Patriots Must Capitalize On This Advantage They Have Over NFL
The New England Patriots didn’t lead the league in much in 2024 — at least not anything worth bragging about.
It’s a slightly different story as the NFL nears the offseason.
Clearly, this is a massive, make-or-break spring coming up for New England. The Patriots are coming off consecutive 4-13 seasons, the former leading to Bill Belichick’s dismissal, the latter costing Jerod Mayo his job after one season. New England seemingly made the right move to address that area of need by hiring Mike Vrabel to be its third head coach in as many years.
The work is just getting started, though. The roster is not good, and an infusion of talent is badly needed. As Pro Football Focus recently pointed out, though, no team is better situated to change that than the Patriots.
PFF last week put together its rankings of NFL teams by total assets. Essentially, they defined the largely arbitrary idea by two things: draft capital and salary cap space. For the draft capital, they used their own draft-value chart. For cap space, it was a little more complicated. PFF used effective cap space and restructure potential as defined or calculated by OverTheCap.com and then merged the two into one scale.
There was math involved, and they’re smart, so sparing you the details (go read the story for a detailed breakdown), the formula spit out what they defined as true cap space.
Long story short: The Patriots, by having the fourth-best draft capital (not surprising given they have the No. 4 pick) and the most true cap space in football, enter the offseason atop PFF’s offseason assets ranking.
Here’s a quick rundown of the top teams:
1. New England
2. Las Vegas
3. Chicago
4. Tennessee
5. New York Jets
The common theme from all those teams? They all stink. That’s no real surprise. Bad teams get high draft picks, and that impacts the draft capital. Bad teams are also typically the ones with the least amount of money tied up with players (because good players usually cost money), and so there’s cap space to play with.
Looking at that list, one could also give the Patriots another advantage: They seemingly have their franchise quarterback in Drake Maye. The same could be said for the Bears with Caleb Williams. As such, it’s not exactly a coincidence the top two coaching candidates in this year’s cycle — Vrabel and Ben Johnson — landed in New England and Chicago, respectively.
Just because you have assets, though, doesn’t mean you’ll be successful. As it pertains to the Patriots, there are two major issues: New England has rarely been willing to go nuts with their spending, and they have whiffed more than Wily Mo Pena when it comes to the draft recently — largely without the rare no-doubter.
While there’s no guarantee the Patriots turn use this hollow distinction and become a legitimate contender again next season, it does speak to just how important this time in their franchise’s history is. If New England is going to get back on track, it must seize the moment in this very clear, specific period.