Curran: "In my estimation... [Gonzo would like to] be treated as if he's at the table in 2027." [previous title: "say goodbye to gonzo"]

[One-If-By-Sea]

Oh, lol, I meant the 2025 draft. Campbell, Henderson, Williams and Wilson. Sorry, could've been more clear. Every draft needs to be evaluated according to the position we were drafting at. Coming off the Super Bowl and picking 31st, we did really well to land Lomu, Jacas and Raridon. It's really hard to do. But flash to the previous draft, and we're taking guys at 4 and 36 and 68. A world of different, premium picks. Effectively, Treveyon is the equivalent of Lomu, Williams is like Jacas. I'm nervous that we won't find 1 more permanent starter out of Treveyon, Wilson and Williams to give us 3 for the draft. Actually when you're picking that high, you need 4 starters.

I agree. But I will be positive. The 2025 draft was a weak one.

Henderson had a lot to learn, unlike what we were told. He had a hard time picking up the blitzer. We will see what the Y2 jump produces. He is much better the Strong . Still a wait and see, I agree.

I think Campbell is improving and will keep getting better. He will never be great but just below All-Pro which is OK. The Pats said they did not have any offers to trade down, so they had to pick someone, even a player that did not belong at #4.

K Williams was slow to learn in college and got better all four years. He is on the same trajectory.

Wilson is much more comfortable according to Vrabel. That might be because he is moving to Center, or a Y2 thing, or both.

Woodson might be the best of the lot. I like Woodson and Reed. I hope Byard sticks around this year and next, and after that, Woodson and Reed will be good to go.

Farmer and Bryant might contribute as backups. That is not a bad thing. Ashby and Borregalles are OK.

Not a great draft, but the whole class was weak. Overall I think we did OK.

 

[Ring 6]

Yup. Last years draft looks perilous.

I think Lomu will be great. He is improving at a rapid rate, and needs an off-season to fill out. I think Lomu will be good.

Raridon looks above average in a few years. The Pats picked up and coming guys.

Reed was not in the draft but I really like him. He was good as a rookie in the playoffs. Think Woodson.

I am hoping Vrabel told Jacas to only bull rush for the 3rd preseason game to teach him some things. Jacas was awful in that game against 2nd and 3rd stringers.

Obiazor must not have impressed as the team put in for 3 or 4 LBs.

Prunty looks good. I like him. I also like the LB UDFA we signed, Hunter.

So if I like a lot of guys, why do I say perilous? Because the picks and signings all seem to be from the same high risk mold, highly athletic guys from lower level schools or with a "dent".

Who are from lower level schools?
Lomu from Utah
Jacas big 10
Raridon. ND
Prunty ACC
Crownover SEC
Obiizar from ranked TCU

 

[Ring 6]

I agree. But I will be positive. The 2025 draft was a weak one.

Henderson had a lot to learn, unlike what we were told. He had a hard time picking up the blitzer. We will see what the Y2 jump produces. He is much better the Strong . Still a wait and see, I agree.

I think Campbell is improving and will keep getting better. He will never be great but just below All-Pro which is OK. The Pats said they did not have any offers to trade down, so they had to pick someone, even a player that did not belong at #4.

K Williams was slow to learn in college and got better all four years. He is on the same trajectory.

Wilson is much more comfortable according to Vrabel. That might be because he is moving to Center, or a Y2 thing, or both.

Woodson might be the best of the lot. I like Woodson and Reed. I hope Byard sticks around this year and next, and after that, Woodson and Reed will be good to go.

Farmer and Bryant might contribute as backups. That is not a bad thing. Ashby and Borregalles are OK.

Not a great draft, but the whole class was weak. Overall I think we did OK.

Henderson had 900 yards and 5.1 ypc as a rookie. Thats a home run pick in round 2. Damming him because of one poor game in pass pro is ignorant.
Campbell, Woodson, Wilson started on a SB team.
Williams was above average for a 3rd round rookie receiver.

This was a tremendous draft so far, it’s a big reason for going from 4-13 to 14-3. It’s hard to find a draft class anywhere that contributor more to a playoff/SB team in their rookie year, not just last year, but any year.

 

[KCSVEN]

They left a lot of cap money on the table every year since BB left. They spent a lot one year because they had no choice, they had something like 120 mill in cap space FROM NOT SPENDING IT EARLIER and they didn’t come close to spending it. Mayo got sent to the principals office for suggesting they could.

Belichick was given a budget, and it was tight fisted. He did a tremendous job working within it. If the budget was bigger, he would have spent it.

There is zero evidence of BB wanting to spend more and Kraft stopping him
.
Kraft "He [Belichick] has never come to me and not gotten everything he wanted from a cash-spending perspective. We have never set limits"

Kraft went as far as to say he occasionally pushed to spend more money, but Belichick refused. "I've actually tried to get us to sign players who maybe would've cost more but wouldn't have been the right players or value," Kraft claimed in early 2024. Kraft added that if cash spending ever became an issue for his family, he would simply sell the team.

They spent cash in 2024, with a ton of upfront money thus the cap hit was low, and they did not have any superstars or QB's to pay.

2024 cap space carried to 2025 where they also spent a lot of cash.

In 2026 they are 9th in cap space as cash spending was lower.

If they spend cash up front cap space is lower and vice versa.

Apparently, the Kraft is cheap argument is that cash spending makes the owner cheap. When he spends cash then its salary cap that makes him cheap.

Right? got it?

 

[rkarp1]

 

[One-If-By-Sea]

Who are from lower level schools?
Lomu from Utah
Jacas big 10
Raridon. ND
Prunty ACC
Crownover SEC
Obiizar from ranked TCU

Depends on what is meant by lower schools. I consider Utah (Lomu), Illinois (Jacas), Wake Forest (Prunty), and TCU (Obiazor) to be lower schools.

Texas A&M (Crownover) and Notre Dame (Raridon) are upper level schools to me.

We traded for Reed who was Ohio State so that is upper level, and signed Hunter from Morgan State which is lower level to me.

Maybe I should not say upper and lower level. Is Elite or Tier 1 better? Illinois and Ohio State are both in the Big 10, but no-one confuses Illinois as being at the same Elite level as Ohio State.

 

[One-If-By-Sea]

Henderson had 900 yards and 5.1 ypc as a rookie. Thats a home run pick in round 2. Damming him because of one poor game in pass pro is ignorant.
Campbell, Woodson, Wilson started on a SB team.
Williams was above average for a 3rd round rookie receiver.

This was a tremendous draft so far, it’s a big reason for going from 4-13 to 14-3. It’s hard to find a draft class anywhere that contributor more to a playoff/SB team in their rookie year, not just last year, but any year.

I said I was going to be positive, but have clearly been outdone. That is super positive - good for you.

 

[Ring 6]

You IMPLY that BB was given a limited budget and had to live with and the Krafts are cheap, when we've heard the opposite from a wide variety of sources that BB just had to ask for more money and he'd have gotten the fact is that BB understood you cannot win consistently UNLESS you have a strong middle class on your team. If your roster becomes top heavy you will be subject to the whims of injuries and the inevitable bad personnel decisions that afflict EVERY team. You just have to look at the Pats teams of the late 90's who had excellent rosters... one deep. They never had a losing season after the Pats went to the Superbowl, but they consistently underachieved, and when their window closed in 2000 we were left with a roster that was voted by Profootball Weekly to be the LEAST likely to make it to a Superbowl in the next 5 years, And we all know how THAT prediction turned out,

Now I don't know what the hang up with Gonzo's contact is, if it's the money or the terms. All I know is that the discussions are NOT hostile, since neither side has mentioned any specifics about what the holdup is as much as we wish they would. BTW- the Krafts spent the most money (by far) in FA in 2025, and were in the top 10 in the league with money spent this year. Your continued rants about the Krafts are constantly flying against the truth, Andy. You'd be better served staying out of the FO stuff, and stick to actual football observations where you offer more to the board even those times when I disagree. Biases sometimes make us blind.

Kraft has said he has a cash budget.
There is not a “wide variety of sources” that said he would get whatever he asked for, the only one who ever says that was Kraft when he was in defense mode over being the among lowest cash spenders in the league.

So your argument is that BB preferred to have less money to sign players with? You can have a string “middle class” without being cheap. No one is saying be top heavy, but having a bottom 5 cash budget is 100% a constraint.

Once again, when you are at the bottom of cash spending you have seasons where you have to spend because you have a ton of cap room. BB explained that when we spent in 2021 but over 21-23 we were 27th in cash spending.
Why would BB say that if he had an unlimited check book?

By the way you are wrong, the patriots are 26th in cash spending this year.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cash

They were number 9 last year

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cash/_/year/2025/sort/cash_total

They left 36 mill cap money on the table in 2024 (3rd most)
They left 48 mill cap money on the table in 2025 (most in the league)
They have left 19 mill on the table so far this year. (8th most in the league)

At least when BB was here he got him to spend to the cap, now we don’t even do that.

 

[Ring 6]

I said I was going to be positive, but have clearly been outdone. That is super positive - good for you.

Well no, you were super negative. Can you find a rookie class that contributed more to winning on their first season?

 

[Ring 6]

Depends on what is meant by lower schools. I consider Utah (Lomu), Illinois (Jacas), Wake Forest (Prunty), and TCU (Obiazor) to be lower schools.

