No, just a lack of impending FAs who will be worth comp picks.
To be clear, it's not the impending FAs that determine the 2017 comp picks, it's the ones who just left - which is like, Tavon Wilson and Akiem Hicks - offset by the guys they signed (Long, McClellin, Hogan, Brown, Knighton). Well, some of the guys they signed might not factor in to the compensation formula, but at any rate, they definitely won't get any comp picks in 2017.
Thats not necessary true. Bennett and Cooper among others are on one year deals.
As Reiss has reported, this was pre-arranged. Iosefa was released so NE can "shuffle" their roster spaces. In return, Iosefa declined worksouts for other teams.
Can someone explain this a bit more? Specifically, did they want a longer look at Steward? Was there another UDFA they thought they would be signing? Why wasn't he signed the same day Steward was cut? Just trying to understand exactly what's going on with these decisions because I'm obsessive like that. I understood the Ventrone shuffle because they brought other guys in. They don't save any cash with the timing, right, because players are paid game checks?
I think the timing was around rookie mini-camp; cutting Iosefa let them bring an extra UDFA to get a look. Presumably if one of the rookies had been awful, he might have been cut, but I guess Belichick / the coaches liked them all enough to make Steward the victim instead.
You seem to really over value the draft and the WR position in particular. Looking at the 2014 draft they got a starter in stork, a RB that looks like he has a role with team and their backup quarterback. In aggregate that is a pretty good draft. All those 5th and 7th round picks you listed were always only lottery tickets. The expectation should have been that guys like Moore, Thomas, Gallon we're going to flame out. Anything else would have been a surprise.
How is the 2014 draft an example of the Patriots missing over and over again by not finding Brady a weapon on the outside?
Or the dart could have hit Paul Richardson or Marquise Lee and we'd be in the same place we are. And if you throw in rookie free agents--which I do think is fair to do in evaluating a team's ability to bring in new cost controlled talent out of college-we did get a pro bowl cornerback that year, so all hope is not lost.
How much of an improvement to the team's current level of success will an upgrade at the outside receiver offer the team and how does that upgrade compare to the impact of an upgrade at another position? Unless we are talking about a player as great as Randy Moss, would an outside receiver ever be better than the third option on this team?
Jordan Matthews has been almost exclusively a slot receiver, so I don't know what you're talking about.
It's so hard to tell because Jimmy G. is such an unknown. If Jimmy G is Ryan Mallet (an adequate cheap backup who can't really start) then a C or lower is fair; if Jimmy G is actually a good starter in this league for the Pats (or if he shows enough to earn the Pats a good return) then there's a totally different answer.
Isn't 2014 LaFell basically the guy you describe? If defenses double-teamed Gronk or Edelman, he was effective enough to beat man coverage and make them pay. He ended up getting 953 yards and 7 touchdowns, which is a lot of production considering the other weapons. Obviously he fell off big-time last year. I'm just trying to get a sense for what caliber of guy you're talking about here.
He is the kind of guy I'm describing. And not necessarily coincidentally, the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Obviously, the real Lafell has since reared his head, and he turned back into the guy that wasn't good enough for the Panthers dreadful receiving corp when they gave up on him. I think 2014 Lafell was his absolute ceiling, and I don't think even the Patriots could have hoped to get that kind of production from him when they got him. The problem is the Patriots have taken how many shots on guys like Lafell in free agency and the draft, and basically, barely any of them have worked out. I just wish at some point, before Brady is all done, they stop taking shots on guys like Lafell and hoping they work out, and they go and get someone through a trade or free agency, or gulp, the first round of the draft, and get a guy that they know can give them what Lafell gave them when he was at his best.
I said it at the time that I liked the Mitchell pick. However, I like the pick more than the player. I like the fact that they are at least taking a shot at someone that can truly play on the outside (although he's not really big, and not really fast), but I think he's just yet another guy that probably won't give them much when all is said and done. That said, I can't really blame the Patriots for not hitting on a wide receiver in this years' draft. It was a pretty terrible class for the position, particularly with respect to guys with the size and speed to be a true No. 1 on the outside in the NFL. I think Doctson will be the guy that will be the best of the bunch, and obviously, there was no way we were getting him, but aside from him, there really are question marks everywhere, so getting Mitchell in the 4th is what it is.
I agree with this post. That's a lot of what I'm trying to say, except my original post was in regards to the draft where Easley came out of, and in that draft, guys like Lafell did actually grow on trees. Instead of grabbing Easley, and a back up QB that probably would have been available with our next pick, the Patriots essentially passed on a number of guys that squarely fit this mold. They could have taken a shot with either pick, and maybe hit a Landry or an Allen Robinson, or maybe packaged a couple picks, moved up in the 1st and hit one of the 4-5 absolute can't miss guys that were there. IMO, that draft was just a huge opportunity missed, and would have left this team with an offense that would be virtually unstoppable right now.
Where the Patriots were picking at 29, WR like LaFell don't grow on trees. The next WR were Marqise Lee, Jordan Matthews, Paul Richardson, Davante Adams, Cody Latimer, Robinson, and Landry. Robinson is awesome, Matthews and Landry have been good but are more inside guys - they don't fit your "mold," and the rest of the list is pretty underwhelming. This was a great WR draft if you were picking 10th, but not so impressive late in the first.
