The question is at what cost. That cap hit is money he's already earned and been paid. In a way it's irrelevant to his 2022 contract. Is the $3M figure that some posters have thrown around a realistic target?
2022 Pats Free Agent period
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It may be irrelevant to him financially, but if he wants to stay in New England the cap hit he has will matter to the team. They will need to sign him to an extension in order to lower this year's cap hit and kick the can down the road.
He will be a free agent so they need to agree on a new contract regardless. Maybe it gives a little more urgency to get a new deal done before the new league year. But even that depends on how much we are looking at and how much they want to kick down the road.
It's almost like the opposite is true--second round picks who don't play for BB as rookies almost never end up playing for him. Which makes some sense--second round picks tend to have the physical skills of strong NFL starters but with some question marks about injury/intelligence/experience/work ethic and the ones who do play are the ones who have answered those questions.
Neither really began the season as a full-time starter though - Dugger averaged 32% of snaps played on defense through the first 8 weeks of his rookie year. 2nd rounders can certainly become the answer, but it's another thing to go into the year planning for a 2nd round rookie to play a key role from week 1.
32% at the midpoint of rookie year is significant IMO. Not sure if snap counts go back that far but for instance I bet Seymour and Wilfork were similar. I bet DMC was higher than Dugger but you have to remember how big of a jump it was for Dugger from Lenoir-Rhyne.
In any case, FA happens before the draft and any summer camp where you'll be able to evaluate your picks, so you basically need to have a projected starter in place prior to the draft and the best case scenario is a Eugene Wilson/Lawyer Milloy type situation where you draft a guy that quickly proves to be a viable alternative to that starter.
No snap counts for Wilfork or DMC's rookie years that I'm seeing on PFR game logs.
I'm not saying it isn't, nor that 2nd rounders can't play a meaningful role as rookies. But with 32% of snaps played for Dugger, that means a lot more played by somebody else to start the year - the Pats need to have a plan A in place ahead of the draft to start at FS. If a rookie comes in and outplays him, then great pick.
Fully agree with your point - Phillips was playing a lot of snaps as the box safety (and did this year too).
It hurts to much to do that.
All in all it's pretty unlikely that BB's plan is to have a second round pick be a major contributor as a rookie at most positions (I think he'd assume a second round running back could contribute in the running game if not the passing game, and i'd assume he's not taking an IOL in the second unless he thinks they're good enough to play as a rookie, but other than that? too much uncertainty).
The structure I proposed- 1 year, $9m with 3m bonus, 3 m guaranteed, and 3m in nonguaranteed/LTBE bonuses would pay him the same cash he earned last year. It would keep his cap hit at $6m this year if cut/retires after Jun 1, so there would be no harm there. It would also increase the cap this year by $3m, but make the remaining 2 void years $3m each so the Pats would be in the same situation with a $6m void hit next offseason- though apparently they can live with a $6m void hit for McCourty. Back to back 6m hits in the case of cut/retirement would be pretty painful though.
I think 1 year 9m is probably pretty generous. Even as an above-average safety last season, I'm not sure what the demand would be for a late 30s DB on the open market. I doubt there are a ton of multi-year offers out there.
If they don't get it done before the new league year, the cap hit this year accelerates and I don't think they can resign him. If he wants to go more than a one year deal, I also don't think they can keep him, though if he completes this year there may be options for next offseason.
Meh. Just because EVERY one doesn't do it, doesn't mean BB doesn't play them.
2nd round picks are basically a 50/50 proposition. Maybe worse where the Pats take them. Belichick will play them if they look good and earn playing time. But he rarely goes into a season with a 2nd round pick as Plan A (compounding that, of course, is the reality of FA occurring before the draft). Or what @Average Game James said.
That's a completely different argument. He plays them. He just pretty much never gives them "entrenched starter" snaps. Devin McCourty is on the field for 100% of the Patriots' defensive plays week in and week out. You think Bill would plug in a second round rookie to do that?
