INDIANAPOLIS — If you aren’t convinced yet Stefon Diggs might play elsewhere next season, consider this.
Two and a half months ago, when Diggs faced strangulation and assault charges that seemed to threaten his immediate football future, the Patriots stood with their star receiver by releasing an atypically strong statement.
“We support Stefon,” they wrote.
Now, as Diggs’ contract merely clouds their roster-building crystal ball, Mike Vrabel and Eliot Wolf appear to be keeping their distance. The message now is: come what may.
“I’m not going to get into any specific players today,” Wolf said this week. “There are certain conversations that we’re having, and we’ll see what happens with everyone.”
On Wednesday, Vrabel had a chance to stand by Diggs again. He was asked point-blank how he views Diggs’ future with the Patriots, who have him under contract for two more seasons.
“I mean, not only his future, but what he was able to do for us, and come in and provide leadership, work extremely hard the time that he was rehabbing from the knee,” Vrabel said at the NFL Scouting Combine. “I think (he) was just a really good presence each and every week. And so as we look to evaluate the football team, you know, we’re doing that (evaluating players) constantly.”
As far as non-answers go, that is a beauty. Kind, complimentary, downright flowery. But still a non-answer, and all because of his contract.
The football trouble with Diggs — setting aside the serious criminal charges that stem from an alleged incident where his former chef accused him of smacking her in the face and choking her using the crook of his elbow around her neck — is that his deal suits neither him nor the team. Only $1.7 million of his 2026 base salary is guaranteed, unless he’s on the team by March 13, at which point he’s guaranteed another $6 million. Diggs’ total salary next season is $20.6 million, a number that should make the Patriots uneasy, but not more so than his $26.5 million cap hit.
Even after authoring the team’s first 1,000-yard receiving season since before the COVID-19 pandemic, Diggs is simply not worth that type of hit on their books. He will turn 33 in November, and totaled just 110 receiving yards over four playoff games. Elite defenses were unafraid of him, the Patriots’ best receiver and an aging player whose best days are behind him.
Then there’s Barmore. Even at 26, there are reasons to believe his best football has been played, too.
Barmore has a history of knee injuries recently overshadowed by his battle with blood clots. He failed to tally a single pressure in the Super Bowl. He had two sacks in the regular season, when his run defense was often problematic. He genreated several quick pressures but also failed to record as much as quarterback hit in seven of eight games during one midseason stretch; a dry spell Wolf noted this week in an answer about whether Barmore is the type of player in whom the Patriots should be investing.
“I mean, Christian has grown up quite a bit, and we continue to help him with that,” Wolf said. “He continues to want to make improvements in that area.”
But is maturity really something an NFL staff should really be focused on developing for a player in Year 6?
For the record, investing in players like Barmore, whose alleged transgression last summer was not his first run-in with the law, is now a no for me. The details of his alleged domestic incident are u-g-l-y ugly.
Throwing the mother of his 2-year-old daughter to the ground, a woman who submitted a photo of her injuries from the alleged abuse to the police and said Barmore threatened to have his cousin assault her. A woman who took a team-provided car service to Delaware to get away from Barmore, according to the police reports.
The Patriots stood by Barmore throughout this, playing him for all 17 regular-season contests and four playoff games. So if they release or trade Barmore, they cannot claim it was on a character basis alone. It will be about money and value, the two factors that have actually changed since the incident; mirroring Diggs’ poor playoff production after his charges.
Like Diggs, Barmore will be guaranteed a significant chunk of his salary if he’s still on the team March 13. He will secure $10 million of his base salary, unless the team cuts him and eats a $12.8 million dead cap hit or $5.6 million in dead cap if they apply a post-June 1 designation when releasing him. A Barmore trade feels less viable, but might be worth fetching a late-round pick at the expense of more dead cap instead of releasing him for nothing.
Despite the cash considerations they are now weighing (Barmore is the 11th-highest paid defensive tackle in football by total contract value), it was nonetheless notable that Vrabel went on about character when asked Wednesday about his defensive tackle’s legal situation and how it might affect his future with the team.
“We want to make sure that these are just, in fact, accusations. And I mean, we want to make sure that we have the right people on this football team. That’s the first thing that we want to do,” Vrabel said. “I want to make sure that the people on this football team are the ones that we want on there that share the same beliefs and the same work ethic and the same values and help us build an identity again.
“And then we’ll evaluate the player for the player. So, whenever any of those things come to light or there’s a decision and we know more information, then we’ll make a decision on that.”
Whether his case is resolved in the next few weeks or not, decisions on Barmore and Diggs are coming. In a year when the free-agent market is almost devoid of true difference-makers and the odds of a blockbuster trade remain fairly remote, this is the story of the Patriots’ offseason.
Will they part with two of their 10-to-12 best players to trim salary and shed baggage?
It feels like one of Diggs or Barmore will be gone.
But both wouldn’t shock me, either.
