WHY THE PATS’ REAL WORK WILL CONTINUE
Fast-forward to draft night.
The Patriots are on the clock at No. 3 overall.
Caleb Williams is a brand new Chicago Bear, and North Carolina’s Drake Maye or LSU’s Jayden Daniels just pulled a Commanders cap over his head. After months of speculation, the Patriots make their pick, the same pick we all expected: a quarterback. It’s the leftover, between Maye and Daniels.
Huzzah. Celebrations ring out across New England. A new face of the franchise has arrived.
So, now what?
Well, a new clock starts.
The contract clock; a four-year period for the Patriots to build around their new rookie quarterback and his predetermined four-year deal worth $35.8 million with a fifth-year option. That contract will afford the Pats immense financial flexibility before they must either commit to him long-term with a massive extension or pivot and pay a new quarterback; the type of flexibility just helped the 49ers, Eagles, Bengals and Chiefs, among others, reach the Super Bowl.
The Texans feel this privileged pressure already, with second-year quarterback C.J. Stroud already on the precipice of stardom. Earlier this week, they traded for disgruntled Bills star receiver Stefon Diggs and restructured his contract into a one-year, $22.52 million deal. The Diggs trade punctuated an all-gas-no-brakes offseason for Houston.
The Texans rank top-5 in cash spending for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, per Over The Cap, and ninth in 2026, during which time Stroud’s contract will represent one of the best bargains in American sports. For a time, Diggs’ old team benefitted from this same bargain.
Buffalo acquired Diggs in a March 2020 trade with Minnesota, less than two months after the end of Josh Allen’s second season. In 2019, Allen established himself as a legitimate, rising starter and entered superstardom the following season. He ultimately signed a six-year, $258 million extension in August 2021, which kept his annual cap hits down for a time.
However, Allen’s cap hit jumped from $18.6 million last year to $30.3 this season, and he’s scheduled to count $42.3 million and $63.9 million against the cap each of the next two seasons. Allen’s cap hits do not, by themselves or by any means, prohibit Buffalo from spending or contending; though it was no coincidence the Bills parted with several highpriced starters (Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer and Ryan Bates, among others) at the same time Allen’s contract became a burden on their books instead of a blessing.
(Diggs’ exit from Buffalo, which came after he wore out his welcome, may be a different case. But let’s remember he arrived in Buffalo at the same time the Vikings re-worked their books around Kirk Cousins’ fully guaranteed $84 million deal.)
Which brings us back to New England. As soon as the Patriots’ pick is in, the real clock starts. Thankfully, unlike the previous regime, which spent little over the 2022 and 2023 offseasons that ran concurrent with Mac Jones’ rookie deal, de facto GM Eliot Wolf at least sounds ready to seize on his next quarterback’s contract.
“I think the main thing is just trying to do everything we can to support that person once we get them in the building,” Wolf said at the combine. “We’re going to make the best decision we can in terms of who that person is – if we decide to go quarterback at No. 3. But really putting every resource into everything we have into that person to support them, and make sure that we get the best version of themself.”
And cash and cap should – keyword: should – be no issue for the Patriots. They rank top-3 in cap space over each of the next four years, when they also rank bottom-10 by cash spending. But because free agency is over, between now and next offseason, their keys will be the draft and patience.
After the third overall pick, the Patriots have just seven draft choices to fill positions like wide receiver and offensive tackle and reinforce their remaining strengths on defense. Wolf has already declared the Patriots will play their young players; a reminder his front office’s to-do list may run long, but their timeline runs longer.
To build a perennial postseason contender once again – not a flash-in-the-plan playoff team, like the 2021 Wild Card squad birthed by a record-setting spending spree – the Pats must hit on consecutive draft classes. The Texans hit before Stroud, the Bills hit before and after Allen, as did the Chiefs with Patrick Mahomes and Eagles with Jalen Hurts.
The ideal NFL roster-building strategy involves stocking your premium positions – quarterback, receiver, offensive tackle and cornerback – via the draft. There is no value in football like an elite player at a premium position on a cheap contract. Free agency, in