Patriots 2023 Offseason Thread

feels like the Klemm and Jefferson interviews are Rooney Rule and he just wanted to give some former players insight into the process for their coaching futures

If they pick Caley I’m just gonna be a piss baby that they didn’t do it last year

I’d move Patricia into the Ernie Adams role. Jack of all trades type. Perhaps the insight gained this past season would help him fill a role like that

Def agree . The part I like he got on coach’s neck about not having a good plan when Josh left.

I don't even understand calling Jamie Collins one dimensional. At his peak he was great in coverage, great rushing the passer and decent versus the run. That's one of the more versatile LB in the NFL. At his peak if he was great versus run, he might have been the best LB in football.

With Duggar you do worry about his coverage snaps. Bad first year, big improvement second year and rather bad this year. I'd give him another year before I'd call him one dimensional though. Hopping it was just him adjusting to covering the tough assignments. 

Collins was traded for free lancing on D versus doing what coaches wanted. Him leaving, getting paid and playing on crappy teams likely helped make his next time here better. You never heard about him free lancing again and he was darn good.

Yeah you don't even have to breakdown film to see Dugger had issues in Coverage last year. It was obvious just watching the games and some of it was rather bad. I love the guy, yet if he doesn't improve in coverage he's likely not worth the huge contract he'll get in free agency. He's also an older prospect, so next year is huge for his Patriots future.

www.pff.com/news/draft-ranking-top-2023-nfl-draft-prospects-every-position

Some of the better early information.

I want WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba he has chance to be special player. He supposed to go top 10 but sat out all year with hamstring injury scouts didn't like that he was thinking about his future and health.

I don’t mind him staying in the org in another role, he just can’t be OC

I would be very disappointed if they take OL two years in a row knowing this is deepest class of OL free agent in many years and I don't want waste a draft pick filling that need because it's safe pick knowing it might not be that safe when you draft Cole Strange who is undersized.

If you don't like JSN then move up and take Quentin Johnston the Patriots do have the draft capital to move up because you're not going fill WR hole with free agency and what they really need to do sign Jakobi Meyers and draft dynamic WR too because if you don't all we will be hearing on website how bad Mac is. Ron Borges said it best it's not about the x's and o's it's about the Jim and Joe's.

You might think we don't have the cap space to do this, but when your cash spending is not same as your cap space you can move money around and do all this and not be in cap jail in the future, name one team that had to trade their draft picks because they're in cap jail nobody except 2010 Cowboys almost did in uncapped year then following year NFL reinserted cap.

When I said Kraft is one of the cheapest owners in football 2 months before BB blow the whistle on Kraft or Flanagan wrote his article that came out saying Patriots 31 out of 32 in spending cash last 7 years and it has been longer than that. www.spotrac.com/nfl/cash/ overthecap.com/cash-spending

If this comes out all over the place like last time I won't use spaces again.

www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/2023/

I'm not sure you fully understand how football and the salary cap works, those numbers your looking at are crap, look at the team's negative. So many teams have to dump so many players. Yet look at where the Patriots rank in cap space, that number isn't completely correct.  Yet they have the ability to spend more than most teams, there's a correlation. Last year was low because they went crazy in 2021 spending more than any Patriots team every. You can't do that every year, look at the Bucs the bill comes do and limits you. Yet like a few of us have said they have the ability to spend this year, it's not like last year. Cap goings crazy the next few years means you can spend big and not be like 2022 with very little money the next year. That being said I wouldn't go as crazy as they did in 2021, as you have a ton of free agents coming due for big raises in 2024.

What free agent lists are you looking at? NFL.com has one LT among it top 51 free agents, the other two good ones signed extensions. There are a few below that, yet it's a rather poor free agent class at LT. I'd fully agree with you if it was actually a deep LT class in free agency. Yet it's only Orlando Brown, that's going to drive his price up crazy high and Mac Jones needs a darn good LT. He couldn't take advantage of the weapons he had this year with the crappy OL.

This WR class has been compared to the Harry class, where it's not great in the first round, yet very deep in the 2nd to 3rd rounds. Now it's early, so maybe that changes slightly. WR usually get over drafted, yet I'm seeing a good chance at getting a legit franchise LT at 14. With the WR being a lot worse than last year, Johnston many people #1 WR would likely have been late first round last year. One year of production, more athlete than polished WR. I'll watch tape in the coming months, yet right now I'm not going to trade up for him just to take a WR. You don't want the next Harry do you? Now trading up from the 14th pick in 2nd round might make sense. Heck depending what happens maybe trading back up into the lower end of the first round could make a ton of sense, getting that 5th year contract for a WR. It's still very early in the process, these rankings will change a ton in the coming months.

Now I fully agree in that I hated the value of taking an OG in round one. It's bad value and the fact Strange wasn't even that good makes it worse. Yet LT is very good value in the first if the right guy is there. Ask yourself do you really want to chase bad value for a 2nd year in a row trying to fill a need? Yeah it's not sexy, yet if Mac Jones doesn't have time to throw and a good running game, it won't matter what weapons he has.

You want a compromise, what about Mayer? Compared by some to Jason Witten. He adds a weapon and is a great inline blocking TE. Can help passing game, pass blocking and run blocking. Not likely, yet he's one of the safest picks in the draft. He's currently my sleeper pick.

I love Meyers, have since they signed him as an undrafted free agent. Yet he's the #1 WR in free agency and its a horrible free agent class. Should you pay him big money, while saying you should also trade up to take a guy in the first? That's the problem with Meyers, even if you pay him, he's not close to a #1 WR. We'll see what he gets, yet I'm expecting one of the bigger overpays in free agency. In a lot of ways Bill messed up the cycles and has put us in a very bad spot. Like sign Karras and trade up for a WR last year. Start drafting more WRs, he spends more draft capital on RBs than WRs. That's crazy in today's NFL.

Great, great news. Step 1 in the right direction.

A couple things:

- What do you mean by upstairs? Patricia is best suited as a coach. I don’t care what you call him but make sure he’s coaching. He’s a good coach, maybe just not suited to be a head coach. That’s a different skill set. This team has lost so much coaching brainpower at the base levels and we saw that with sloppy play… think guys like Scar and Fears who were so perfect at the fine details.

- there was no reason for Klemm to be a Rooney rule box check as they had 2 other minority interviews as well. Idk if it’s possible to hire him away as anything but a coordinator based on his current contract but I’d be all for him being hired as an OL coach.