The best you could have done is package your 1 and 2 to get Cooks at about 20. He's more of an inside guy. There no way short of trading a few 2015 picks to move up and get Evans/Watkins/ODB. The draft was simply not a missed opportunity.
Kelvin Benjamin was taken with the 28th pick, and then we took Easley 29th. In my opinion, he was the big missed opportunity in that draft. As soon as New Orleans traded up and took Cooks at 20, Benjamin was going to be the next WR off the board, and at 6'5", he was the prototypical #1 outside threat. People seem to have forgotten about him because he was hurt this year, but people's memories will come back quickly when he and Newton start connecting again. He's going to change that offense completely.
Again, not every draft is created equal at Wide Receiver. I could turn out to be wrong, but I had no issues with the Patriots not reaching in this year's draft for one of the top guys, or even taking any receiver at all. It was just a weak class, as have many others. The 2014 draft was another story altogether though, and everyone knew it going in. The fact that they didn't make an attempt to get any of those guys, and ended up coming away with what they did, is a miss. That's all. And some here like myself were saying just that at the time.
I agree it's a philosophical difference. I pointed out Dez's salary (and Demaryius Thomas makes about the same) because it's pretty clear to me that the Patriots aren't going to pay a WR that kind of money. They were able to get Moss for cheap, so they made the move (LaFell, Lloyd, and Johnson were cheap, too, with varying results), and they traded Moss when his contract became an issue. WR isn't the only position they take this approach on, either: they have only used one top-50 pick on an edge rusher in the Belichick era (fewest of any team) and they just traded that guy for a second-round pick before they had to pay him big money. They've had some top CBs, but that's another spot where they've been happier to let other teams give them the big contract.
It's tangential to this discussion but to be fair, Jones and Eifert both missed the entire season (Eifert played one quarter) in 2014 in addition to Green missing a lot of time. When you take any team's top three options away, their passing game is probably going to suck.
There is a bit of a chicken/egg thing going on here though, in fairness, which goes back to one of my earlier points in that a true #1 outside threat will not have the same impact on every team, as it does on a team like the Patriots. When you're talking about the quality of the wide receiving corps on a team, I don't think you can really do so without also mentioning their QB. Dallas' receiving corps looked awful last year, in large part, because they had to catch passes from Matt Cassell, Weeden, and Kellen Moore, and not Tony Romo. Tom Brady has done quite a bit with guys a lot less talented than Jason Witten, Terrence Williams and Cole Beasley. I'd venture to say that Brady could probably turn all three of them into 1,000 yard receivers (in Witten's case, again).Shit, Brady won a Super Bowl with David Givens as his #1 receiver, and two years later, he threw for 3,500 yards, 24 td's and 12 picks and went 12-4 with Reche Caldwell catching the most passes. For most of his career, the Patriots have not only not been top heavy at wide receiver, they've been downright shitty. You don't think Brady could turn a guy like Beasley into the next Welker/Edelman? If not them, then Amendola? I sure do. Has any Patriots receiver ever left New England and had the same success they had here? Nobody has done more with less, IMO, than Brady has in his career, and now, when they've given him a set of weapons on the inside and down the seam that makes it brutal to defend them, there is one more piece that could make them unstoppable (particularly if Dion Lewis returns to what he was to start last year). That's why a #1 on this team, at this point in time (and going back to when Gronk got here), would have a completely different effect than it would on most teams.
I agree with 90% of what you wrote, but I came to the opposite conclusion. I agree that Brady (and other elite QBs like Rodgers) can do more with less; no Brady Pats team has finished worse than 12th in points, and the 2006 and 2013 teams with terrible receiving groups finished 7th and 3rd in points, respectively. I see that as a competitive advantage over situations like Cincinnati and Atlanta where Dalton and Ryan need the #1 receivers. The Pats can spend their picks and cap room filling out the roster elsewhere. This is where I think Polian's Colts went awry - instead of asking Peyton to do more with less, he spent several first-round picks on offensive weapons (and signed them to big contracts). That helped Manning put up huge numbers, but those teams weren't as well-rounded as the Pats teams that won three out of four Super Bowls.
Colston is a slot guy now, but earlier in his career and when they won the Super Bowl, he was playing on the outside quite a bit, and quite often alone on one side of the field with Henderson and Meachem on the other side. It was in his first training camp that the Saints decided to trade old friend, Donte Stallworth to make room for Colston. (Stallworth then played one year in Philly before coming here). Joe Horn basically lasted one more season, and then Colston became the undisputed #1. That team also had Shockey in the middle of the field. He was listed at like 6-5, 225 lb's coming out of college, and ran a 40 in the 4.5 range. Yeah, he played at Hofstra, but just 10 years later, a kid with those kinds of numbers would never fall to the 7th round, barring some sort of character issues. Even in 2006, I'm surprised a team didn't take a shot on him much earlier than the Saints did. He was damn close to being an undrafted free agent, and went on to own basically every single Saints receiving record. One of the most underrated receivers in the NFL in the past two decades, IMO, and one of the biggest late round steals in draft history.
