Woo hoo!!! Belichick isn't sitting with his thumb up his ass after all!
We let Lewis, Dola, and Butler go, BUT!....
re-signed Ebner!
Jesus Fcking christ!
Only Lewis had a deal that they could have or should have matched, and I’m as big an Amendola fan as it gets. These deals (King, Ebner etc...) are really important because they address numerous roles that have to be filled, and that allows them to focus on the more specific roles left.
Pretty much everyone here hates to see players like Solder, Butler, Amendola, and Lewis leave, but the NFL is structured for exactly that to happen. Unless you suck and have 40-50 million plus to blow on anyone you want you are going to have to pay guys in accordance with their actual value, and not as if they were the best at their positions. And the burden that goes with being a very good team every year is that you will always draft at a much lower position in Every round of the draft, and you will have much less cap room because you are paying many more good to great players. That’s the position that the Patriots have been in for almost twenty years, and Belichick has been able to defy the forced parity structure of the NFL because he has the GOAT QB and an organizational structure that is quite simply better than every other franchise in football. And because of that they have been able to overcome the structural parity system of the NFL and the losses of great players and great coaches and coordinators. And that’s the challenge they face once again this offseason.
The losses the Patriots are dealing with suck, no question about that, but they are a part of the deal that goes with averaging 12+ wins a season. Losing Solder is clearly the biggest loss, and now LT is their biggest need. However they clearly saw this coming and addressed it by drafting Garcia. That he developed a serious health issue is not something they could have seen coming, but hopefully he can regain the size and strength he needs to play the position, and they have the best OL coach in football to coach him up. I would still like to see them go OL early in this draft if the right prospect is there, and I’m hoping they re-sign Waddle as well. Lewis is a significant loss as well, but RB is the easiest position to address. Butler was a good CB but I would not have given him that deal, Tennessee will regret that deal imo.
So the Patriots have some holes to fill, that’s par for the course at this time of the year, and while they may not be able to upgrade at every one I have complete confidence that they will address the needs and field another 12 win team that competes for a Lombardi in 2018, and you really can’t expect more than that from any franchise.
