I ran across this great video of Wayne Chrebet today and it sparked this thought that I’ll talk about here, but be elaborating on further in an article that I’m writing that will also be one of the final chapters of Caponomics. Belichick has his own formula for his dynasty and that article/chapter will be explaining that formula, but for now, let’s focus on the Chris Hogan deal that went down in New England…
Art Weiss represented the 5’10”, 188-pound Wayne Chrebet, who Bill Belichick saw first-hand every single day in practice as the Defensive Coordinator of the New York Jets. Then, Belichick brought that to New England to win championships with small, quick receivers like Troy Brown, Deion Branch, Wes Welker, Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola. In a way, Art Weiss gave Belichick the prototype receiver in Wayne Chrebet, which resulted in this offense built on short, quick, and inexpensive receivers that has helped the Patriots immensely in the amount of cap space they’ve saved over the last 16 years in a really expensive receiver market.
As that video above points out, critics believed Chrebet was too small and too slow, which was always one of the knocks for players like Welker, Edelman and Amendola, but Chrebet’s quickness was not properly valued at the time. I’m won’t avoid the elephant in the room with this conversation as the Patriots now have three white receivers, but Belichick has been able to exploit going back to Welker.
I think that having seen what Chrebet did in New York, Belichick had a first hand example of the prototype for his position, so he was more open to the possibility of Welker than other coaches probably were at the time. Back in 2006, although Chrebet had already happened and the Patriots were winning with their short receivers, I’d imagine that very few people were concerned with what a 5’9”, 190-pounds receiver with 67 catches for 687 yards (10.3 ypc) and one touchdown. Even fewer would be willing to trade the Dolphins a second- and a seventh-round pick for him, then sign him to a five-year, $18.1 million contract with a $9 million signing bonus.
While I think there’s a little bit of a bias about white athletes, it’s less a race thing than it is a prototype thing as I think that Christian McCaffrey will not only inspire a generation of white running backs, but he’ll give coaches a prototype. Even though Chris Hogan isn’t similar in size to Welker, he’s compared to him because he’s a white slot receiver. As McCaffrey continues to have success, that barrier will break down like Warren Moon and Doug Williams broke down the barriers at quarterback.
A lot of people refer to Welker as an average athlete because he looks like the average guy, Chrebet faced the same thing and I think that people in the NFL are affected by this bias as well, but to call Welker and average athlete is insane. He had eight punt returns for touchdowns in college, which is still tied for the NCAA record and he’s only the second player in NFL history to return a kickoff and a punt, kick an extra point and a field goal and make a tackle in a single game. I even saw the same things being said by some Patriots fans who questioned why the team was interested in an average athlete. Our society likes crying racism too much, but this is just lazy thinking, just like the way people thought Geno Smith and Teddy Bridgewater were more mobile than they are when they came into the league. People have a idea in their head of a prototype at a position and it affects how they perceive things, that’s all and Chrebet opened Belichick up to the Welker prototype, which has become a fixture since.
Hogan breaks all molds though, he’s a modern-day Jim Thorpe. I don’t think there is any sport he’s ever picked up that he hasn’t been good at and he has the size too that these other players haven’t had for New England at 6’1”, 220-pounds. He started playing lacrosse as a freshman after tearing his rotator cuff as a pitcher and he was All-State as a junior and State Player of the Year as a senior in one of the best lacrosse states in the country, then went on to play at Penn State. Vic Carucci tweeted that Belichick likes Hogan because he was the Bills back-up punter, Tyler Dunne wrote that Hogan was the Bills best ping-pong player and I remembered that Hogan won the LeSean McCoy Charity Softball Home Run Derby with seven home runs, which you can watch here.
Hogan’s college recruiting process was always very strange to me as colleges somehow weren’t lining up to offer the player who was clearly best receiver and athlete in the state of New Jersey. Hogan burst on the scene with 5 catches for 213 yards and a touchdown in a 2003 State Championship win as a Ramapo High School sophomore, then had 114 catches for 1876 yards (16.5 ypc/85.3 ypg) and 25 touchdowns over the next two seasons, which were both All-State seasons for him, but his best offers were from New Hampshire, Temple, Western Michigan, Connecticut, Kansas and Rutgers. Maybe the fact that he had his pick of lacrosse schools scared some teams off and I know he had to commit to lacrosse in the fall, before the football season even ended, but he had shown enough up to that point to merit a football scholarship, yet very few teams bit.
