Patriots brought home bacon in free agency, but this isn't a time for any victory laps

New York Times

13-03-2025

The New England Patriots have scheduled a news conference for Thursday at 1 p.m. to discuss the organization's decision to rip open the cash drawer in pursuit of free-agent talent. If Patriots owner Robert Kraft and incoming head coach Mike Vrabel take part in the session — and even if they don't — here's some unsolicited advice for those swashbuckling, daredevil spenders:
• Do not say anything that even suggests a victory lap.
• Do not, under any circumstances, talk about 'getting back to the Super Bowl,' though the temptation is always great, what with all the banners, trophies and celebratory photos that are festooned throughout Gillette Stadium.
GO DEEPER
At long last, the Patriots made some big-time moves to kick off free agency
Now make no mistake, the Patriots have done a good job shopping for the groceries (© Bill Parcells 1997) this week. Not only were the Patriots big spenders right out of the legal tampering gate, but also they spent more than any other team. It marked the first time the Pats have been No. 1 in anything since Feb 3, 2019, when Tom Brady took a knee to close out their 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII.
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Yes, the Pats have gone big on defense this week. Coincidence or not, Vrabel made his bones playing defense (when he wasn't moonlighting as an occasional touchdown target for Brady, which was always tremendously entertaining), and the Patriots bulked up in that department. The Pats have already paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $280 million in free agency, most of it going to defensive tackle Milton Williams, inside linebacker Robert Spillane, cornerback Carlton Davis and outside linebacker Harold Landry.
.@brockvereen is a fan of the @Patriots Free Agency moves so far🫡 pic.twitter.com/cPNpWtmUTn
— Good Morning Football (@gmfb) March 11, 2025
Some big questions: What about getting some help for second-year quarterback Drake Maye? What about left tackle? What about a big-time, just-throw-me-the-damn-ball type of wide receiver whose athleticism and route-running know-how will have shirts flying off the shelves at the Patriots ProShop? You could walk front to back at any sports bar within 100 miles of Boston and hear a nonstop whirl of those questions. And that's fair. It's also pretty early in this process. We'll get to that when the Patriots get to that.
For now, let's get back to the Kraft family, and to Vrabel, and to every employee in football ops, from executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf on down. It's too early to even entertain the idea of the Patriots being back in the Super Bowl business, because that's wildly optimistic. What matters is that what the Patriots have done since the end of the 2024 season — the painful decision to part with coach Jerod Mayo after just one year, recruiting Vrabel to come back to Foxboro, and, now, an aggressive pursuit of talent — indicates they are back in the football business.
NE Patriots so far in free agency… pic.twitter.com/uPP3s93VtD
— Jason McCourty (@JasonMcCourty) March 10, 2025
That's what's been missing.
The Patriots won a TOTAL of eight games over the past two years. They haven't made the playoffs since 2021 or won a playoff game since Brady took that knee at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. They will enter the 2025 season with their third head coach in three years. Mixed in there are all kinds of calamities and mistakes, including draft picks who couldn't play, the Matt Patricia-Joe Judge running-the-offense experiment, the mixed messaging on when Maye would take over at quarterback, and on and on. It wasn't just the losing that resulted in all those empty seats as the 2024 season was staggering to the finish line; it was the hopelessness.
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In the old days, when Bill Belichick was on his game and Brady was on the field, the unveiling of the Gillette Stadium Lighthouse, with its 360-degree observation deck and a former Patriots hero standing up there to wave hello to the masses before each kickoff, would have been treated with applause. Instead, it became a punch line.
There appears now to be hope. There appears to be a plan. But all plans, all good plans, come in phases. If Phase 1 was reimagining the coaching staff, Phase 2 is being played out in these early stages of free agency. Next will come the draft, not just the much-discussed No. 4 pick but that chancy lower-round pick that might pay off bigly and quickly.
The Pats landed Matthew Slater in the fifth round in 2008. James White was selected in the fourth round in 2014. Julian Edelman, a quarterback out of Kent State, was a magnificent seventh-round gamble in 2009. OK, there's also Brady in the sixth round in 2000 (199th overall, just before the New Orleans Saints scooped up wide receiver Sherrod Gideon), but what New England did was a miracle on a par with the '69 Mets. (Props to the late Dick Rehbein, who championed the Brady cause.)
Victory laps? Not yet. But to repurpose an old line from the playbook of Ronald Reagan, the former lineman from Eureka College who then played George Gipp in the movies en route to calling plays at the White House, are Patriots fans better off than they were a year ago?
That's a yes. That's a start.
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