Am I the only one worried about...

[stcjones]

Lol. Is that all? That's about 90% of football.
Cmon man, our trenches ain't that bad.
Williams/Barmore is one of the better dt combos in the nfl.
The OL will ve much better than last year.
And they were pretty good last year before Campbell's injury.

I hope you are right about the offensive line and obviously that would require that everybody stay healthy because there’s not a lot of depth there… I know reports on Campbell are up and down so I’m really praying that he is healthy and getting better this year… As he was the main liability in the Super Bowl last year

 

[Hugepatsfan]

Maye and Gonzo being at the top of their markets is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo far from concerning. You can't just add the AAV and apply that to the cap. That's just a fundamental difference from how actual NFL contracts are structured. There's not a team in the whole league that structures deals that way, Pats included.

At some point you do worry about being over allocated to the top of your roster but it'd have to be another 2-3 guys on top of Gonzo/Maye before it's really an issue.

 

[imahobgoblin]

I think there is also a strategy to it since we are playing Seattle again. They are prepped for the SB team. They had a Brady tip that was a tell for the McD offense. By not showing a thing in preseason, Seattle can't study the tape to see of the tell is there with the starters. Vrabes addressed it saying Tommy probably did say something so they are well aware of it. They won't see it on September 9 and will have to start fresh. I don't know how much this will affect anything, but this is a game of inches. So maybe it will.

 

[PatsFanInVa]

My grandkids will someday tell their kids a story about how their grandpa used to watch football before everyone wore flags to pull.

"I saw some of those old game holos... they never got a tackle, they just knocked guys down. And worst of all the refs NEVER called them for it!"

 

[PATSNUTme]

I'm a retired businessman. My take on Speedy Gonzales (I refuse to call him Gonzo) is to offer him a top 5 deal. He's is not the best at his position. If that doesn't work trade for a 1st rounder him to some team you will have a top 10 pick. Use that pick to draft another that will be just like him.
In the meantime, use that money to bring in 1 or 2 very good players. That makes business and football sense to me.
I'm also old school 2 a day smack each other around training camp guy. But that is not reality in today's NFL. The join practices fill that void or so I'm told.

 

[Rob0729]

Not worrying how Gonzalez and Maye's contracts and how they will affect the cap until I see the structure of their deals and what the future cap will look like. And then I will defer to people far smarter than me on these things to tell me if it is a concern or not.

There are a lot of teams paying top dollar to lesser QBs and other players than the Pats will be paying. And these teams still make moves in free agency.

Plus the Pats still have a lot of cap room this year to eat an extra portion of Gonzalez's cap hit this year if they want or they can carry the money over to next year.

As for not playing this preseason, I checked and the Seahawks haven't been playing their starters in preseason games either. So they will be in the same boat. And they faced the Cowboys and Titans thus far so the Pats have had joint practices against better teams.

 

[DaBruinz]

..... The following things.

1. The Patriots are about to give Gonzo a roughly $35MM/yr contract, and NEXT year give Drake a roughly (we hope) $65MM/year deal. So, say next year's cap jumps to $330MM per team, am I the only one worried we are giving one third of our cap money to just TWO players? As salaries explode for star individuals, I wonder at what point the bottom 2/3rds of the roster revolt as their earning potential shrinks, while their a few of their teammates get ever higher percentages of the cap. It will be harder and harder to justify the ever-increasing number of players to risk their future health for less and less of the pie. Kind of mirrors our current economy, right.

This isn't reality, Ken. Just because their AAV will be 35M and 65M respectively doesn't mean that it happens all at once. In fact, it's typically gradually tapered. Witherspoon's 1st year cap hit is $15.37, followed by 14.1M Followed by $27M The THIRD year (so 2028) is when Witherspoon's contract starts seeing new money above and beyond the 5th year option.

You can expect the same sort of gradual uptick in Cap hit for Maye as well.

It would not surprise me if Gonzalez get's his deal this year and it mimics that of Witherspoons. Meaning it won't be until 2028 that the hit goes over $27M. I would expect it to mimic Witherspoon's and Witherspoon's contract does go over the $30M mark until 2030. That's 4 years from now.

If Maye get's an extension before the start of year 4, his year 4 cap hit would be adjusted to include any signing bonus money. But his year 5 cap hit would be whatever his 5th year option money is plus the signing bonus proration. Now, I'll be the first to say, that Maye's 2028 Money will be around $45M due to the 5th year option. But don't expect gigantic jumps until the 2030 or 2031 season Even then, the two of them are looking at combining for 100M at that time.. Which is only 20% of the Cap. Not 33%. And that still leaves $383M for 67 players. Or about 5.7M per player.

2. Is anyone else worried about the fact that ALL of our starters and the key backups, when they line up against the Seahawks, will not have play a SINGLE live down this entire preseason. When Seattle runs the ball, it will be the first time Spillane will have tackle a guy to the ground since back in February. That's a pretty scary thought, imho. The joint practices are great, but all the contact there is "controlled", good work, of course, but NOT the same as game speed.

Where did you see that all none of the starters or primary back-ups will have taken a single live down in the pre-season? Jacas and Ponder have seen a ton of time already. So have many of the key back-ups at Cornerback and Safety. The O-line, especially, has seen the back-ups take a ton of snaps.

Pretty sure that they were tackling each other in the padded joint practices. Maybe I'm wrong in that.

Now I know, I'm an old school guy. I played in an era where you scrimmaged at full go during parts of practice, 2 times a day, 3 or 4 days in a row. You developed those so called callouses and got ready for that 12-game season. Now granted, I personally never made to the actual game part schedule, but I would have been ready for it. .

