2015 Patriots Offseason Thread

Isnt this the last guaranteed year of his contract though? He might be willing to for an extension.

Mayo I don't think makes sense to cut due to his huge dead money penalty. Hopefully we can restructure/resign him. It could be tough to resign Gostkowski.

Browner I think actually is a great deal for a CB2. I think Arrington is the one thats not as good of a deal.

I pay little attention to the draft so take this with a grain of salt... But I really like TJ Yeldon from Alabama. He is physical enough to run between the tackles and nifty/athletic enough to do some of the short passing game.

Why not? Seemed pretty clear to me it was one of the 3 possible outcomes.

Eh, apparently Gostkowski's cap hit in 2014 was high enough that his tag is now 120% or $4.5m. Makes it all the more surprising to me that they couldn't work out a longer term deal instead.

A few random things:

- Vince is one dimensional but even that is super valuable to this team. He's not easily replaced and this team would have been hashed versus the run without him even with Siliga and Branch, etc. They did they best stopping the run by having all those guys on the line together. He's too valuable to this team to cut.

- I can't see Browner even being a consideration to be cut. His salary isn't that great and he's a great match ups guy. Moving him into Mathews in the Super Bowl may have been the key to winning. His penalties are only a minor concern. They play a way bigger role in the regular season and penalties have little correlation to wins or losses. Seattle has been one of the most penalized teams in the NFL each of the last couple years, the Patriots were this year and Denver has been as well. So not to say penalties help you win but the style of play that draws regular season flags does. They call less of that stuff in the playoffs.

- Arrington is one of my least favorite players but he had his moments and the savings isnt enough to cut him. But there is enough depth there that if it's necessary to keep Revis and McCourty then it's fine.

- Amendola is another that may be over paid but he's not worth cutting because you'd have to pay more than what you save to replace him for less production.

- I'm not surprised Goskowski got the tag but I'm disappointed is wasn't McCourty. I don't buy the Revis situation having anything to do with it.


- revis needs to be resigned. No excuses not to; it has to happen and I'm guessing it will but I'll be nervous everyday until it does because he's that important. You don't let a guy like him leave. Him, Brady and Gronk are the three guys that if any of them aren't there the team goes from favorite to an after thought.

Everyone will be calling both of them

How do you read his note and not think he's willing to return? It's going to matter about the money but do we think Vince is getting more than 3m on the open market? If he does, I be its a crappy team who needs to spend money like Oakland or Jacksonville.

I don't think they have officially released Wilfork yet, but they've just informed him his option won't be picked up. I think he won't officially be released until the start of the league year on Tuesday.

I wouldn't be surprised to see him back with the Patriots. He doesn't strike me as the guy who would take a little extra money to play for a non-contender. He is the kind of veteran piece that contenders like to talk themselves into overpaying a little, so he's probably gone, but if no playoff-caliber team is willing to offer a meaningfully better contract, I think he would be back.

Pats were linked to Brian Hartline before he agreed with the Browns and are now being linked to Andre Johnson. It seems like they'd like to add a receiver. I'm guessing they would cut Amendola if they landed one.

If they designated Amendola a post-June-1 cut, they'd save $4.5m in 2015 cap space, which is quite a bit and almost certainly more than he's worth to them (it would push $2.4m in dead cap space to 2016, however). I think they'd ideally like him to restructure his contract and convert a good chunk of his base salary to NLBTE incentives (or just to reduce it), but if he doesn't agree to that, I think he gets cut.

They're also letting Browner test the market, and have almost certainly asked him to restructure as well (either by converting base salary to NLTBE incentives or by reducing his base salary and giving some of it to him as a signing bonus to compensate). His cap hit is $4.8m (no dead money), which is a little more than I honestly think he's worth. If they need the extra cap space to re-sign Revis (which they do-- there just aren't that many other places to carve out cap space (their other options require extensions/restructurings with existing players, whose agents don't have to play ball), and they're only $9.5m under the cap at the moment), I wouldn't hesitate to cut Browner. I just don't think he's that good, and while his size and physicality is useful in certain matchups, he's really lost a step and the penalties are a big issue. They also have good depth with Ryan, Butler, and Dennard.

Correlation is not causation-- they won in spite of his penalties, not because of them. Remember, he gets to play that physical style because he has McCourty shading to his side and he doesn't have to worry as much about the deep ball, and for what he adds versus larger receivers, he subtracts versus the smaller, shiftier ones. $5m a year is a good bit of money for a corner entering his 30s who is mostly a matchup piece-- is his role that much more valuable than Kyle Arrington's, for instance? Like I said, he's not overpaid by much, and the only reason I think it's a consideration is because there aren't a lot of other ways to open up cap space, but I won't be too upset if they cut him. We'll see what happens.