In the same vein of Uche and Winovich, Reiss brings up another name today (in this case, out with injury)
8. Jennings' lost year:Linebacker Anfernee Jennings, a 2020 third-round pick from Alabama, was a forgotten man this season after landing on injured reserve at the end of training camp and staying there all season. He falls into a similar category as Chase Winovich (2019 third round) and Josh Uche (2020 second round) as Day 2 picks on defense who should be part of the Patriots' core going forward, but whose futures with the team are instead more uncertain. Jennings didn't arrive for 2021 training camp in peak physical condition, so a good sign of a possible bounce-back in 2022 will be if he changes his offseason approach.
https://www.espn.com/blog/new-england-patriots/post/_/id/4824745/j-c-jackson-faces-uncertain-future-with-patriots-after-tough-playoff-outing
8. Jennings' lost year:Linebacker Anfernee Jennings, a 2020 third-round pick from Alabama, was a forgotten man this season after landing on injured reserve at the end of training camp and staying there all season. He falls into a similar category as Chase Winovich (2019 third round) and Josh Uche (2020 second round) as Day 2 picks on defense who should be part of the Patriots' core going forward, but whose futures with the team are instead more uncertain. Jennings didn't arrive for 2021 training camp in peak physical condition, so a good sign of a possible bounce-back in 2022 will be if he changes his offseason approach.
https://www.espn.com/blog/new-england-patriots/post/_/id/4824745/j-c-jackson-faces-uncertain-future-with-patriots-after-tough-playoff-outing
Don't know where to put this, but the Pats have let the contracts of 12 practice squad players expire, sending them into free agency. Notables include Daniel Ekuale, James Ferentz, D'Angelo Ross, and Matt LaCosse.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/patriots-let-12-practice-squad-players-enter-free-agency/ar-AAT5MuB?li=BBnbfcL
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/patriots-let-12-practice-squad-players-enter-free-agency/ar-AAT5MuB?li=BBnbfcL
Reiss says Ekuale is expected back:
View: https://twitter.com/mikereiss/status/1485754352866316291?s=21
While DT Daniel Ekuale was listed on the NFL wire as having his contract expire, he has committed to re-sign with the Patriots for 2022. Ekuale was elevated from the practice squad 8 times in '21. He was used mostly as an interior pass rusher (2 sacks/2 excellent celebrations).
View: https://twitter.com/mikereiss/status/1485754352866316291?s=21
While DT Daniel Ekuale was listed on the NFL wire as having his contract expire, he has committed to re-sign with the Patriots for 2022. Ekuale was elevated from the practice squad 8 times in '21. He was used mostly as an interior pass rusher (2 sacks/2 excellent celebrations).
Good to know, thanks. I thought he played pretty well in limited action, so glad he's coming back. (He just turned 28 though, so if he's going to establish himself, he'd better do it soon.)
Based on his performance as a rookie, I think Belichick may have been ready to IR him with a hangnail. It was alarming just how often and easily he got spun round and pushed out of running lanes.
The Pats conceivably will have 6 LBs/Edge players back next year who played little to none this year and most of which were recent high draft picks: Uche, Wino, Jennings, Perkins, McGrone, and McMillan.
You can't say that the Pats haven't made LB a priority of late; it just hasn't turned into production. Makes me wonder if there is some issue happening with the coaching staff being unable to develop these guys.
Yes, hopefully he changed his offseason approach of not getting ready for training camp properly.
You have one job, Anfernee…
McGrone was a 5th and McMillan was a cheap free agent, so they don't really make the case for investment.
The others are mid-round edges, and mid-round edges are dart throws. Sometimes you get a Trey Flowers; more often you get a Jake Bequette. It's a hard position to find talent in the 50-100 range.
Uche I think is the only one you can call disappointing, given where he was drafted, and he's flashed as a pass rusher at least. Winovich has also flashed. But they aren't good enough to play every down.
I'm not sure any of these other than McGrone were supposed to play off ball, though maybe they had that intent with Uche or Jennings.
Jennings was like fifty percent on the ball/fifty percent off as a rookie per PFF. I think they saw him as budget hightower. I'm convinced they saw Uche as ultimately primarily an off the ball guy because no freaking way they draft someone that high to play a full time on the ball player at, what, 20 pounds less than Nink, Hightower, etc?
A guy I'd love for the Pats to sign is Foley Fatukasi from the Jets. UFA after the 2021 season, according to Spotrac.
From: https://heavy.com/sports/new-york-jets/should-joe-douglas-extend-foley-fatukasi/
PFF says this about him:
“Fatukasi plays on the defensive line alongside recently extended defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers, and the Jets also have 2019 No. 3 overall pick Quinnen Williams’ next contract to think about in the not-so-distant future. Still, Fatukasi has been one of the league’s best, if unheralded, nose tackles over the past few years, with run defense grades of 87.6 in 2019 and 86.2 in 2020. He’s added to his repertoire as well, with 14 quarterback pressures on 226 pass-rush snaps so far in 2021, beating his previous career-high of 12. Fatukasi’s play the rest of the season may dictate how much he ultimately gets on the open market and whether the Jets or someone else will be paying.”
