The idea that 2021 cap dollars would buy a lot didn’t pan out did it? Judon is a great signing, but they’ve signed guys like him before. And Hunter Henry? I like him, but it’s not like their master plan to spend in 2021 allowed them to get a pro bowl TE. the reality is that while the Pats had a lot of $ to spend in 2021, other teams were finding ways to keep their free agents and the Pats did not have their pick of a great free agent crop of players. They also spent a lot of those dollars signing their own free agents. I think they did pretty well last year and some signings will be better this year, but its not like the Pat’s we’re so much smarter than the rest of the league that they had the market to themselves last year.
And this year, while the Pats are standing pat multiple top AFC teams are spending to get better. Other teams are spending now to get better now because the cap is going up by a lot in ‘23 and ‘24. The Pats were always smarter than all those other teams that were fiscally imprudent, but that was when their QB was TB. We’ll see how that works now.
I was responding to your assertion that the reason the Pats spent in '21 was that everybody was gone or going to be gone anyway. I think that it's almost always the case that we tend to set up two poles so we can fight. I think it would be stupid to assert that the timing of all these contracts
all came due with some master plan that 2021 would be the down cap year, but it was a knowable strategy in July 2020. Cardboard cutouts were not paying a lot to get in, and in July of 2020 the CBA reflecting this fact was signed. (2021 would have a min. cap of 175M, up from an earlier possible min. cap of 165 M... compared with 198M for 2020.)
Everything you need to know about the league's plan to kick off the 2020 season
www.cbssports.com
(It ended up at 182M)
It's 208M in 2022.
So you could look for articles on the steps that the Pats took to have a ton of cap room to start 2021 free agency; if your contention is that things just worked out coincidentally with the Pats having a ton of cap room during a black swan-like deflation event, a drop of 16M per club vs. a raise of at least 10M per club in normal times.... okay, I await your findings.
I don't think that's correct. I think that the Pats explicitly planned to spend in the 2021 off-season. I think other teams spent to different extents as well. I think a lot of teams were like "wait what?" once the dust settled.
Now you want to argue whether it panned out, and you feel strongly on both sides of that.
They spent a lot when the model for spending was a good one. Sometimes they got a little happy with the checkbook when they were hell bent to get at least one good TE, for example (that 12.5M APY money for BOTH TEs makes me think they graded their upside the same.)
So let's establish one axis, useless on its own, "Money Spent, 2021 off-season."
Let's prep the ground with a reductio ad absurdum. Bill B's magic 8 ball told him before he signed any contract that would be up in 2021 that it would be a year of cap deflation, even if that contract was signed 4 years ago.
Of course this is not true, but knowing the deflationary nature of 2021 cap dollars, wouldn't that be a cool superpower to have?
Now let's look at the who complaint that we're crediting NE with strategy when it's really "just because" contracts were up in 2021. What they did was not move on things they could otherwise move on from 2020 to 2021.
How many contracts did that affect, out of that huge 2021 offseason spend? Hunt it down, if your iconoclastic assertion is important to you... that the Patriots just looked like they thought it through, by coincidence.
Now, to the axis, "Money Spent"
In another reductio ad absdurdum, let's hold constant how well the Pats guessed on the future value that they paid for in 2021 (including the re-upped contracts which were also a big part of "the spree".) Let's say anyone who did their spending in 2021 -- all talent evaluation held constant -- were smart and well prepared, and those who did not were stupid and ill-prepared.
The Pats were smarter and more prepared than all the teams that went into 2021 FA with less money, and they were smarter and more prepared than all the teams that just didn't spend 2021 dollars to the same extent. Teams that spent bigger in 2021 were better smarter and better prepared
if judged only on this axis. Who spent more in contracts in 2021?
Now, this is just an ingredient in the "How'd we do" recipe. That's the prob. w/a reductio ad absurdum. But we do know that we made that call correctly, on only the cap inflation point.
The last argument, on which you are firmly on both sides, is how we did in the 2021 spending.
I'm right there with you, on both sides of that one. Complaining about Hunter Henry is a bit of a reach... the go-to red-zone target. Complaining about Jonnu is spot on, if he stays where he is now in terms of value (and however he performs in the next 3 years has to really pan out to also make up for that first year.) He's a C-grade TE being paid like an A. But I wonder how 12.5M APY will look in a couple of years.
You might complain "But that's always the case!!!" Um, not in 2021. That is the point. A 16M dip in cap vs the usual 10M or more increase. That's a swing of $26M on a cap of 182M. Apply that dip to the whole market and think whether you might go home-shopping if home values were down 14% and you had a guarantee that they would increase the next 4 years. F*** I would and I hate real estate. Or grocery shopping or car shopping or whatever. QED
Agholar's a WR3 being paid like a low 1, but we can get out of that after this year if he can't show us something. Judon's an A find. Bourne was an A especially at his price (3 years, 15m). The market was hotter for Godchaux, 2 years, $16m (8M APY). People here hate him. Henry Anderson got injured, cost 11M for 2 years, who knows if he's good.
So 3 players were $141 million of the "Spending Spree," the TEs plus Judon.
Judging by 1 year only. Bourne was a surprise overperformer, Agholar was a surprise underperformer. Henry was worth it, Smith was not, Judon was.
The others... you like 4 years of Deatrich Wise for 22m? Jalen Mills at 6M APY for 4 years? Guys want to compare every player at every position to the best or at least the elite tier. I think those types of signings are decent spends, once again, because they are about what you're paying for, and that spend will look even lower in short order.
Do we get cheap when our UDFA find gets 17M APY from the Chargers, even though it seemed like he'd cost 20M? Yeah maybe. Did we overspend in the 2021 offseason? You have to cherry pick to conclude that -- some hits, some misses. I honestly don't think we believe that you buy that expensive corner. You get the best corner you can at a more modest price point. There's been a long line of Corners marching out of here sometimes in a huff to prove that point.
But I think there's strategy in what we did in 2021, and I think on balance we made decent bets. (And when everything you do is a "decent bet" or "an okay game plan" or whatever, granted, you can't excel. Here's hoping for the next step up in 22)