I understand the thinking behind not playing those guys, but we all have to agree that it seriously affects the quality of play. Fans should get 20% discounts on their tickets for having to watch subpar execution. And none of us should be pissed when we see missed tackles from guys who are doing it live for the first time since last season.

Now those are the things I am worried about this August, what are yours?

Unfortunately, gone are the days of 2-a-days. They've tailored the game to focus on the WRs, RBs and Star QBs instead of making it a TEAM game. Part of that is because of all the concussion issues that have come up. Especially most recently where it was found that 1 in 4 players will develop CTE. I have a feeling that the number will end up being higher unless there are significant changes to the helmets far beyond the "Guardian".

The owners spent far too much time getting rich and treating the players like machines instead of ensuring for their care. Which is why the players were able to get so many concessions from the owners in 2010.

Unfortunately, we've not seen the downturn in injuries that the league wanted us to believe would occur with the lessening of the physicalness in practices and in TC. Just like I don't believe we've actually seen a downturn in the injuries on kick-offs with the changes implemented.

 

[mgteich]

In the meantime,.

1) There is no "on the meantime"

2) Gonzo's extension will add very lttle to the 2026 and 2027 cap. We will absorb the cap money this year, and carryover enough to absorb next year's hit.

 

[imahobgoblin]

I'm a retired businessman. My take on Speedy Gonzales (I refuse to call him Gonzo) is to offer him a top 5 deal. He's is not the best at his position. If that doesn't work trade for a 1st rounder him to some team you will have a top 10 pick. Use that pick to draft another that will be just like him.
In the meantime, use that money to bring in 1 or 2 very good players. That makes business and football sense to me.
I'm also old school 2 a day smack each other around training camp guy. But that is not reality in today's NFL. The join practices fill that void or so I'm told.

So we trade for AJ Brown and just throw away a year of a 29 year old WR? We don't have the CB depth to do that.

 

[slash83]

Kraft isn’t paying Gonzo so rest easy.

 

[JoeSixPat]

..... The following things.

1. The Patriots are about to give Gonzo a roughly $35MM/yr contract, and NEXT year give Drake a roughly (we hope) $65MM/year deal. So, say next year's cap jumps to $330MM per team, am I the only one worried we are giving one third of our cap money to just TWO players? As salaries explode for star individuals, I wonder at what point the bottom 2/3rds of the roster revolt as their earning potential shrinks, while their a few of their teammates get ever higher percentages of the cap. It will be harder and harder to justify the ever-increasing number of players to risk their future health for less and less of the pie. Kind of mirrors our current economy, right.

2. Is anyone else worried about the fact that ALL of our starters and the key backups, when they line up against the Seahawks, will not have play a SINGLE live down this entire preseason. When Seattle runs the ball, it will be the first time Spillane will have tackle a guy to the ground since back in February. That's a pretty scary thought, imho. The joint practices are great, but all the contact there is "controlled", good work, of course, but NOT the same as game speed.

Now I know, I'm an old school guy. I played in an era where you scrimmaged at full go during parts of practice, 2 times a day, 3 or 4 days in a row. You developed those so called callouses and got ready for that 12-game season. Now granted, I personally never made to the actual game part schedule, but I would have been ready for it. .

I understand the thinking behind not playing those guys, but we all have to agree that it seriously affects the quality of play. Fans should get 20% discounts on their tickets for having to watch subpar execution. And none of us should be pissed when we see missed tackles from guys who are doing it live for the first time since last season.

Now those are the things I am worried about this August, what are yours?

I wouldn't say I'm worried but I've long been cognizant of the impact of Gonzo and Maye's extensions.

We'll have to see how they structure both of those contracts - sometimes frontloading a contract makes more sense to minimize the cap hit but I'll let the pros do their jobs.

I'm wondering if the back end of Gonzo's contract is problematic, as we've heard rumblings that he wants contract kickers to keep up with inflation at CB. If that's what he's demanding, he's not going to get it given the future cap concerns.

Maye will get what the market dictates too - though that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be the highest paid at his position like Gonzo will on paper at least.

This also highlights the need to draft well and efficiently. I've only half facetiously advocated for drafting OL in the first and 2nd round as they tend to have one of the higher hit rates compared to other specialist positions. Having a bunch of quality guys on rookie contracts in positions like OL that have been getting crazy themselves is probably essential to affording to pay veterans and free agents what the market dictates. Now let's hope Lomu works out as I'm pretty sure that's part of the equation, just as taking Campbell and Wilson on rookie deals - though they too will have to get paid in later years too if they pan out.

On the lack of a real preseason, while I'm certainly open to the notion that veterans don't necessarily need to endure the same training camps and preseason games as yesteryear, that HAS created an NFL where SEPTEMBER is the new pre-season and teams don't even begin to gel until October.

We did see this a bit even in the Belichick era, but now more than ever as you correctly point out, as of Week 1 against the defending Super Bowl Champs, the Patriots starters will not have played a snap together since the last time they played the Seahawks - and of course THAT was a different team too!

So any September wins to me are gravy - all I care about is the team developing, winning enough to make the playoffs, and being healthy in January when the games really begin to count. THAT's when I expect them to peak, and I specifically set my expectations low throughout September.

Teams that retained a lot more veterans can get in some early wins and the lack of film on newer teams can also be helpful (be assured Josh has not shown any of his planned trick plays in camp). But overall it's not great for the game and I've noticed a lot more early season injuries since they stopped compelling players to spend mandatory time getting in game shape, save for contract incentivies.

The best players DO keep themselves in shape, but there's no substitute for playing together.