The Patriots, under Mike Vrabel, are about to enter the critically important offseason. Good or great teams are built in the offseason, as are the opposite. The 2024 offseason was the harbinger of another last-place finish in 2024. It was all set in stone then.
Free agency can't be discounted as a key contributor to any NFL team's offseason and upcoming season's success. In 2024, Eliot Wolf and company re-signed several current players to big contracts. The team did not improve one iota as a result. The argument can be made that, in so doing, he wrecked the entire offseason effort.
The Patriots have an estimated $131M cap dollars to spend. They have to spend it wisely to improve. Status quo equals stagnation. It's on Mike Vrabel now to realize that you only spend to improve in free agency. In so doing, you set up the rest of what has to be a top offseason if the Patriots' slide to the AFC East's cellar is to be reversed.
Patriots' Vrabel needs to have one free agency objective, improve with top players
Adding to or remunerating your or others' decent players who don't improve your team is a path leading to mediocrity or worse. Available cash must be splashed on the best players who improve your team in positions of need. Just look at Pro Football Focus' list of the best available and sign the ones you can who are better than what you have.
On the Patriots, those positions are left tackle, wide receiver, edge, and defensive tackle. The Patriots need all of those and more. Forget extending any but the very best of your free agents. Wolf went overboard re-signing Kyle Dugger, Mike Onwenu, Davon Godchaux, and Rhamondre Stevenson. All regressed. It's been suggested here that all should be trade candidates for draft picks.
Key players like free-agent left tackles, Ronnie Stanley or Cam Robinson, Tee Higgins, a No. One wide receiver and edges like Khalil Mack or Haason Reddick are where Vrabel should invest. Overpaying for the best will have no regrets. Doing so on mediocrity will be regrettable, as in 2024. All of those players improve the team dramatically in positions of major need.
The key is spending for the best you can get in free agency in positions of need and then drafting top rookies to fill the rest. Vrabel will be in fine shape entering the draft if he signs two or three top players at positions of need in free agency. Here's why.
Free agency can set up the Patriots for a great draft
The Patriots should scrap any ideas of casting a wide net for just decent players. It doesn't work. Winning NFL teams win with top players and great players. The Pats have few. Get a couple/few in free agency at positions of need. Then, fill in a couple more high up in the draft.
One or two of the following immediate starters will be available to the Patriots at pick No. Four. These non-quarterbacks are wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter, edge Abdul Carter, left tackle Will Campbell, and defensive tackle Mason Graham. You take any one of those four who's available at a position of need you haven't yet filled in free agency. You immediately improve.
Any of the four potential draftees mentioned is an immediate starter and also likely an immense upgrade over anyone you currently have on the roster. Trading down is a loser's strategy for the 2025 Patriots. It's all about quality, not quantity. A subsequent trade-up is suggested if the team still needs to fill one of those four positions. Trade your second and third (they have two) round picks plus, if necessary, to move back into the first round to get another starter at a position of need.
The Patriots have the cash to upgrade two or even three positions of need with top-quality players in free agency. In so doing, they set the team up to continue that strategy with their excellent positioning in the draft. Vrabel should emulate Eliot Wolf's 2024 strategies, both in the draft and free agency. Excepting Drake Maye and, to a lesser extent, Antonio Gibson and Austin Cooper, they were a dismal failure.
Get the best at your positions of need in free agency and the draft. Winning will follow.