Pats need to retool. Guys like Gronk, Hightower, Clayborn, Allen and D.McCourty need to go or be restructed. Impossible to argue that Gronk is going to be worth 12M next year, or McCourty 11M. Clayborn and Allen could easily be replaced by cheap talent and might be addition by subtraction. Hightower, like Gronk, is too old/beat up to warrant big bucks.
Without addressing the fact that the majority of the big cap guys are low production in 2018 guys, I don't see how this team competes for a Super Bowl next year. They have 44 guys under contract and arguably 2 of their top 5 players this year (Flowers, T.Brown) are free agents and need big contracts.
The whiffs and bad injury luck with the past 3-4 drafts have really boxed the team in. They need two brand new defensive tackles (can't imagine M.Brown or Shelton being retained given they're both pretty bad). They need significant work at WR and TE. The OL could potentially need a brand new LT (can't rely on an unknown young player like Wynn coming off a major injury). The RB situation needs to be addressed. The DE and LB depth needs to be bolstered (probably with mid tier vets and rookies)
There's a lot to do and not much money to do it. The draft can only help so much. Typically, rookies don't contribute much. If they draft 10 guys, maybe 3-4 will be active on game days and only 1-2 will be guys who contribute regularly (based on Belichick's near 20 year history).
I think they need an aggressive, active offseason. It might mean wasting the last year of Brady but this team is very poorly set up for the future. They only have good young players at RB (and Michel seems likely to be a one contract guy). Mason is solid at RG and isn't going anywhere. Pretty much every other position is old/declining/chronically inured (safeties, TE, WR, RT), mediocre (every CB outside of Gilmore, LG/C, ILB) or outright not good enough/unknown due to unsigned guys (DT,DE,LT)
Obviously, no team is going to be great at every position. But the talent level on this team is much worse than most Brady rosters. If guys were healthy or playing at their prime level, it would be another story. But there's no reason to think Gronk, Cannon, Hightower, Chung, Edelman, D.McCourty are going to find the fountain or health and youth. That's a lot of premium talent to replace with no obvious in house replacements. The safeties and Edelman will likely stick around for another year or two of continued decline which means other positions need to improve to offset the downgrade at those spots.
Their roster is old, thin and in decline. They only have $20M to play with and it's going to be very difficult to balance spending that cap to address the holes in the current roster (and hedge against or replace declining vets) while also retaining or replacing T.Brown and Flowers.
