I suppose here are my organized thoughts on the Pats offseason so far:
1. I wish that Revis was still on the roster next year.
2. I wish that Revis and Vereen were still on the roster next year.
3. I wish that Revis and Vereen and Browner were still on the roster next year.
4. Heck, I wish we could just run it back with the same team next year.
5. The salary cap is a Hard Cap and it is designed to prevent a team like the Pats from winning a superbowl and easily being able to run it back.
6. There is no "being cheap." It's not about actual money, it's about navigating the cap, and the Pats are close to it each year.
7. NFL salaries ARE a "Zero Sum" game. Money spent in one place DOES prevent you from spending in another place (unlike baseball, which just has a tax, and the NBA, which has a soft cap...OKC definitely "cheaped out " on Harden; the Pats extending Revis would mean they CANNOT spend that money elsewhere.
8. I like debating about roster moves in any sport, but Bellichek is much better at this than me. About every offseason the Pats (and every NFL team, basically) lose someone via free agency or trade... Law, Malloy, Mankins, Seymour, Moss, Welker, Hernandez...still managed to stay afloat.
9. You can't measure success by superbowl titles. That '07 team didn't win the title, but man, if that '07 team had 10 seasons together, they'd win more superbowls than any other Pats SB winning team.
10. Considering the cap is designed to prevent this, it's AMAZING how many deep playoff appearances and division titles they've won. They deserve Spurs level respect at this point; I'll wait until they absolutely flop before thinking it's over.
11. As others pointed out, paying 1 player is also lost opportunity cost. Sometimes it comes down to "do you want Revis age 31-35 or do you want Jones, Hightower, Collins age 24-28?" The cap requires a lot of long-term thinking.
12. Considering how hard it is to win a superbowl and how much luck (bounces, injuries, etc) is involved, probably the best you can do is guarantee yourself to be repeatedly "in the mix" rather than "the favorite" every so often. If you sacrifice future to "go for it," you usually end up more like the Saints (if you're lucky), but more usually the Cowboys or Falcons (think they're 1 player away, trade a bunch of picks for "the guy," never get that superbowl).
13. Except for Brady (and recently adding in Gronk), the Pats general strategy has been to avoid overpaying aging guys, paying guys for past success, and avoiding tying up a lot of money in one player where injury or sudden decline would cost the team both that player AND cause a huge amount of dead money.
14. The Pats overall strategy has yielded possibly the best every stretch of NFL success in the hardest NFL time period to have that kind of success, so, pretty good.
15. I do not see any negative FA consequences from the Pats. Wilfork was employed and well payed by the Pats for 10+ years. Cuts happen all the time in the NFL to good players. It is well known by players. It is fans and reporters that don't get it. The ONLY part of a contract that matters is the guaranteed bonus. It is reporters' faults (and fans' faults for buying into it) that contracts are reported for the full but almost never actually delivered amounts. Good reporters will say "it's a 5 year contract worth up to 100 million, but it's really a 3 year 40 million dollar deal." All players know that it's a 3 year 40 million dollar deal, and no one is surprised when they are cut before year 4.
16. Continuing with FAs, why wouldn't they want to sign here? Browner got paid and now can test free agency. He signed a cuttable deal with the Pats, so he knew this could happen. Revis signed a 1 year 12 million dollar deal, won a title, proved his worth, and now gets 16 million a year or so from age 31-35 or something. Ayers was a borderline cut, now looks like he'll get a nice payday for looking good on a SB winner. Casillas, never heard of him before last year, now he gets 10 million. Vereen played 16 games this year (5, 13, and 8 in other years), got 840 TOTAL receiving and rushing yards, 5 TOTAL TDs, and now he gets 4 million per year at a position where there's a deep RB draft and it's been shown over and over again to be an unreliable position. If I were a free agent, I'd LOVE to play 1-2 years in NE!!
and I should add
17. I'm not going to try to make it feel better by saying Revis wasn't important. He was a huge asset last year. He might have been vital on the final SB play because maybe it made it more obvious where the throw was going, whereas with a less CB out on that side, maybe the defense hesitates more because the ball could go anywhere. I don't know. But 1 year 12 million is different than what he's getting now.
18. The NFL has the single most difficult to manage budget and salary cap. Additionally, the NFL is the most difficult sport in which to evaluate players; so many fluid and moving parts that are dependent on each other.
19. It might be a mistake to let Revis go. It might make next year's team worse. It depends on what else is added, how they draft, and what the Pats would have needed to cut in order to make Revis fit. The same is true for 2, 3, and 4 years from now. Depends how Revis ages, and what is added to the Pats, and what they would have had to let go in order to keep him all those years. We'll have to see.
Topic: Patriots & NFL Free Agency Updates 2015 (Read 78197 times)