Monday Patriots Notebook 6/10: News and Notes
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Some Patriots news and notes for this morning:
The Patriots are gearing up for minicamp this week, with the team hitting the field later this morning in what will be a public session in front of the media.
This should be an interesting week. There are three practices scheduled and these workouts are mandatory, which should see veterans like Matthew Judon, Jonathan Jones, and several others on hand after they sat out the recent voluntary workouts.
Judon has already previously said he had planned to be there, joking that he wasn’t willing to take the chance of losing any money for sitting out. The veteran still hasn’t received a contract extension from the team, which remains a key thing to keep an eye on ahead of the season, given that his base salary heading into 2024 is just $6.5 million, well below the value that most players at his position are paid.
Right now, Judon likely didn’t view the voluntary workouts as critical, given that the Patriots are essentially returning the same coaches and the majority of players from last season. There’s no learning curve, or any additional hurdle to clear.
What would have been interesting would have been whether or not an offensive veteran might have done the same, squandering a critical period to get acclimated with an entirely new offensive coaching staff, new quarterbacks, and a new system. That likely would have been a risky move, with not enough reps for a player to get on the same page in such a short period.
Fortunately, that’s not a problem, albeit they also — unfortunately – don’t have a player of Judon’s stature on that side of the ball.
For now, the goal is to see rookie quarterback Drake Maye continue to make progress and for the club to continue sorting things out up front along the offensive line. There’s still a long way to go before they return next month, but it’s safe to say there’s certainly plenty of value in the work that will go into these next few days as they continue trying to build a foundation ahead of training camp.
Former Patriots running back Damien Harris’ interview with TheAthletic’s Robert Mays last week obviously had some interesting quotes as it pertained to that difficult 2022 season, but he also talked about what that free agency period was like for him before he ended up in Buffalo.
Harris said that offseason was supposed to be a big one for running backs, but it ended up being the complete opposite.
“Everybody was looking at my class that was coming up in free agency,” said Harris. “This is going to be the class that reshapes the market for the running back position. They’re going to get guys paid more. They’re going to get guys more guaranteed money, more extended deals, so on and so forth. And it just wasn’t happening. Because, obviously my phone wasn’t ringing. And so I was in touch with my agent like, ‘What’s going on?’ He’s like, ‘Bro, nobody’s phones are ringing because just the market is just not doing what everybody thought it was going to do.’ And it was the weirdest thing, for a lack of better words. I didn’t really describe it as that at the time. I thought it was a bunch of bulls***. But it was just the strangest thing because you got all these guys who were expected to do it.”
“So then basically, all these teams gave them a tryout year, and then eventually paid them anyways. But when you do that, then you only have a couple of guys who are getting paid. Versus in my class, it was supposed to start with the guys up here, and then it was supposed to trickle all the way down. And a lot of guys were supposed to benefit from that. But that’s the thing with the league, unfortunately. With running backs, it’s like, ‘Okay, you’ve been a great player for three or four years. Okay, prove it again. Because you just have to. One, we’re not going to pay you. We’re going to send you somewhere else, and they’re probably not going to pay you.’ So you just got to keep proving yourself year after year after year.”
“And then once you finally get to the level of proving yourself, then they’re like, ‘Oh, shit, well, you’re too old now, and now your career is going to start going like this.’ So you work so hard to prove yourself. And once you get to the mountaintop of like, ‘Okay, finally, I’m about to get what was owed to me.’ And then they look at you and they’re like, ‘You’ve been in the league for about five years now, six years now. You’ve already surpassed the average lifespan of a running back. So at any year now, it could be your last year, and you could be gone.’ So it’s such a weird dynamic, man.
Harris ultimately signed a one-year deal in Buffalo with the Bills, but he suffered an injury in 2023 that ended up being career-ending. “The decision [to retire] came because of the injury that I had last year, where I messed up my neck pretty good,” said Harris. “And ultimately, that just wasn’t something that I could come back from.”
Harris gave some insight into why he believes that running backs are undervalued, especially given how the market has shifted at that position.
He pointed to a player like the Giants’ Saquon Barkley, who does so many of the little things that go unnoticed yet make a big difference against opponents.
“Well, I think of a guy like Saquon Barkley, right? And so obviously, Saquon is an incredibly, incredibly talented guy, right? When he’s got the ball in his hands, he’s electric, right? But then you also got to think, Okay, well, how many times a defense is going to line up in an eight-man box because they don’t want Saquon to rush for 150 yards, and you got two receivers streaking down the field, you got a quarterback that can get them the ball?” said Harris. “I mean, that completely shapes a game plan.”
