The last two years are fake years. They are really added for the sole purpose of making the Pats look back for not picking up a contract that was only $14 million a year. The real contract is three years, $48 million, with $39 million guaranteed. Normally, you’d add fake years to spread the signing bonus over more years, but the Jets didn’t even pay a signing bonus. Just guaranteed salary, so they take the full cap hit up front.
This was all about the Jets wanting to steal Revis from the Pats and being willing to pay any price to do it. It sounds like Belichick had it figured out pretty early on and “politely declined” to participate in a bidding war.
Those JETS, they love winning the off-season championship!
Of all the Jets needs I would not rank a CB at a high cap number as #1, not when Ryan Fitzpatrick or Geno Smith is QB. I’m thinking the Jets are now a solid 4th in the AFC East, maybe not even close to Buffalo or Miami. Nice for me because with Rex gone I can root against the Jets again. I had to respect Rex Ryan’s coaching and how he got that team to play so well and hard against the Patriots (not against other teams but against NE). They need a new owner.
My thinking about free agency is:
I'm amazed at how much time people spend talking about this. On the radio. In the papers. On the net.
Amazing because most of these signings turn out to be bad system fits, guy is losing skill, low motivation after a free agent year, etc.
Has it ever worked when a team has loaded up to "go for it"? People throw out 2007 when NE brought in Moss and Welker but no one, including NE, knew that Randy Moss would play well after what happened in Oakland and no one knew much of anything about Welker or how well he'd work with Brady. Last year, it was Denver. In fact, my reaction when Seattle got Graham was that means they won't be in the Super Bowl because loading up never works. (And my favorite is when everyone picked the Red Sox to win over 100 games and they fell apart.)
I see Julius Thomas signed with Jacksonville for apparently $21M fully guaranteed for 2 seasons (and then some more he might not get). I think he's a dog of a player.
^ The Revis signing wasn’t about filling a football need, it was a p.r. move - it appeases the fans, shows the new guys are doing something, and sticks it to the Patriots all at the same time.
Seattle getting Graham wasn’t a free agency move, that was a trade. I think it’s a pretty good one - they gave up a center and the #31 pick for one of the top two tight ends. It fills a big hole for them.
I agree about Julius Thomas. Peyton made him, he will not do well with a crappy qb.Jeremy Machlin getting 5 yrs/$55 mil/$22.5 mil guaranteed from the Chiefs also had me shaking my head.
Well, Murray is seemingly wrapped up as a Christmas present to the Eagles. The cost is way over Dallas’ appetite at 42 MM for 5 years and 21 MM guaranteed. The Eagles surely upgraded their RB potential. If they get the old Sam back, they will be much better than last year. But then Chip is nuts.
Cornerback was important for the Jets because Bowles, the new head coach, uses a lot of blitzes and you need corners who can do press man coverage, and Dee Milner was a typical Idzik draft pick, a waste of time. The reality is that at QB, there was nothing good out there in free agency, or in trade, Fitzpatrick is a more steady QB than Geno Smith, he has worked with Gaily and thus might give them a stellar offense, but it might give them enough to be competitive for this year. And yes, after Idzik with his idiotic ideas about cap room (and then having 0 personnel skills), Revis is in part a PR move to try and please the fans after the disaster the last two years were, it gives a bit of hope that the Jets aren’t the NY Mets, trying to go cheap with personnel and convince everyone they have “a plan” (Idzik’s final score? two drafts, 19 picks, only 1 impact player, Richardson…the rest either have flamed out, or so far have done little to nothing). Last I heard, Revis is trying to get Cromarte to come back, would be an interesting tandem.
And the Pats lose Browner to the Saints. Ugh. I remember last year when the Pats signed Revis and Browner and I was thrilled, as it addressed their Achilles heel over the last several years - the secondary. So now they’ve lost Revis and Browner and I’m . . . well whatever the opposite of thrilled is. I recognize that the Pats’ approach to all this is what’s kept them a winning team every year for the last decade and a half, so I’m not going into panic mode. But it would be self-delusional to pretend this isn’t going to hurt them. They’ll still be a good team, but the chances of their repeating as champs has to be less at this point. Glad they won it this year!