Texas A&M (Crownover) and Notre Dame (Raridon) are upper level schools to me.

We traded for Reed who was Ohio State so that is upper level, and signed Hunter from Morgan State which is lower level to me.

Maybe I should not say upper and lower level. Is Elite or Tier 1 better? Illinois and Ohio State are both in the Big 10, but no-one confuses Illinois as being at the same Elite level as Ohio State.

Reed isnt a Buckeye.

So Big 10, powe 5, and teams ranked in the top 25 are “low schools”. I think you are alone in that belief

 

[Ring 6]

There is zero evidence of BB wanting to spend more and Kraft stopping him
.
Kraft "He [Belichick] has never come to me and not gotten everything he wanted from a cash-spending perspective. We have never set limits"

Kraft went as far as to say he occasionally pushed to spend more money, but Belichick refused. "I've actually tried to get us to sign players who maybe would've cost more but wouldn't have been the right players or value," Kraft claimed in early 2024. Kraft added that if cash spending ever became an issue for his family, he would simply sell the team.

They spent cash in 2024, with a ton of upfront money thus the cap hit was low, and they did not have any superstars or QB's to pay.

2024 cap space carried to 2025 where they also spent a lot of cash.

In 2026 they are 9th in cap space as cash spending was lower.

If they spend cash up front cap space is lower and vice versa.

Apparently, the Kraft is cheap argument is that cash spending makes the owner cheap. When he spends cash then its salary cap that makes him cheap.

Right? got it?

So Kraft in defense mode about not spending says he would spend whatever he was asked to is your evidence?
The greatest football coach in NFL history said “no, keep your money I don’t want better players”. Laughable.

They were 14th in cash spending in 2024 and left the 3rd most cap money on the table.
They were 9th last year and left THE MOST cap money on the table.
This year they are 26th in cash spending and haven’t 8th most cap money left on the table as of now, and the coach says they aren’t a deep team. Hmmm maybe if the spent more than 26th most….


Cash spending is volatile. It is a function of your cap status. It has to be looked at over time. Over time the patriots are bottom 5 on spending and have been since Kraft arrived.
At least when bb was here he convinced Kraft to spend to the cap.

Since he left we’ve left 36 mill, 48 mill and so far 19 mill of cap space unused.

There is no twisting of numbers or whining that erases this away. It is a fact that Kraft spends less cash that almost any other owner. It’s a fact that he’s stopped even using all of the cap now too.

Whatever reasoning you want to pit behind those facts they are still facts. Your affection for Kraft doesn’t change that.

 

[Huckleberry1]

Multiple articles have said the same thing. They'd be Patriots precedents not NFL precedents, other than the overall value that will set a record for CB's.
It's the 1-year early guarantee and the per game roster bonuses. Pretty sure those are the issues. Patriots want some relief if he gets injured, more than Seahawks wanted from Witherspoon. It's all about how early Gonzalez is guaranteed a certain amount of money. It's not about how much he gets paid if he plays out the contract. atrios have never done the early guarantee. Even Milt Williams is same year.

Sorry, " multiple articles" means absolutely nothing. I can literally give you multiple articles that are completely made up every day. Last week there was an article about the Patriots HUGE SIGNING, of JuJu Smith-Schuster, which was completely false. 2 weeks ago there was an article that claimed that Vrabel had " lost control of the locker room " because Nick Degennaro showed up for practice smelling of alcohol and was immediately released," also complete ********. Rumors aren't fact, and shouldn't be treated as such. And the way you posted it was like it was a fact. And no player has a contract that guarantees a consistent % of the salary cap, so if that rumor happened to be true it would indeed be an NFL precedent, and not one the Patriots should create.


If we find out what Gonzalez is asking for, and what the Patriots have been offering we will then know what the hold up is, until

 

[silentone]

I've read several articles on this over the years, so it's really in my head. But a quick search yields this: How Billionaires Have Beaten the Market Over the Last Decade (and What You Can Learn From Them)

Thanks, interesting article. I took a look at it and also at the UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report it's based on. I think there are three pretty significant issues with the article, particularly as it relates to the idea that billionaires are earning 13% a year.

First, the S&P 500 number in the article just appears to be factually wrong. It says the S&P 500 returned 77% from 2015–2024. According to S&P's own data, it actually returned about 243% over those 10 years including dividends, or 13.1% a year. That's a huge difference, especially since the article uses the 77% number to show how much better billionaires did. Unless I have this wrong, the S&P itself earned the roughly 13% a year that we're talking about as the "billionaire advantage," which seems to undermine the basic point of the article.

