Remaining FA Wide Receivers - or Do We Wait for Draft?

[Ivan]

This is a new team. You cannot judge this team based on what they did under Belichick. There were reports that the scouting staff in 2019 were pushing AJ Brown and Deebo Samuel and Belichick overruled them for Harry. Belichick is also the guy who told Dimitrov that he shouldn't trade up to get Julio Jones. It is Belichick who didn't value paying for WRs. Belichick also put too much emphasis on a receiver's blocking skills.

If the Pats did really offer Ridley $22 million a year, it shows that this scouting staff will be approaching WRs very differently than Belichick did. I question whether Belichick would give Justin Jefferson $22 million a year, never mind Calvin Ridley. Belichick just never valued investing in WRs.

This team could be just as bad or worse at getting WRs in the draft as they were under Belichick. But it won't be because of what happened during the quarter century under Belichick. It certainly won't be because of anything that happened prior to the Belichick era.

Agree completely. What happened during the Belichick years is irrelevant to what will happen going forward. The same goes for the draft, what has happened in prior drafts is irrelevant to the current draft. Every year the players change and the strengths and weaknesses change. I’m going to give Wolf and Mayo a couple of years with free agency and the draft before coming to any conclusions about them. That doesn’t mean I won’t have opinions on various moves, but evaluating them fully will require a couple of years to allow them to fully implement their overall plans for the team. Three years would be fairer, but we should have a pretty good sense of their overall approach two years from now.