Oh, yee of little faith! The Pats had to promote Malcolm Butler after the SuperBowl. In the 4th quarter, he made four big time defensive plays, one on one, with no help, including the game winning interception which was as good a defensive play as I’ve ever seen.
With Revis gone, Browner’s skill set wasn’t that useful to the Pats as they will no longer be able to rotate a safety over the top to protect him.
The good news is that the Pats are no longer tight against the salary cap, but have some flexibility to make some moves, including trying to do extensions for some of their good young players.
I just finished listening to a 20 minute conference call with Jimmy Graham and I am sold. We are conditioned not to like him because he’s the enemy but I was really, really impressed with him.
I don’t believe the talk about Browner not being needed without Revis. I think the Pats decided they didn’t want him. There’s so much pontificating and speculation here about what’s going on and there’s absolutely no information. It’s humorous when they have on a guy who covers the team daily and he has nothing to say that’s not his uninformed opinion. That said, I think the gist is this:
They won the Super Bowl. That requires a ton of luck. Odds of that happening again the next year are really low. Making the Super Bowl two years in a row requires flukey luck - as Seattle had against Green Bay.
They made the Super Bowl in 2011 (2012) with the worst passing defense in the league and lost on one play.
So Belichick knows he can coach, knows that luck matters, knows that the rest of his team is in good shape and he's not going to change his ways of doing things for a single player. (Note they eat $5M for Revis this year, which they count against their CB group.) Everything Belichick does is "for the benefit of the team" as he defines it. And that means you can't risk too much to get there this year versus next. The Revis deal was not different: they underpaid him for the one year versus what he has and will make every other year.
The Pats definitely didn’t want Browner or they would have kept him. His contract was pretty favorable to the Pats. The problem is that he is really a one-trick pony. If you want a big cornerback to jam a receiver at the line of scrimmage, he’s your guy. But, he’s not very good at any other type of coverage.
I’ve been convinced for a couple of years that Belichick is trying to reinvent his defense to match up against the all-pass-all-the-time NFL. It’s a major shift from the big physical front 7’s he’s favored going as far back as the Giants SuperBowl teams. We are seeing smaller faster more athletic players on the Pats defense. And a base defense of 2 linemen, 2 linebackers, 2 edge rushers, and 5 DBs.
@interesteddad, don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of faith. I’ve been a Pats fan year in and year out since they came into existence. The team has been blessed for the last decade and a half with the greatest coach and the greatest quarterback of all time. I understand why they do what they do, from Lawyer MIlloy and Ty Law, to Wes Welker and Logan Mankins, and now to Darelle Revis and Brandon Browner. The Jets gave Revis stupid money and the Pats aren’t going to be stupid. There’s a reason the Jets are the Jets and the Pats are the Pats. And having lost Revis, I actually don’t mind losing Browner. In combination with Revis, Browner was a real asset. I think less so on his own.
I have no idea whether undrafted free agent Malcom Butler is for real, but we’re going to find out. Whatever he has, I trust Belichick to get the most out of him. And the most out of every other player on the team. I like that they got McCourty back on a decent contract. And restructured Amendola, who seems like he’s finally clicking with Brady. From what I’ve read, I like the Sheard signing. I have no idea who this Chewbacca guy is, but I’m ready to believe in him too. If Mayo can stay healthy, and if Easley is what they think he is, and if they’ve got a fully healthy Gronk for the whole season, and if Collins and Hightower can continue to develop, and if they can add a couple more key pieces with the salary cap room they now have, maybe even bring Vince back at a lower salary, as I’ve seen rumored. . . .