“That completely changes what a defense is going to throw at you. Or say you got the same Saquon who, obviously, like I said, electric with the ball in his hands, but who’s going to protect Daniel Jones, or in this case, Jalen Hurtz, so he can throw to A. J. Brown? There are so many things that running backs do that are transformative to the entire game of football. Don’t get me wrong, it’s 100% a quarterback-driven league. I get that. But at the same time, you have to have one, a run game to balance out your run-pass option. You got to have a running back that’s going to at least draw the attention of a defense.”
“You want a seven-man box, you want an eight-man box. Then what does that set up? That sets up your play-action because as soon as you fake to somebody like Saquon, all three of your linebackers are going to go shooting the gaps. Like, Oh, I got to go hit this, dude. I got to fill my gap. I got gap responsibility. I got to do this. Oh, snap. The quarterback still got the ball in his hands. So then what do they do? They just turn and run. And that’s what linebackers do. They just turn and run. They have no clue where they’re going. They just turn and run, trying to find a receiver to cover. And by that time, when you got guys like A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, just the plethora of options that Philly has that transform a complete game plan. As a defensive coordinator, okay, do we want to stop Saquon from running the ball? Do we want to sit back and let our coverage handle the deep part of the field and then let Saquon run for 150 yards? Or what are we going to do every time he play actions? What are we going to do whenever they run screens?”
“That’s what goes on through a defensive coordinator’s mind. A defensive coordinator is not going to sit and look at a receiver and be like, Okay, I have to design my entire game plan around this guy. If anything, he’s going to be like, We’re going to run one double 11, which is two guys cover A.J. Brown. And that’s it.”
“You know what I mean? It’s nothing. You designate two guys to him, try to eliminate them from the other half of the field, and that’s it. But you got such a dynamic player at running back who can not only run the ball, can catch out of the backfield, can block, can draw defenders in play action. You literally have to base your entire game plan around this guy. So whenever you think about it in terms like that, why are running backs so undervalued?”
Cowboys defender Micah Parsons had an interesting take on why players sit out voluntary practices. “Understanding the business side of it, too. (My body) is all I have to offer the Cowboys,” said Parsons via Mike Giardi of Boston Sports Journal. “Before you sign a contract, you go through a physical. This is your engine. This is where all of my equity lies. I have no equity outside of this to offer them. So you have to understand that availability is the best ability. If I’m not available when it really matters because I’m banged up, or my body is not healing properly, or I didn’t get all the rehab or treatment that I need to be successful, then that’s on me. It’s not on them. They’ll just find the next me.” He’s certainly not wrong in what’s a business and results-driven league. … Harris gave some insight into defensive players that the Patriots prioritized, with guys like Myles Garrett and Maxx Crosby among them. “A couple of times when we played the Browns and we had to face Myles Garrett. It was just like, ‘This is just going to be a problem and a half. This dude is going to be an absolute problem,’” said Harris. “And we would do that. Every week, whenever we would play teams, as soon as we would sit down in our first overview of the team, we were, I’m saying, Josh McDaniels, when I was in doing that, he would circle, ‘This guy is the guy we cannot let him wreck our game. We cannot let him wreck our game.’ Like I said, Myles Garrett sometimes. I would say, Maxx Crosby probably was the guy of guys because he has a supernatural motor. His skillset is off the charts. Don’t get me wrong. He’s got the same skillset as every elite pass rusher in recent memory. But, dude, his motor. I’ve never seen a guy with a motor like this guy. And that’s what we would say. You can block him with two or three guys. You literally cannot block him or you can’t stop blocking him until you’re going back to the huddle because he will find a way to get to the ball if you turn him loose for a split second.” … Mike Reiss had a good bit in his Sunday column on the leadership Maye is already showing. Veteran wideout K.J. Osborn pointed to a play last week that Maye asked him about later on as the two sat in the locker room, talking about a rep where the veteran could have changed his route. “His locker is two lockers down, and he said, ‘K.J., I wanted to tell you something,'” said Osborn. “He wasn’t even the quarterback [on the play but] he’s locked in, watching film, giving me a tip. That’s somebody you can see is studying the game.” … Good to see Matthew Slater get a standing ovation at last night’s Celtics game. Slater appeared on the jumbotron as the “Hero Among Us,” drawing some big cheers. The Celtics improved to 2-0 in the NBA Finals last night after a 105-98 win over the Dallas Mavericks at the TD Garden. … This is a big year for Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa, who Giardi pointed out is reportedly 15 pounds lighter heading into this season. He’s in the final year of his deal and is still without an extension. He told reporters last week, “The market is the market,” which essentially hints that while the Dolphins may not want to pay him like Jared Goff ($53 million per year), it sounds like he’s expecting to be somewhere in that vicinity. The Jets are expected to be more of a factor this season, and whether it’s the Bills, Jets, or Dolphins who take a step back, Tagovailoa needs to make sure it’s not his team that ends up being at the bottom of that group if he hopes to get paid that way.
From our archive - this week all-time:
April 5 - April 20 (Through 26yrs)
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