A lot can change in a week in the NFL. This time last week, I was singing the New England Patriots praises for their strong start to free agency. They weren't making outrageously flashy moves, but they were retaining the key players from their team on cheap deals, while also shoring up areas of weakness, such as quarterback and offensive line, with unheralded external free agents.
Well, a week later, the Patriots haven't exactly done much else in free agency, which is a bit of a problem. For a team with several big holes and tons of cap space, you'd figure they would have shelled out some cash to land a top wide receiver or left tackle to help rebuild their roster. Instead, New England's front office has played hard ball, and they have paid a pretty big price for it.
With gaping holes at those two positions, and obviously quarterback as well, all attention is quickly turning to the 2024 NFL Draft, and it's safe to say the team needs to hit on pretty much all of their picks if they want a shot at jump starting their rebuild. But moving forward, it's clear the front office needs to refine their free agency strategy, because players simply don't want to play in Foxboro anymore.
The Patriots need to realize they no longer are a perennial Super Bowl contender
A lot has changed over the past few years for the Patriots. They have lost Tom Brady and pretty much every other holdover from the team's dynastic run, and now, they have replaced longtime head coach Bill Belichick with Jerod Mayo. The dynasty is very clearly over, and changes need to be ushered in at every spot within the organization.
We have gotten a chance to see how the new Belichick-less front office would operate during free agency, and the results have been mixed. The moves they have made have been solid, but it's the moves they haven't made that have come back to haunt them. Two of their top targets in Calvin Ridley and Tyron Smith ended up spurning them after spending a few days on the open market, resulting in the team spinning their wheels for much of the past week.
For all the changes that the team has experienced in recent years, this may be the biggest problem that New England has to deal with moving forward. Players aren't exactly going to be in a rush to play for a Patriots team that isn't very good, and doesn't have much of a plan for how to make themselves better in the near future. Maybe that changes with a strong draft, but you'd rather not put all your eggs in one basket.
It didn't necessarily have to be like 2021 when the Patriots were overpaying everyone they could to come play for them, but they can't exactly lowball players and expect them to sign on in New England given the circumstances. This isn't the Brady-Belichick era anymore; this team is bad, and they are going to have to work hard to turn things around. There cannot be an air of superiority in the building anymore.
A quick look around the league, and it's not hard to envy the plan the Washington Commanders of Tennessee Titans put into place for their rebuilding squads. Both teams were among the top of the league in cap space with the Patriots, so what did they do? They went out and acquired top-tier talent for their team, and players across the league took notice of that.
Did those teams overpay in some instances to get their guys? Certainly, but that's what you need to do when you find yourself at the bottom of the league. Ridley would have been a great addition for the Patriots, but it's not exactly a bad thing that his four-year, $92 million contract isn't on their books. However, when you have a need and a player you like, you have to go the extra mile to land him. In free agency, the Patriots failed to do that.
Deciding not to overspend in free agency makes sense based on what happened after the 2021 season for this team with that free agency class, but the Patriots missed a shot to really reinforce their roster in free agency. Unless they go swing a trade for a star receiver, such as Tee Higgins, they have three massive holes on their roster that need to be addressed extremely early in the draft, which is never really a good thing.
Now, the front office has put themselves in a massive bind with the draft approaching. Do they select a quarterback with the third overall pick, or do they trade down and try to fill all three of their biggest holes with what would presumably be two first round selections and the 34th overall pick. For an extremely important draft, you'd like some clarity, but after dropping the ball in free agency, the front office has a lot of work to do in order to get back on track. Whether they can do so this offseason will depend solely on how their draft goes.
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