According to the grading site, the run-stuffer projects to garner a contract of somewhere around “three years, $25 million ($8.33 million per year, $15 million total guaranteed).”
So...young (just 26). Big and tremendously powerful at 6'4", 318 lbs. Excellent run stopper, and improving pass rusher. Good dude. Team captain for the Jets, and we know BB loves team captains. Would be ideal to plug into the Pats' DL - he's way better than Godchaux, and probably even Guy. And he hasn't even hit his prime yet, so there's still improvement happening.
I think he'd become a star here.
From: https://heavy.com/sports/new-york-jets/should-joe-douglas-extend-foley-fatukasi/
PFF says this about him:
“Fatukasi plays on the defensive line alongside recently extended defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers, and the Jets also have 2019 No. 3 overall pick Quinnen Williams’ next contract to think about in the not-so-distant future. Still, Fatukasi has been one of the league’s best, if unheralded, nose tackles over the past few years, with run defense grades of 87.6 in 2019 and 86.2 in 2020. He’s added to his repertoire as well, with 14 quarterback pressures on 226 pass-rush snaps so far in 2021, beating his previous career-high of 12. Fatukasi’s play the rest of the season may dictate how much he ultimately gets on the open market and whether the Jets or someone else will be paying.”
According to the grading site, the run-stuffer projects to garner a contract of somewhere around “three years, $25 million ($8.33 million per year, $15 million total guaranteed).”
So...young (just 26). Big and tremendously powerful at 6'4", 318 lbs. Excellent run stopper, and improving pass rusher. Good dude. Team captain for the Jets, and we know BB loves team captains. Would be ideal to plug into the Pats' DL - he's way better than Godchaux, and probably even Guy. And he hasn't even hit his prime yet, so there's still improvement happening.
I think he'd become a star here.
I was surprised that Wino and Uche didn't get more snaps the last few weeks, given how little Judon was giving us.
The problem with this list is yes they've invested and while they may be dart throws. It either means their evaluations of these players are off or they're whiffing on developing them.
Jennings sounded like a John Simon replacement coming out and it was never clear to me whether he was playing off-ball in 2020 out of necessity or as a plan. Uche, I dunno. He was an unusual pick for them, and certainly hasn't worked out so far.
They played a decent amount vs Jacksonville when Judon was coming off COVID - Uche got 19 snaps and Winovich got 21. But even with Judon only playing 22 snaps in the playoff game vs the Bills, Winovich was inactive and Uche played just 6 snaps. I don't think they trust any of these guys to set the edge.
I think we need to be realistic about what the hit rate is on edge rushers drafted in that range. They've hit on two in Flowers and Wise; that's pretty damn good. Most of the great edges are drafted very high, higher than the Pats ever get to draft.
If that's realistic then maybe we should be expecting more in their ability to coach them up because I surely want more out of picks in rounds 2-5 then barely get on the field. That has happened way too often lately (hit rate or not) that has them in this position. Hit rate or not, the miss rate means someone hasn't been good enough at their jobs imo
So this article is from a few years ago, but I've yet to see an updated version, so I'm assuming the numbers are relatively stable.
https://www.arrowheadpride.com/2015/2/20/8072877/what-the-statistics-tell-us-about-the-draft-by-round
They define "success" as a player starting half the games in their career. Fair or not, that's the criteria, and at least it's used consistently across all positions. Here's the success rate by position by round drafted. And we understand that rounds aren't really necessarily the best criterion...for example, a player drafted #33 fits in the 2nd round slot, even though he's been picked just ONE pick after #32, who fits in the first round slot...and #33 and #32 should have roughly the same success rate. Anyway, here are the numbers.
So drafting a DL in round 3 for example, yields a player that will start half the games in his career just 27% of the time. I know a player can still be a useful player if he's primarily a backup, but the hit rate on some of these positions in the middle rounds just isn't very high. And not just for the Patriots - league wide.
Maybe it's only counting the 21st century. (using the argument that 2000 is the last year in the 20th century).
Those TE numbers don't even seem possible...how many guys are starting at TE at the same time in the league?
That article was using a specified 10-year period, and it was written a number of years ago. Like I had said already, I just don't have updated information, so that's the best I can provide.
It's not including the Brady pick, obviously. It's only looking at the drafts from 2005-2014.
% of starts is an awful stat. How about % of snaps or games played or total snaps or something than the arbitrary “start”.
