NFL free agency wins, losses and questions for all 32 teams: Execs on Pats and Giants’ spending, Bucs’ strategy, more
There are a couple ways to evaluate the Patriots’ expensive dive into free agency. We’ll begin with a harsh, narrative-busting take contending that, after two decades of dominance with Tom Brady behind center, the Patriots became just another team in 2020, and that’s what they remain. This view holds that the transformation from elite power to also-ran continued over the past month as New England made a strong push for winning the offseason, just like so many other teams that never produced a sustained winner that way.
“It doesn’t matter if you have Bill Belichick, Andy Reid or any other great coach,” an exec said. “When you lose Tom Brady, you scramble to get the same crap everybody else gets. Your hit rate in free agency falls, and unless you find that next QB, you are going to be looking back at them in a year saying, ‘I can’t believe they spent all that money on that guy.’ ”
This buzzkill analysis wasn’t the majority view. Outside the league, pundits generally applauded as the Patriots made a series of aggressive moves. There were even suggestions this spree was part of a Belichickian zig-when-others-zag strategy to invest heavily when other teams lacked the cap flexibility to procure expensive talent. That sort of analysis is hard to disprove when a team wins 75 percent of its games year after year. Is it fantasy now?
“Just because Bill had a down year last year without Brady doesn’t make Bill a bad coach,” an exec said. “Bill is still as good a football coach as anyone that’s probably ever coached a game. They had a lot of opt-outs. Every team goes through a transition. They just happened to not go through one for 20 years, where every other team goes through one every four or five years.”
Multiple execs approved as the Patriots signed four free agents to deals worth between $11 million and $13.625 million per year, plus four others in the $5 million to $7.5 million range.
Matt Judon,
Jonnu Smith,
Hunter Henry,
Nelson Agholor,
Davon Godchaux,
Jalen Mills,
Kyle Van Noy and
Kendrick Bourne surely will upgrade the talent base.
“New England was good,” an evaluator said. “It cost a lot of money, but they had to do something to try to turn it around there. I put the Giants in the same category. They spent too much money relative to what they acquired, but they needed to acquire what they acquired.”
Others liked the Patriots’ emphasis on tight ends, who add versatility at prices more reasonable than what teams frequently pay for wide receivers.
“New England got a lot of good players,” an exec said. “They got the two best tight ends on the market. They got a good receiver in Bourne, maybe overpaid for Agholor. You wish they had a better quarterback — maybe they get one in the draft, maybe they get Jimmy Garoppolo, who knows? At least they have talented players now. Last year, they had just nothing.”
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