They will have a good team. They should win the East again, which would be 13 out of 14 in the Belichick-Brady era (not counting the Matt Cassel year). How crazy is that? And they’ll make the playoffs, maybe even with a bye again. And once they’re in the playoffs, with Belichick and Brady, anything can happen. I’ll be rooting for them to get back to the SB and repeat as champs. But I can’t pretend it won’t be tougher without the secondary they had this year. Seeing Kyle Arrington on the field is like fingernails on a blackboard to me! I was hoping that Butler would displace Arrington, not have to replace Revis or Browner. But it’s all good. I’m ready for the 2015 season!
They do ok in terms of points allowed, generally being around 10th or so. But they do horribly in terms of yards allowed, usually near the bottom of the league.
While “bend don’t break” is a fine philosophy during the regular season, it breaks down in the playoffs when you are one-and-done. The inability of the defense to come up with a big play when needed cost them two super bowl wins (2007, 2011) and prevented them from reaching another super bowl (2006).
This year they had the ability to make a big play and they came up with a big play. If this was the 2013 Patriots’ defense, I don’t think they win the super bowl.
I heard Belichick say that only the Jets this season ran more plays with 3 LBs/4 DBs than 2 LBs/5 DBs.
I suppose if I wonder about a trend it’s whether the QB position is actually changing or if people just keep falling in love with the idea of the running QB. The potential driver to me is the rule changes about hitting QBs: if those hadn’t changed, Russell Wilson would be on IR and there would be the old discussion about how running QBs can’t last. So I can see how the rules change can make a trend. If running QBs becomes a real trend, then we see more college style passing games that work off the option threat.
I keep hearing that the running quarterback is the thing of the future, but keep in mind that when a QB runs, unless they give themselves up, the rules don’t apply. Just take a look at what has happened to several of the running QB’s, RGIII has been all but put out of commission, Tim Tebow, who was supposed to harken a new era, ended up with broken ribs from the NE defense and never did much, Kapernick was supposed to be this phenom who stumbled. Russell Wilson is a good quarterback, but if you look at his gameplay, he isn’t a traditional running QB, while they do some read option and pistol offenses, a lot of this playing is in using his feet to try and make a play, which is a big difference (for the record, I hate college offenses, the triple option read and so forth, I find it simply a way to make mediocre qb’s look good). Among other things, pro defenses know well how to stop running quarterbacks, things like the read option and pistol only work when the defenses haven’t seen them before. Think of the wildcat, which was supposed to revolutionize the game, ti didn’t, within a couple of years, other than Rex Ryan, no one uses it cause defenses can defend against it. In the end, things get adopted, but I doubt the NFL is going to look like the college game anytime soon, defenses achieve parity with new strategies, as offenses do when defenses came up with the blitz, zone defenses and the cover 2 and 46 defenses, they work great when new, then teams adjust, and the game tend s to come back to where it was.
As a baseball player, Wilson knows how to slide. Of course Kaepernick was also a baseball player but his head is too big to give himself up. Wilson also talks about how he learned to accelerate out of bounds so as not to take the legal hit on the sideline.
Speaking of NFL offenses, Belichick signed a tight end today. Bigger than Gronk. 6’7" tall, 270 lbs. Has averaged 45 catches a year for the last four years with the lousy Bills QBs throwing to him. Yikes. A two TE package with this guy and Gronk on the field at the same time. That is a severe matchup problem for NFL defenses.
It seems like an open and shut case, if you read the actual rule there is not much room for debate at all:
Woody said "Darrelle is a great player, and if I thought I could have gotten Darrelle for [what the Patriots paid], I probably would’ve taken him. And it was our best judgment to do what we did. Darrelle is a great player. I’d love for Darrelle to come back.”
Boom!
The only question should be the penalty. It won’t be severe. For example, in 2011 a tampering case against the Lions cost them a seventh round pick and they swapped their 5th round pick with the wronged team, the Chiefs. In 2008 the 49ers lost a 5th round pick and had to swap 3rd round picks.
Not the first time Woody put his foot in his mouth. From 2014: