We end up trading all our players that we build through the draft anyway...Even our good draft picks are all gone.Leonhard Williams looks good now that hes gone,Robby is having a carrer year,Jamal Adams is still a top player.And thats just a few players..We seem to have this trend of not giving our own guys big contracts lately.Douglas is looking for guys who can play cheap through the draft then trade them before he has to pay them.If he misses on this draft he will be gone by the end of 2022.
Thanks for this. I wouldn't have wanted JD to go to these extremes by any means, but this shows how a team can be re-made overnight. 21 FAs, and he probably is not done. When coupled with the draft, over half the Patriots' roster will be turned over, and if they get the QB they want in the draft and he pans out, they could be right back in the thick of things within a couple of years. This is how to do a fast rebuild. With the expected huge cap increase next year and in 2023 due to the new TV deal, they should not have any cap issues. Still, as I said, I wouldn't have wanted JD to sign 21 players, but would have liked to see Jonnu Smith signed with a similarly creative contract with a somewhat similar cap breakdown, with perhaps 3 million more this year and $1 million less over the next 3 years. JD could have done that and maybe signed Kyle Fuller or William Jackson, and still handed out the other contracts he has, and then add K'waun Williams or Poole.
I don’t want to trot Sam out there again so I guess we are taking Wilson/Fields at 2. Hopefully we get a 2nd back for sam to add to our draft class. If we take a QB at 2 I’m signing CJ Beathard to play and the kid can sit and get up to speed for a year.
So they went hard after five players and signed two. That's a .400 batting average and would put JD in the Hall of Fame. I wish that there had been 1-2 more players that they had gone hard after like Jonnu Smith and Keanu Neal.
Those are the only two that really had any staying power though, along with Jumbo Elliott. It's encouraging that this rebuild looks very similar to that one though. Trade a malcontent for a bevy of picks afterwards, selectively sign some free agents and we badly need a 2000 draft and we should be in pretty good shape.
Agreed. So the problem was not that Mac made trades and signed players in FA. The problem was partially that some of the players he signed were bad choices due to age and contracts, but mostly it was because he sucked in the draft and had no clue what he was doing. If he had been able to draft well, the team would have never fallen down the rabbit hole.
Yes. If we draft a LB at #23, Collins is the one I want. I've liked him for quite a while. He possibly even could make the switch to DE.
Only if you have a team ready for the QB to succeed. Also, it depends of the QB and the positional player.
See, this is where I think many posters have it wrong. IMO it isn't and either/or, black/white situation. A few of those players were not good signings, but overall, if Mac had a clue what he was doing in the draft and had drafted well in those years, the Jets would have been fine. As those older, expensive players faded or left, there would have been replacements ready to take their place. FA is a valuable tool that can be used responsibly to build a team. To say otherwise, is pure folly.
Connor Hughes said that JD said that he thought that there were very few Tier 1 players last year in FA who were worth the money. He supposedly said that it was mostly Tier 2 and Tier 3 players who would want/command Tier 1 $s. I don't know whether it's true or not, but makes sense. Supposedly, JD was going to try to sign Thuney last year until the Pats tagged him. I do believe that he saw that last year was not going to go well regardless of whom he signed, and he didn't believe in potentially wasting cap space and $s when he wasn't even sure if they would have a season due to Covid. I think that was a wise decision to wait until this year. It gave him more money to spend this year in a bigger and better FA with less competition for players. If he had spent a big chunk of that money last year, we probably wouldn't have Lawson or Davis now. He was trained by Ozzie Newsome, who built through the draft not FA. For better or worse, we're stuck with him for now. I agree more with you than I do his approach. I think he needs to realize that the era and timing are different than when Ozzie became the GM. Owners and fanbases were more patient then. Now, not so much. I think he could have been creative like Belichick was with some of the contracts, and been able to sign more players, and spend more this year, but I wouldn't have wanted to go as far as Belichick and sign 21 or more players and overpay some of them like he did.
I disagree regarding Cole and Lawson. Cole will be one of the best #4 WRs in the league. Crowder, Davis and Mims will be a very good WR corps. Lawson got a ton of pressures and hits. The Bengals' scheme in general produced very few sacks. I think you will see Lawson's sack numbers increase significantly this year. JD tried to sign Williams Jackson. He made several big contract offers, but Jackson opted to sign elsewhere. There are still opportunities to sign CBs. I think JD is now waiting for K'waun Williams price to come down and probably Richard Sherman's price to come down as well. If he misses out on Williams, he'll re-sign Poole. If there's an OG left who is better than Feeney, Lewis and VanRoten, then I believe JD will make them an offer as well, when his price comes down, but there may not be one who's better at this point. There wasn't much to be had in FA, and Gabe Jackson never hit the market.
In reference to the bold, don't no much about Trai Turner, but noticed he has been suggested by a few analysts as a candidate for the Jets. If he nails K'waun, JD can go into the draft with a ton of options to fortify the offensive side of the ball.
I think the system of rebuilding isn't the problem. I think our concern is the offense we are building is antiquated and we wont have nearly the talent for it to succeed like it did in SF. When the 49ers went to the SB it wasn't their offense that got them there.
Yeah, I don't know much about Turner either. I believe that I remember reading that he had been great up until the 2020 season, and he had a bad year, but several posters here have said that was due to an injury he suffered and was playing thru. If they're correct, then I think JD needs to be all over him, overpaying if necessary for a year or two. Even if JD signs K'waun, we still need a #1 CB, and a poster in another thread said that they heard/thought that Saleh strongly wants a WLB. If he is correct, then Zaven Collins could be a great pick at #23. He might be there at #34, but probably not. So, JD may not be able to focus on offense as much as I'd like. A RT I'd love to add is Teven Jenkins, but we'd have to take him at #23, and he may not even make it that far. We could probably still get a very good RT at either #34 or #66.