Second, the UBS report is looking at the growth in total billionaire wealth, not the investment returns billionaires earned on their money. That's really apples and oranges. A lot of billionaire wealth is tied up in the business or asset that made them billionaires in the first place. If the Patriots go from being worth $2 billion to $8 billion, Kraft's wealth has grown enormously, but that doesn't tell us what kind of return he's earning on the money he has available to invest, even with the "billionaire advantage."

Third, during the same period the number of billionaires increased by more than 50%, from 1,757 to 2,682. So even the 121% increase in total billionaire wealth isn't measuring the growth in wealth of the same group of people from beginning to end.

Unless I'm missing something, there isn't anything close in the UBS report indicating that billionaires are earning 13% annually on their investment portfolios. I can certainly see a "billionaire advantage" in terms of access to certain investments and opportunities that most people don't have, but I'm still not seeing evidence that it translates into the kind of overall investment returns you were talking about.

 

[WhatJustHappened]

Among the lowest cash spenders while charging the most for game tickets of any NFL team.
Quite a feat when you can pull it off.

I'm just grateful some of the excess profits went to erecting an inland lighthouse with a tiny bell......and acting lessons for his "niece".

That Lighthouse is ugly as fk.... and it has a tiny bell.

Jus Sayin

 

[PatsFan2]

Anyone thinking this Gonzo situation will have any bearing whatsoever in the Maye negotiations is delusional. He’s a franchise QB. Totally different dynamics.

Yea that's obvious: Franchise QB's have their respective Teams by the Balls no pun.

 

[ScottishPatriots]

I don't think anyone thinks they could ever get out of just paying Maye top of the market if that's what he wants, we saw what the Patriots looked like with bad quarterbacks and they were completely irrelevant as a team and no one wants to go back to that for the sake of money.

The biggest Gonzalez issue here is a 2026 one because if he's not playing games or not playing at a high level due to the contract issues then the Pats are done as a genuine Super Bowl threat and pretty much wasted a second year of Drake Mayes rookie deal after the Mayo fiasco.

I don't want to hear the media spin about how Vrabel values edge rushers over corners and that's why they don't want to pay Gonzalez top of the market because then why weren't they in on Crosby or Hendrickson?

If they didn't want to pay Gonzalez top of the market then he should have been traded before the draft because there's no way it was ever going to happen otherwise.

 

[PatsFan2]

Multiple articles have said the same thing. They'd be Patriots precedents not NFL precedents, other than the overall value that will set a record for CB's.
It's the 1-year early guarantee and the per game roster bonuses. Pretty sure those are the issues. Patriots want some relief if he gets injured, more than Seahawks wanted from Witherspoon. It's all about how early Gonzalez is guaranteed a certain amount of money. It's not about how much he gets paid if he plays out the contract. atrios have never done the early guarantee. Even Milt Williams is same year.

Tom Brady was such a blessing for this Franchise. BB was so lucky he had such an unselfish player who put not himself but Team first. I wonder if Gonzo is saying to himself: I'm not going easy on them like Tom Brady I have earned my payday. I think if they can't come to an agreement this year Gonzo is getting Traded next year. We won't get what the Jets got for Sauce.

 

[Ring 6]

I don't think anyone thinks they could ever get out of just paying Maye top of the market if that's what he wants, we saw what the Patriots looked like with bad quarterbacks and they were completely irrelevant as a team and no one wants to go back to that for the sake of money.

The biggest Gonzalez issue here is a 2026 one because if he's not playing games or not playing at a high level due to the contract issues then the Pats are done as a genuine Super Bowl threat and pretty much wasted a second year of Drake Mayes rookie deal after the Mayo fiasco.

I don't want to hear the media spin about how Vrabel values edge rushers over corners and that's why they don't want to pay Gonzalez top of the market because then why weren't they in on Crosby or Hendrickson?

If they didn't want to pay Gonzalez top of the market then he should have been traded before the draft because there's no way it was ever going to happen otherwise.

Is the media saying that? Because I haven’t seen Vrabel value “edge rushers” he seems to value edge defenders who can play the run not just pure pass rushers. He also values DTs heavily

 

[One-If-By-Sea]

Reed isnt a Buckeye.

So Big 10, powe 5, and teams ranked in the top 25 are “low schools”. I think you are alone in that belief

My mistake. Reed was at Penn State, not Ohio State.

 

[KCSVEN]

If we find out what Gonzalez is asking for, and what the Patriots have been offering we will then know what the hold up is, until

It's speculation in some cases, more than rumors in others. Kraft is on record saying he'd be highes paid CB and multiple reports from people with contacts at Patriots say overall money is not the issue. Both sides have leaked the issue is the language and the details of the contract.
We know what Wotherspoon gt and we know the things in it the Patriots wouldn't do.
I don't think it is a big leap on a message board to suggest the evidence heavily points to guaranteed money and when the guarantees happen as being the main issues.