Hightower not willing to take a pay cut

5 pages for a non-story. I can't remember a player telling the media "yes, I'm willing to take a pay cut" before even being asked. I could be wrong.

Joey007 said:

I say D-Mac is the main one who should be kept.

Definitely surprising if Hightower won’t take any cut. I don’t think anyone else is willing to pay him 12 million a year at this point.

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He is not worth it did not have a great year he had a good playoff run but not fast anymore trade him for a wide out we do not want to loose Trey Flowers spend some money on him, he is younger than Hightower to.

reamer said:

We've seen what our defense looks like in the Super Bowl without Hightower. We've seen that he makes big plays in every single championship. Keeping him is a no brainer to me.

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He is not worth the money for just playoffs we need to get younger at LB and if he will not take a cut BB can and will replace him. Put the money into Flowers and give Van Noy a boost!!!!

zimmy said:

I don't see why High would take a payout, and I don't see how the Pats would cut him. A potential trade is the only solution if they don't want to pay him.

I tend to agree with whoever said the Pats won't pay Gronk, DMac and High what they are currently getting this year. Pay a 31 year old DMac $13m or give that money to 26 year old Flowers? Seems to make sense to lock up the younger man

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Zimmy I agree we need to get younger at LB Pay Flowers and Give Van Noy a boost before we end up next year with him on the block they should extend him now if they can!!!!!

libra957 said:

At time Hightower was a non factor, i wonder what we can get for him.

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Maybe a 2nd or Third roun pick wit maybe a 6th or 7th on top of that. Hightower needs time off to perform the way he does in the playoffs and the pats can not afford to pay an extra 8.5 mil on a playoff LB trade him and sign Flowers also xtend Van Noy before we get his contract up we need to be younger at that Position!!!

vuudu said:

Cap increased, why will this thought even cross our mind? He is a soul of that D. When you need a big play in a big game, High always delivered.

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I love Donte to but he is no longer what he was great in the playoffs but we need a LB full time and younger. Pay Flowers trade Hightower Get Van Noy locked up before he is up and grab a young LB or two out of the draft. The pats have 12 picks this year the mopst of any team and I hope they use them smart. If they make a couple of moves there is nobody that will compete next season and we will win the SB 54 and maybe 55 with Brady still here!!!!

jerryv001 said:

He is not worth the money for just playoffs we need to get younger at LB and if he will not take a cut BB can and will replace him. Put the money into Flowers and give Van Noy a boost!!!!

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1. He was coming back from injury and showed more explosiveness and comfort as the year progressed.
2. How old do you think he is?
3. Do you think this is a report based on pending financial/personnel moves, or a speculative story during a media slow stretch?
4. How much money do you think we save against the cap by cutting Hightower this year?
5. Can you show me why Van Noy is better than Hightower? And do you know their relative ages (cf. question 2)?

reamer said:

1. He was coming back from injury and showed more explosiveness and comfort as the year progressed.
2. How old do you think he is?
3. Do you think this is a report based on pending financial/personnel moves, or a speculative story during a media slow stretch?
4. How much money do you think we save against the cap by cutting Hightower this year?
5. Can you show me why Van Noy is better than Hightower? And do you know their relative ages (cf. question 2)?

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1: The injury itself is a bit of a concern. It could be like Deion Lewis where he needed a year to recover after the injury but once the injury bug bites, it rarely lets up.
2: pushing 30 at a very physical position. Again, if injury wasn't a concern this wouldn't be a problem, but this was hardly the first time Hightower has missed games from injury.

Hightower games played (Career)
Year Played Started
2012 14 13
2013 16 14
2014 12 12
2015 12 12
2016 13 13
2017 5 5
2018 15 15

So if you nod to the fact that his first full season he was healthy and played in every game, after that, he's been dinged and banged and missed games to injury every year since. 2018 was easily his healthiest year since his sophomore campaign

Note: This is not really a surprise. Linebacker is an incredibly physical position, it requires both hard contact at the line and speed in coverage. Linebackers use their bodies harder than just about anyone else on the field, with the possible exception of RBs. But from what I can see, Hightower's tendency to let 3-4 games a season leak away to injury marks his durability as somewhat below average, I'm sure that's at least partly because of his playstyle but I doubt that changes as he approaches 30.

So the question is, which trend do you think is more likely. The trend where the guy plays 12-13 games a year and is dinged up for half of those, or the outlier year this year where he made almost all of his starts?

3: Irrelevant. First of all all responses to this report are predicated on the assumption that it's true, if it isn't, then it's so much wind and we all know it. Secondly, this is the offseason. Speculation is literally what we're here to do until the ball starts snapping in TC

4: Moving Hightower along would not be a "cut," it would be a trade based on the name brand, so the answer here is "probably all of it." At least 12 NFL teams would probably be willing to take that contract as it stands right now, for his leadership if not his play on the field, he's not that expensive for a high end linebacker and he would probably negotiate a market value deal wherever he went. Moving Hightower along would be about getting younger and healthier at a key position, not about the money.

