Curran's Off Season Grade

In his latest assessment of the Patriots Off Season moves NBC Boston Patriots writer Tom Curran gives the Patriots an F. He is very bitter that Tom Brady is not on the Patriots anymore. He also rakes the Patriots for trading Rob Gronkowski. Why, they got something for nothing! Gronk was not going to play for the Patriots without Tom Brady. The Patriots made the right choice about Brady. You DO NOT pay $25M guaranteed per year for two years for a 43 you QB.

What if the Cap goes down by $75 next year as projected. The Bucs and a lot of other teams are screwed. The Patriots were in cap jail but still made significant moves with the signings of Allen, Copeland, Lee, Phillips and Vitale.

I like the draft class with the exception of K Rohrwasser. As with all rookie kickers, I will keep and open mind about Rohrwasser.

I love their UDFA class and think as many as 3 or 4 could make the team.

The Patriots have the oldest roster on both offense and defense in the NFL. They have 31 players in the last year of their contracts. It was time to pay the piper and have over $25M in dead money and have another $16M tied up in Franchise tagged Joe Thuney. Thuney is a player you build your oline around and given a choice between keeping Thuney or keeping a 43 you Brady, the Patriots made the tough decision and kept Thuney.

This off season has been difficult, but an F, no way. A solid B- and if these players work out, could be a B+.
In Bill We Trust!

He gave them the correct grade. This off season was pathetic.

BB bad habit of ignoring needs while hoarding positions of strength will get exposed if there’s actually a season.

Haven't read the article, but if so it's odd to see Curran so bitter and negative. He's normally more grounded than that.

Curran said the grade was based on improving the talent but caveated it by saying NE did what it had to do.

-Get younger
-Clean up the cap
-Move on from Tom/Start the new QB process

Hard to argue really. We are capped strapped and could do little to nothing. We still have the worst receiving corp in football. Rookie TEs we are counting on to he productive out of the gate. The real possibility that Hoyer could be our week 1 starter, lost 2 of our core LBs and of course let the GOAT walk. The only thing I would say in defense is that BB is not trying to win anything this year. He is treading water until next year when we will have more money if the cap is not completely sunk from the virus.

Mark Morse said:

In his latest assessment of the Patriots Off Season moves NBC Boston Patriots writer Tom Curran gives the Patriots an F. He is very bitter that Tom Brady is not on the Patriots anymore. He also rakes the Patriots for trading Rob Gronkowski. Why, they got something for nothing! Gronk was not going to play for the Patriots without Tom Brady. The Patriots made the right choice about Brady. You DO NOT pay $25M guaranteed per year for two years for a 43 you QB.

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The Saints signed their QB to a very similar deal to which Tampa signed Brady...

What if the Cap goes down by $75 next year as projected. The Bucs and a lot of other teams are screwed. The Patriots were in cap jail but still made significant moves with the signings of Allen, Copeland, Lee, Phillips and Vitale...

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Did you just call the signings of Fat Thor, off-the-juice plodder Copeland & broken-down Marquise Lee "significant"? I do like the signings of Phillips, Vitale & Cody Davis, but c'mon man...

Curran is an embedded member of Team Sad Tompa and in order to retain speed dial privileges with Don Yee, Curran is contractually obligated to denigrate the Pats draft, roster, leadership, ownership for an undetermined period of time, likely until Yee tasks him with a new assignment.

FYI.....It is abundantly clear Tanguay has been auditioning for Sad Tompa rights given his unrelenting weekly Patriot attacks

borg said:

FYI.....It is abundantly clear Tanguay has been auditioning for Sad Tompa rights given his unrelenting weekly Patriot attacks

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I dont even read his garbage. Glad his lymphoma is in remission but now he can go back under his rock.

Curran made an insane claim saying when Brady motioned to McDaniels to fix a player misaligned in practice, that this somehow meant Brady was not allowed to chime in on the offense or provide guidance to teammates. Curran turned crazy.

.

borg said:

Curran is an embedded member of Team Sad Tompa and in order to retain speed dial privileges with Don Yee, Curran is contractually obligated to denigrate the Pats draft, roster, leadership, ownership for an undetermined period of time, likely until Yee tasks him with a new assignment.

FYI.....It is abundantly clear Tanguay has been auditioning for Sad Tompa rights given his unrelenting weekly Patriot attacks

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Meh. Everyone has their ties. The one thing I will say for Curran, he was pretty spot on with everything this past season.

The possibility that Curran might be upset enough with Pats management/coaches, because he might lose part or all of some access privileges, to give their offseason an F out of spite more than out of analysis still should not detract from the reality that this offseason has thus far been a near complete Failure.

Meh, B+
In Bill we plus

Curran knows the formula: A crossover from local to national media punditry requires an alignment readjustment.
31 non Patriot fan bases don’t want to read a Boston-centric toady. Curran is making his move, likely guided by the self appointed moral compass of the NFL...Florio.... former fact-challenged rumor monger

Mark Morse said:

In his latest assessment of the Patriots Off Season moves NBC Boston Patriots writer Tom Curran gives the Patriots an F. He is very bitter that Tom Brady is not on the Patriots anymore. He also rakes the Patriots for trading Rob Gronkowski. Why, they got something for nothing! Gronk was not going to play for the Patriots without Tom Brady. The Patriots made the right choice about Brady. You DO NOT pay $25M guaranteed per year for two years for a 43 you QB.

What if the Cap goes down by $75 next year as projected. The Bucs and a lot of other teams are screwed. The Patriots were in cap jail but still made significant moves with the signings of Allen, Copeland, Lee, Phillips and Vitale.

I like the draft class with the exception of K Rohrwasser. As with all rookie kickers, I will keep and open mind about Rohrwasser.

I love their UDFA class and think as many as 3 or 4 could make the team.

The Patriots have the oldest roster on both offense and defense in the NFL. They have 31 players in the last year of their contracts. It was time to pay the piper and have over $25M in dead money and have another $16M tied up in Franchise tagged Joe Thuney. Thuney is a player you build your oline around and given a choice between keeping Thuney or keeping a 43 you Brady, the Patriots made the tough decision and kept Thuney.

This off season has been difficult, but an F, no way. A solid B- and if these players work out, could be a B+.
In Bill We Trust!

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Captain Curran.

I don't really see how one could disagree if improving the roster is the prism to view through. The roster wasn't good enough last year, and is worse this year. WR in particular is a huge problem. I a totally think front 7 will be an issue as well this year.

BUT...that said, I don't give them an F because the prism for me is "how to revamp the team and move on from an institution who WAS a transcendent player and prepare the franchise for future success. Tom wasn't good last year...full stop. Whether or was mental/trust/quitting on young players/decline I think we are going to find out but it doesn't change the fact that he just wasn't good enough to justify what his cap number would be.

So...we rebuild. And rebuild is exactly what is happening. To me it's a "B" only because I do think Reiss was onto something that the Pat's may be a bit too restrictive with thier draft criteria. I think we wasted some draft ammo.

KDPpatsfan said:

I don't really see how one could disagree if improving the roster is the prism to view through. The roster wasn't good enough last year, and is worse this year. .

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If improving a 12-4 team to be SB contender is the metric, then Belichick deserves an F.

Honestly it all depends on this draft class. We ended up using whatever cap space we had on Thuney and Dmac. We’re gonna have a ton of space next offseason and should have a good idea on if we need to use a high pick on a qb or not.

It still perplexes me that they franchised Thuney and actually seem willing to let him play at that figure. That much cap tied up in 2 guards doesn't make sense to me. I thought for sure he was trade bait but I was wrong.

Here's what Curran actually wrote:

They have to take their medicine with $23.5M in dead cap money thanks to Tom Brady, Stephen Gostkowski, Michael Bennett and Antonio Brown. They franchised Joe Thuney to keep him away from competitors and still haven’t gotten an agreement with him to clear up more dough. They drafted a kicker in the fifth round nobody else would have likely drafted. They saw two of their best defensive players in 2019 go out the door — Jamie Collins and Kyle Van Noy — and also lost Phillip Dorsett, Duron Harmon, Danny Shelton, Ted Karras and Nate Ebner.

Coming in, they have some Joes who will no doubt help — DL Beau Allen, DB Adrian Phillips and FB Dan Vitale to name three — and their first five draft picks are worth being enthused about, but you don’t lose the best quarterback of all-time and be forced into trading the best tight end of his generation both in large part because you didn’t want them and they didn’t want you and expect to get a pass.

The question isn’t whether it’s been awful. The question is whether it’s just a setup for improvement.

While I don't agree with the grade, I agree with much of his analysis. Bill's cleaning up the cap mess and setting us up for better times.

NFL offseason report cards: Which teams aced free agency, draft?

captain stone said:

The possibility that Curran might be upset enough with Pats management/coaches, because he might lose part or all of some access privileges, to give their offseason an F out of spite more than out of analysis still should not detract from the reality that this offseason has thus far been a near complete Failure.

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You obviously have every right to post here and express your opinions but I'm just curious if you have enough self-awareness to realize that your posts stopped being useful for the rest of us long ago, because your schtick and negativity never, ever change on any personnel-related subjects. I don't think you are trolling us. Even trolls at some point will usually get tired of trolling and will admit that "I'm just f*cking with you guys", unless that person has a legitimate personality disorder. What is point of posting at all if you lost have lost all credibility with the other members of the site?

The latest example of your laser-focused, negative-at-all-costs agenda was your post yesterday in which you stated (incorrectly) that Cajuste had a 4th-5th round grade before he was injured while training for the draft. That is simply absurd and you scouring the web in order to find the one page that lists him as such doesn't make it any less absurd. Most of us who come here with regularity know which posts are yours before even looking at the name of the poster.

If partiality, negativity and douchebaggery are going to be "your thing" indefinitely, at least make your posts funny. Currently, they are neither insightful nor humorous.