It’s been a successful year. The Patriots appear to have hit big on the draft, and that’s what you MUST do. Mac has played well above my expectations...and there’s nothing more valuable than a good QB on a rookie contract. Bill made me eat crow for thinking he had overestimated the roster, as a lot of players from previous drafts have started to play more of a role. All that said, you can call this a “rebuild” or whatever you want…it’s semantics, but however you define this year, keep in mind that outside optimistic player projections (like Mac and Barmore), they’re not in some great advantageous position the next few years from a cap standpoint.
Here are 12 players they committed to last offseason (Van Noy is the only one who could potentially be cut with reasonable cap savings.) In 2021, these players counted 45.3M against the cap; in 2022, these players are scheduled to count 100.5M against the cap. The cap will increase about 15%, or 26M in 2022, and the Patriots do have about 7M rolled over. Still, that doesn’t come close to accounting for this.
2021, 2022 - Cap Hits (may be restructured)
Judon: 6.3M, 16.5M
Henry: 6.8M, 15.5M
Smith: 5.6M, 13.8M
Wynn: 3.6M, 10.4M
Godchaux: 4.0M, 10.3M
Van Noy: 4.3M, 7.3M
Wise: 3.7M, 6.3M
Mills: 4.5M, 6.1M
Bourne: 3.1M, 5.7M
Andrews, 1.7M, 5.3M
Guy: 1.7M, 3.3M
Total: 45.3M, 100.5M
This roster was built to win now, and as you can see by the numbers, this is when the real charges come, almost like ”buy now, pay later sale.” Undoubtedly they’ll restructure a lot of deals, though that’s not a great long-term solution...I compare it to mortgaging properties in Monopoly…short-term cash that damages the long-term outlook...it’s a lot more sensible to do it for players who can be extended and are playing at a high level. Fact is, there’s a lot of guaranteed, unpaid money remaining on these deals, and a lot of these players aren’t likely to perform at the level they’ll be owed soon.
In 2022, the Patriots have about 31.2M. They don’t have many disposable contracts where they can must cut a low value player who is overpaid. Hightower is already included in that figure. Notable FAs are Jackson, McCourty, Hightower, Brown, Phillips, and Meyers. Jackson is likely to have a $20M AAV market. I’m sure they’ll figure out how to move cap space around as every team does, but it will be a huge challenge sustaining their current level of talent let alone improving. You can hope for major QB improvement and more draft picks hitting big, but every team is playing that lottery.
