get any immediate help for their floundering team. And they didn’t sell off parts to add much-needed draft capital for upgrades next season, which was the preferred option.
They did zip at the NFL’s trade deadline.
So now what? Where does that leave them?
Answer: With a lot of work to do.
First off, since they didn’t trade any of their players with expiring contracts, they need to get busy signing some of them before they hit free agency, and lose them for nothing.
Translation?
Back up the Brink’s truck, dip into the pool of cash, and make sure to keep Kyle Dugger, Michael Onwenu, and Josh Uche in a Patriots uniform. And that’s just for starters.
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Basically, the decision-makers have to decide who to keep, who their cornerstone players are going to be before working out the rest of it.
And while Dugger, Onwenu and Uche aren’t “great players” per se, they’re good players and part of a young core to continue to build around.
Instead of having them walk away after the season, and get nothing in return, which is where it’s headed, the Patriots need to be proactive and sign some of these players to extensions.
That’s one of the steps that lies ahead.
But before they start throwing money around, Robert Kraft has to decide whether Bill Belichick stays or goes. He also needs to decide if he wants the same collection of people evaluating players.
Whether it’s Belichick, or someone else, decisions have to be made with respect to Mac Jones, and if they want to skip back into the draft for a quarterback.
They can’t pass go, or legitimately plan for the future, until that happens.
Once that’s established, they can determine who makes up the group of players they want to move forward with, and the direction they’re headed.
Speaking with Devin McCourty on MassLive’s “Eye on Foxborough” podcast, the former Patriot captain and cornerstone player on defense agreed the team needed to open the checkbook and spend some money, but it was important to get their ducks in a row, first.
“Overall they have to look at this as a total team thing. What kind of team do we want to be moving forward? Are we going to stay with Mac Jones?,” he said. “Because if we stay with Mac Jones, we have to realize (his) contract’s going to come up, so we have to account for that.
“Or, if we decide we’re going with a new quarterback, and build in the draft and get a rookie quarterback, alright, he’s going to be on a rookie deal, so let’s make everything else around him so much better.”
The Patriots, who own the worst record in the AFC with nine games still to play, need to upgrade the talent, particularly on offense. Nowadays, teams legitimately build around their quarterbacks.
Case in point, the Cincinnati Bengals. After drafting Joe Burrow, they got him elite weapons starting with Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. Then they fixed their offensive line to make sure Burrow was protected.
The Miami Dolphins? They traded for Tyreek Hill last year knowing his pairing with Jaylen Waddle would be dynamite and boost Tua Tagovailoa.
The Philadelphia Eagles did the same for Jalen Hurts, adding A.J. Brown to an arsenal with Devonta Smith.
“You have to know what you want to be,” said McCourty. “When you look at New England, what are they?”
Good question.
Before the season started, it sure looked like the Patriots were going to be a team that won with a stingy defense and had an offense that led with a powerful running game.
“But then you’re like, they really didn’t invest in their offensive line, and make this powerful, big offensive line that can move people,” said McCourty. “So then you’re thinking, well maybe they don’t want to be that? But then they didn’t get a ton of speed at receiver.”
More to the point, they didn’t get a difference-maker, someone defensive coordinators had to game plan around. They had free agent DeAndre Hopkins in for a visit, wined him and dined him, but weren’t willing to pay the freight, losing him to Tennessee.
Following the season, armed with the third most cap space in the league next year, they need to change that narrative. They need to spend whatever it takes to land the desired targets.
“DeAndre Hopkins to me was a no-brainer, simply because even though he might not be 2013, 2014, 2015 DeAndre Hopkins, we just saw last week he had the three-touchdown game because Tennessee decided today, we’re going to throw him the ball,” said McCourty. “It just seems like having a guy that you can say, ‘Hey, on third down, I don’t have to be perfect at quarterback. He can make a play.’”
In short, the Patriots and or Belichick, if he is retained, need a shift in philosophy. Instead of settling on bargain basement solutions, they need to land top-end, bluechip talent. That means swallowing the cost.
As it is, they didn’t help themselves by not adding draft chips before the deadline.
Because now, getting zero return on players in the final year of their contracts is like putting yourself in quicksand. It’s a hole you can’t dig out of. If they wind up spending a ton of money on other free agents, which is what they should do, they aren’t going to get compensatory picks for players they lose.
That’s why they need to extend some of those players with expiring deals, then add on from there.
The players inside the locker room are paying attention. They’re anxious to see which direction this is headed. Potential free agents will do the same when the time comes.
“There’s no doubt about it. You look at all of that. And you watch (what they do in) the draft,” said McCourty. “I knew who Stephon Gilmore was when we signed Gilmore. Or when we signed Darrelle Revis or Brandon Browner. I knew what that meant for our secondary, and what we could be. Guys are fully paying attention, so when you don’t do the things … when you see we didn’t do this or we didn’t do that, it’s like, ‘What are we doing here?’
“And it’s even more, when you fast forward and you’re sitting at 2-6,” McCourty went on. “I think from a player’s standpoint, you do sit there and you’re like: ‘Man if we would have signed DeAndre Hopkins, I don’t know if we’d be undefeated, but we’d be better than we are. I definitely think some of that is going to go on, and has (already) happened.”
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