When did it hit you?
After Mike Vrabel admitted Monday the Patriots must go to “great lengths” to upgrade their talent?
Maybe when Cole Strange got cut Tuesday?
Or whenever you looked at the Pats’ initial 53-man roster, after weeks of practices and reports and roster projections, and surely expressed some version of … “huh?”
For all the fresh faces who have swung through Foxboro the last eight months, cutdown day offered a cold reminder this franchise still needs plenty more. These Patriots are rebuilding.
Just ask Vegas.
The Pats’ preseason over-under win total is 8.5 at most sportsbooks, our new governor for how to frame all expectations in sports. If the Patriots exceed expectations, that will mean more than doubling their win total from last year, and more than matching their wins from the past two seasons combined. Big ask.
If the Pats win nine-plus games, that will also mean clinching their first winning season since 2021. Any guess how many players on the team were here then?
Five.
Kyle Dugger was among them, then a burgeoning safety with Pro Bowl potential. Now, he’s a bloated contract the Patriots would have shipped elsewhere had they been willing to eat more money in trade talks, according to a source. Dugger is also one of just 15 players on the roster the Patriots drafted prior to this year.
Stack those 15 homegrown veterans against the 11 rookies the Pats kept Tuesday, and it’s almost an even split between the players drafted four months ago and those from the previous 64 years — combined.
Drafting like that is how you fall, tripping, stumbling and bumbling, into a rebuild. Blame Bill Belichick. Blame Eliot Wolf. This is how the Patriots got here; a truth not lost on Vrabel, who has made it his mission to revamp not just the roster, but the entire program from top to bottom.
The Patriots, in fact, wanted more change this summer, when they hoped to part with Dugger, the remainder of Dugger’s four-year, $58 million contract, outside linebacker Anfernee Jennings and, reportedly, some backup offensive linemen. Strange was among those reserves, but the Patriots couldn’t find a taker, so they cut him.
Waiving Strange now makes cornerback Christian Gonzalez the Patriots’ longest-tenured first-round pick on the roster. Stepping back, Gonzalez is the sixth-longest-tenured draft pick in New England at the creaky old age of 23. Zooming all the way out, Gonzalez is the only Patriots player whom every other team in the league would covet if he was ever made available.
That brings us to the second problem the Pats’ front office faced in negotiations: nobody wanted what they were offering.
Gonzalez aside, all of the Patriots’ top players are either too new (Milton Williams, Carlton Davis, TreVeyon Henderson, etc.) or have health concerns too significant (Christian Barmore, Stefon Diggs) to be included in trade talks. The Pats received iffy interest in Dugger, even less in Jennings and essentially got stuck with them both. Neither are guaranteed to make it through the season.
Kendrick Bourne — one of eight wideouts the Patriots kept — is another name to watch for a midseason trade, by the way; if the team’s crowded receivers room wasn’t hint enough.
In the meantime, the Patriots will look to fortify other positions via the waiver wire until they can take big swings next offseason and launch into what should be their first season as playoff contenders. Those positions are as follows: tight end, offensive line and basically every position on defense.
Last summer, the Patriots banked on waivers not to strengthen their depth, but fill out a starting lineup. An unimaginative offseason and years of poor drafting left had them no choice. Worse yet, then head coach Jerod Mayo believed it might work, having failed to learn from recent league history that shows teams don’t waive starting-caliber offensive linemen.
Teams keep them, after signing, trading for or drafting them; which is exactly the task at hand for Vrabel. Four months ago, the Vrabel-era Patriots made left tackle Will Campbell their first draft pick in efforts to fix this problem and address that position.
Until they can hit on more picks, the Pats will be stuck picking the bones of the rest of the league — just like last year.
“We’re in a very unique situation right now where we’re third on the waiver wire, and there’ll be some good players that get released, and we’re going to try to take advantage of that,” Mayo said last summer. “The starting guard or the starting tackle may not be in our team today.”
The Patriots ultimately claimed four players off waivers the next day: offensive lineman Zach Thomas, linebacker Curtis Jacobs, defensive tackle Eric Johnson and offensive tackle Demontrey Jacobs. Thomas didn’t survive the season, while Johnson and Curtis Jacobs both got cut this spring.
What about Demontrey Jacobs?
He was the first player Vrabel waived on Tuesday.
