Find out about the opt-outs
Steps Pats must take in rebuilding process
Welcome to the Patriots’ road to rebuilding!
This week, we’ll unveil five steps the Pats can take to return to contention. We kick off with an off-field fix that will affect the team’s cap space this offseason and how it chooses to reshape the roster. All salary cap figures are courtesy of Over the Cap.
Before COVID-19 interrupted the Patriots’ season, it ate away at their roster.
The Pats lost a leaguehigh eight players to optouts last summer, including four starters at vital positions. All eight of the players’ contracts tolled, meaning they were frozen and pushed ahead a year. Dont’a Hightower’s deal, for example, was set to expire last season, but will now restart and run through 2021.
The eight Patriots who opted out were Hightower, safety Patrick Chung, offensive tackle Marcus Cannon, tight end Matt LaCosse, running back Brandon Bolden, fullback
Dan Vitale, wide receiver Marqise Lee and offensive guard Najee Toran. Together, they represent the Pats’ first step of their offseason: determine who’s returning, how much they value each player and whether it’s worth paying those respective amounts.
It’s likely any player motivated enough to optout of the 2020 season, particularly for health reasons, would want to wait until mid-March before determining whether he will will play in 2021 or retire. But if the Patriots can get eight answers before March 15, the start of free agency’s negotiating period, they’ll know ahead of time whether they’ll inherit even more cap space as they begin to rebuild. Whereas last summer, they were blindsided by the opt-outs, received over $30 million in cap room and had no one to spend it on.
When an NFL player retires, a team, generally, is only on the hook for prorated bonuses — not any base salary or future bonus money. Those prorated bonus hits would then accelerate onto that year’s cap, just as if the player was released. For seven of the eight Patriots, their retirement would instantly create more cap room for the team in 2021.
Here’s how much the Pats would roughly save with each player, should he retire or be released (excluding Bolden, who has already declared he will return):
LB Dont’a Hightower ($9.45 million)
OT Marcus Cannon ($7.06 million)
TE Matt LaCosse ($1.3 million)
FB Dan Vitale ($1.19 million)
OL Najee Toran ($780,000)
WR Marqise Lee ($687,500)
S Patrick Chung (-$983,334)
Of these players, Cannon, 33, seems to be the most likely candidate for retirement or the final outcome: a pay cut disguised as a restructure.
The Pats could approach Cannon about taking less money and posture, claiming that David Andrews or Joe Thuney will re-sign and then they’ll already have five viable starters and a swing tackle (Justin Herron) under contract. Plus, Cannon might want to cash in once more, with a $4.7 million base salary and $1.5 million in per-game roster bonuses in 2021. Not to mention, he can be released in a year’s time with no dead-money consequences.
Hightower could face the same pressure, given his $12.45 million cap hit is scheduled to be the secondhighest on the team behind only Stephon Gilmore. Though surely both he and the team realizes his return would stabilize a defense that suffered from poor linebacker play. Hightower is also only 31 and would presumably be as fresh as any other time in his career — if he wants to play.
Regardless of how the Patriots approach either play, they can better begin planning for their longterm future if they know what their present looks like, starting with these eight players.
Are they in or are they out?