5: Van Noy is not better than Hightower, but he is healthy and has shown a great deal of improvement. It's not unreasonable to suggest that Van Noy could play the veteran mentor to an energetic young linebacker drafted to fill Hightower's spot on the roster.

Hightower is sitting somewhere, resting, recovering and enjoying the fruits of his third ring, and a (once again) spectacular playoff run and SB performance, and this forum is assigning him an attitude about his salary, based entirely on a click bait speculation of one media member? There's absolutely no evidence anywhere that any of this is on anyone's mind other than that media member, and now the members of this forum.

To me, he shows up in the SB like Brady does. In all three games, he's made game-defining plays, leading to three wins. He may not make the NFL HoF, but he sure should make the Pats HoF.

There's about $6M in cap flexibility in his 2019 salary. It isn't a big part of the answer to finding the space to sign Flowers or Brown.

Cut him, trade him ... LOL Before say this kind of stuff look the f*cking numbers.

You SAVE 5m if you trade him STOP IT

Aj Klein is making 5m

WOULD YOU CUT HIM AND BRING F*CKING AJ KLEIN

HIS NUMBER IS 11 BUT YOU WILL NOT SAVE THAT

If you want to save money:

Extend Brady
Extend or ask for a paycut from Allen/ DMac
Cut or Extend Clayborn

And that is it.

Brady is playing 2 more years after that they will be with a TON of cap space. They can sign Flowers and backload his deal. If they do not resign Flowers the reason is that they do not value him what he is asking.

jerryv001 said:

I love Donte to but he is no longer what he was great in the playoffs but we need a LB full time and younger. Pay Flowers trade Hightower Get Van Noy locked up before he is up and grab a young LB or two out of the draft. The pats have 12 picks this year the mopst of any team and I hope they use them smart. If they make a couple of moves there is nobody that will compete next season and we will win the SB 54 and maybe 55 with Brady still here!!!!

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12 picks is nice and all but I think people forget that 5 of them are hardly valuable.

robertweathers said:

Yes

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So let me get this straight.
Who is trading him? Must be Doug kyed since HE is the one who asked him about taking a pay cut and the patriots have not.
I guess he is going to get traded because he won’t take a pay cut without being asked to take a pay cut. The team that paid Adrian Clayborn 5.5 mill is going to get rid of their most important defensive player so they can pay 5 mill to not have him instead of 10.9 to have him.

Fascinating how a player like HT is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to injuries. If he misses games he gets criticized and if he plays through an injury he gets criticized for his poorer play. That's crazy talk when the game is football.

Asking players to renegotiate a deal where both sides signed on the dotted line seems to me to be a dishonest tactic that's totally one-sided. If a player plays well above his salary he's expected to honor the deal. If he plays below his salary level, even when it's due to an injury, he's expected to renegotiate that deal.

HailHydra said:

Hightower, while he has certainly made plays, is nowhere close to being a HoF candidate. HoF candidates are the best at their positions - Hightower isn't even in the top 10. If you're solely basing it off playoff success, then Edelman would be a 10x more likely HoF candidate, but even he won't make it.

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Hightower is easily a top 10 lb when healthy. A couple of years ago he was arguably the best LB in the NFL. You have to watch the game not read stats.

1960Pats said:

Fascinating how a player like HT is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to injuries. If he misses games he gets criticized and if he plays through an injury he gets criticized for his poorer play. That's crazy talk when the game is football.

Asking players to renegotiate a deal where both sides signed on the dotted line seems to me to be a dishonest tactic that's totally one-sided. If a player plays well above his salary he's expected to honor the deal. If he plays below his salary level, even when it's due to an injury, he's expected to renegotiate that deal.

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That’s why they get signing bonuses and agree to non guaranteed contracts.
There is nothing dishonest about not continuing a non guaranteed contract when it’s no longer beneficial. That eventually is part of the agreement.
In return the player gets guaranteed money up front. I think Hightower got about 20 mill.
He could have had a career ending injury on his first game and got 20 mill to play one game. Would that be dishonest and unfair?
No it’s the trade off for not being guaranteed for the entire contract.

SBLIII said:

Yes, he was. Seemed to have lost at least 1 step.

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Lost a step, yes. But he was not mediocre all season as you stated .

AndyJohnson said:

Hightower is easily a top 10 lb when healthy. A couple of years ago he was arguably the best LB in the NFL. You have to watch the game not read stats.

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He was a Top 5 LB when healthy. But he's much slower now - as many of us pointed out earlier in the season. He's only going to get slower and it's very likely that he gets injured again.

Username said:

He was anonymous for most of the season. Van Noy and the much maligned Elandon Roberts contributed far more. That's not opinion, that's fact. He came to life in the playoffs, but was an empty jersey most of the year.

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No it's not fact.

HailHydra said:

He was a Top 5 LB when healthy. But he's much slower now - as many of us pointed out earlier in the season. He's only going to get slower and it's very likely that he gets injured again.

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At the beginning of the season he was recovering from a year out of football.
By the end of the season he was the same Hightower.