I'm just telling you what the article says. I didn't write it. Who here wants to do all that work that you're talking about requiring for that study? Raise your hands if you're interested in providing that service for the rest of us.
Those RB numbers after the 1st round are surprising. That might have changed in recent years as it seems as if teams' enthusiasm for using a 1st on a RB has waned. I imagine BB has not approached 50% on 2nd-round WRs and DBs.
It tells us something for sure. I mean, what metric (and what level within that metric) would you consider to be significant when determining whether a draft pick was a "success" (i.e., a "hit") or not?
And it's from 7-8 years ago, which means the numbers can't account for changes in draft strategy. Some positions like RB (as Harry Hooper said) are emphasized less in the upper rounds now ... and w/o knowing the actual number of players that account for a certain percentage, you can't really judge if it's a SSS.
Here was the author's rationale:
"How many players were drafted by position and round over the last decade and how many went on to become a starter. I did not distinguish superstars from regular starters. The determination of a starter comes from whether the player started at least half of their career. Obviously, this will run the gambit from below average to high performing starters. The reality is that if you can start in this league for at least half of your playing career, you are better than most. If you would like to debate the merits of players at a particular position be my guest. However, I found that it would require a lot more work than I was willing to do to put together subjective criteria to determine various levels of starters. This also does not take into consideration undrafted free agent starters in the league."
He didn't want anything other than an objective measure. So no, "Well player X was better than player Y" stuff. Just actual objective data. And apparently (if he's right), you can determine whether a player is designated as a "starter" if he started more than half his games. So he's using a simple, straightforward measure. Sure there might be better ways of determining that, but the dude put in a lot more work than anyone here is willing to do, and it certainly tells us SOMETHING.
So when we have posters saying that "I surely want more out of picks 2-5" with no objective data to measure that, at least this guy has come up with something semi-meaningful and tangible.
The criticism here reminds me of the parents who rip on their kids' youth sports coaches but who aren't willing to volunteer to coach themselves. Criticizing is easy. Designing something better is harder. Putting in the hours and hours and hours of work to put that design into something real is WAY harder; hence, why nobody here is willing to do it.
"How many players were drafted by position and round over the last decade and how many went on to become a starter. I did not distinguish superstars from regular starters. The determination of a starter comes from whether the player started at least half of their career. Obviously, this will run the gambit from below average to high performing starters. The reality is that if you can start in this league for at least half of your playing career, you are better than most. If you would like to debate the merits of players at a particular position be my guest. However, I found that it would require a lot more work than I was willing to do to put together subjective criteria to determine various levels of starters. This also does not take into consideration undrafted free agent starters in the league."
He didn't want anything other than an objective measure. So no, "Well player X was better than player Y" stuff. Just actual objective data. And apparently (if he's right), you can determine whether a player is designated as a "starter" if he started more than half his games. So he's using a simple, straightforward measure. Sure there might be better ways of determining that, but the dude put in a lot more work than anyone here is willing to do, and it certainly tells us SOMETHING.
So when we have posters saying that "I surely want more out of picks 2-5" with no objective data to measure that, at least this guy has come up with something semi-meaningful and tangible.
The criticism here reminds me of the parents who rip on their kids' youth sports coaches but who aren't willing to volunteer to coach themselves. Criticizing is easy. Designing something better is harder. Putting in the hours and hours and hours of work to put that design into something real is WAY harder; hence, why nobody here is willing to do it.
I agree. Which is why I said I wish there was updated information on this, but I couldn't find it anywhere. So this data, while old, is still some of the best we have to go on.
If we throw this out, then all we're left with is subjective feelings on the matter, because I haven't seen anyone else do an objective study on this. If you have, please share with the group.
I have no dog in this fight in terms of defending this guy other than that I appreciate that he put gobs of time into it and at least tried to make heads or tails out of drafting success. Something nobody else here is willing to do, obviously.
I have looked at this over the years. I know SN has too. You can look at expected AV by draft position too which you can find which I think is covered online or in the book I mentioned. Either way I did analysis of Patriots draft years and expected AV Vs what happened. I didn’t have it broken out by position or a comprehensive study of every player and pick for it though. If I have time tonight I’ll snap a couple photos from the book.
Thanks. This is what I mean - to do a comprehensive study of that would take....a long, long time. And nobody here seems willing/interested in doing that.
EDIT: I have actually started to work on this - I started a huge spreadsheet in the fall but I have put it on hold for a bit. Maybe I'll finish it before this year's draft.