Miguel: Comparing the Patriots positional cap spending to the rest of the NFL

[PatsChamp88]

The Patriots are allocating $52,160,199, or 37.5% of their cap to the defense while the average team is allocating $57,830,388.

The Patriots are allocating $63,271,459, or 45.48%, of their cap to the offense. The league average is $60,540,304.

Some observations – the Patriots spending is more focused on the offense than the league. The average team has 69 players. The Pats have 64, the 7th smallest amount in the league. The average team has $10,843,157.78 in cap space. The Patriots have $7,932,369. The Patriots are right around the league average in dead money which does not support the argument that the large dead money hit for Aaron Hernandez prevented the Pats from conducting more transactions in free agency.

Read more: Comparing the Patriots positional cap spending to the rest of the NFL

Great breakdown by Miguel be sure to click the link for position by position analysis.

 

[mgteich]

A primary reason for less being spent on defense is that the defense is young. The following are on their rookie contracts: Jones, Hightower, Collins, McCourty, Harmon, Dennard and Ryan.

 

[JoeSixPat]

Fascinating - not outrageously surprising but it does provide some insight on where Belichick places his value in various positions

There are shifts from year to year no doubt given contract situations - and there's also the premise of simply being unable to secure the players, at say DE and LB, who's play justifies a higher contract - suggesting that perhaps it's more a matter of finding the right player rather than overpaying the wrong one

Not a surprise that DT and NT in particular would command a higher commitment - nor QB for that matter - the only surprise there to me is that it's not higher

I'd love to see more investment at pass rusher like just about everyone (or at least, more production) but let's see what the draft holds in store for us

The bottom line - you have to make choices and for Belichick I think he prefers to invest in quality depth in certain places rather then put all his eggs in one proverbial player basket