We’ve seen the Welker, Edelman and Amendola mismatches, but this last week, Mr. Weiss sold Belichick on a different kind of mismatch creator in Chris Hogan with that size at 6’1″, 220-pounds,
4.39 speed and
the strength to bench press 225 for 28 reps at the Fordham Pro Day in 2011.
He’s a bigger, stronger, quicker and faster version of Anquan Boldin, so prepare for an incredible mismatch creator, special teams stud and athlete in New England this season and beyond. Let’s not forget that the Patriots wanted Boldin in 2010 to pair with Randy Moss and Wes Welker, but his price tag was just too high, so they’re getting a similar guy now and at a huge value for what he can produce for them. That size, strength, speed and athleticism come with a competitive drive that pushed Hogan to stick with this dream after four years of lacrosse and one season at Monmouth where he played both ways, but didn’t have stats that jumped off the page and he dealt with being cut by the 49ers, Giants, and Dolphins before making it with the Bills late in 2012. I’ve known Hogan since we were both in middle school and he’s always had a competitive fire that was obvious from a young age, which is a trait that must be noted. I’ve said it before, Dr. Kevin Elko wrote in
Touchdown that, when he was with the Steelers, they used to look for players who had overcome adversity as they knew that they’d know how to deal with adversity when it hit them in the NFL and Hogan’s overcome his fair share of adversity.
Mr. Weiss and the Patriots constructed a 3-year, $12 million contract with a cap hit of $5.5 million in year one and $7.5 million in guarantees that ensured the Bills could not match it due to their limited cap space and gave Hogan an opportunity to become a legend in New England. I don’t have the final numbers on the last two years, but I have to believe this contract will have a low year three figure that’ll pave the way for an extension in his 30-year old season. They did a fantastic job replicating what the Browns did with the Andrew Hawkins deal to pry him away from the Bengals two offseasons ago with a heavily front-loaded contract, which the Bengals were unable to match.
I’m outlining right now in preparation for the Belichick chapter I’m writing, this offense at it’s foundation is about creating mismatches, while the defense is about being able to handle any mismatches your throw at it. I feel that’s Belichick’s main, core philosophy and that philosophy is why when a player like Chrebet tears up his defense in practice every day, he takes note. With Gronkowski, Edelman, Hogan and Amendola if he stays on, they have four different and elite mismatch creators and they all cost between 2.85-4.38% of the cap each. The Patriots don’t draft receivers in the first round because the kinds of receivers you draft there are guys that you hope will play like Demaryius Thomas or Julio Jones, but that comes with a price tag on the second contract that doesn’t fit into the Patriots formula as they’ll cost 9.79% and 10.24% of the cap respectively, while the Patriots Top 3 receivers now cost 10.77% altogether, plus Gronk at a cheap 4.26%.Belichick isn’t looking for one guy who can go off for 100 yards in any given game, he’s looking for 3-4 pass catchers who can all have between 60-100 yards each in a game with the ability to go off for 150 yards if there’s a match-up to exploit. Like we see every day on Sunday, but even more so in the UFC, the goal seems to be to build a well-rounded skill set and then find the ways to exploit your opponent’s weakness. I’ve said this often on Over The Cap, but you look at Georges St-Pierre who many consider the greatest UFC fighter of all time and he was great because he was great at everything. He had no weakness to exploit and he had every tool at his disposal to exploit yours. That’s what Bill Belichick creates on offense and he builds a defense that you can’t exploit, a defense prepared for as many match-ups as possible.
We see these defensive prototypes across the league, big safeties to cover tight ends like Rob Gronkowski type, taller cornerbacks in response to the Calvin Johnson type, shorter slot cornerbacks in response to the Julian Edelman type, and many others. With Chris Hogan, you’re getting a 6’1”, 220-pound receiver with 4.39 speed, 28 reps of 225 on the bench and athletic ability that’s unmatched, so who on defense is going to cover this guy?
If you add Hogan’s $5.5 million for 2016 to the Patriots current Top 51 of $140.2 million, then we’re at $145.7 million of a $155.27 million cap, which is 93.83% of the cap. That’s enough space for a draft class with 10 picks, but no first rounder, and maybe one or two more of the lower cost free agents they have always used as short-term solutions to continue this dynasty.
With Hogan taking up about 3.54% of the cap in 2016, the Patriots will likely be trying to restructure Amendola as his 4.38% cap hit would be out of line with how they typically spend money on their pass game with Hogan around 3-4%, which is where their highest paid receiver has resided on their Super Bowl teams.
