Daily news threads with relevant news, stories, video, or additional content around the team. Feel free to contribute anything interesting you come across as well, which will hopefully make these helpful for people to keep up with what's going on with the team by having all the news in one place.
Law of unintended consequences. Is it possible that not one single person in the front office considered asking 'what are the potential ripple effects of this action'? We as fans were all very happy that Barmore was signed - but was there not a plan regarding how to handle other players reactions after Barmore's deal was complete?
With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps it would have made more sense to reach an oral agreement with Barmore first, but not make it official yet. Then as soon as they extend Judon and Godchaux, turn in the Barmore paperwork. Though that may be unrealistic, because it would rely on Barmore and his agent keeping quiet in the interim.
Greg Bedard of Boston Sports Journal reported in a podcast with co-host Nick Cattles on Wednesday that Barmore’s contract remains the wedge in the negotiations with both Matthew Judon and Davon Godchaux. “If the Patriots didn’t do anything to Christian Barmore’s contract, if they didn’t give him the extension, I still think there would have been bellyaching from Matthew Judon and Davon Godchaux,” said Bedard. “But once they gave Christian Barmore, off of really one year of production, $21 million AAV, including $19.5 million cash in 2024 – and that’s off of one year of production, really – and Matthew Judon is set to make $7.5 million in cash this year, and Davon Godchaux is set to make $8.3 million in cash this year, they might have been a little disgruntled before, but now when Barmore got his deal – and I don’t begrudge Barmore at all the Patriots, [it’s] a little rich, but you had to do something because you couldn’t let him go through this year and get to free agency and then he’s gone. The Patriots have been through this too many times. So they were proactive and hopefully in time, the deal looks better, it often does. But it went from a little grumbling to when they gave Barmore the extension, $21 million a year, that’s when it sort of went to another level. And those guys are saying, ‘If you guys are handing out money, we’ve done a few things for this franchise, more than a year, so why don’t you look at us?'”
