New England Patriots - NESN.com
The New England Patriots are open to making an enormous trade, but for who?
Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf has communicated a willingness to take advantage of New England’s cap space with a big move soon, per NBC Sports Boston’s Phil Perry.
“Eliot Wolf says the Patriots would be willing to trade away a 1st or 2nd-round pick if it was best for the team,” Perry reported on Monday.
“Worth noting with big names out there still looking for deals. Patriots are at the top of the NFL in available cap space (if you care about that sort of thing).”
Wolf’s revelations are sure to cause excitement among Patriots fans, especially if they read NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah’s recent post on X. On Monday morning, Jeremiah speculated that Wolf and the Patriots should go after Dallas Cowboys four-time Pro Bowler Micah Parsons.
“With Drake Maye on a rookie deal, it makes sense for NE to be interested in trading for an expensive star player,” Jeremiah wrote, reiterating Wolf’s perspective. “(Trey) Hendrickson or (Terry) McLaurin make sense but I’d call the Cowboys first & shoot my shot for Parsons.”
The Parsons-Cowboys contract standoff doesn’t look great from the outside, but on the other hand, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is probably just messing with Parsons for media attention.
Parsons is understandably frustrated, and he’s been clear about prioritizing a contract extension over loyalty to the Cowboys.
“I’m just going to get mine no matter what,” Parsons said recently, per NFL.com’s Kevin Patra. “You know what I mean? Like, the markets change every year. Their salary cap went up, like, another 18% this year. So, if you want to know contracts, all the contracts are based off of percentage. Like, each player, a high-paid player, takes a percentage of the salary cap. So, it’s not really the number. It goes off by the salary cap.”
Parsons, of course, deserves one of the richest contracts in football, as he’s one of the game’s top five or ten players. The 26-year-old defensive end has never not made the Pro Bowl, and he’s also snagged a pair of first-team All-Pro nods in four seasons.
Parsons is a sack machine, having tallied at least 12 sacks per season since he entered the NFL. The Patriots would love to add this matchup nightmare to their defense; so would 30 other teams not named the Cowboys.
Don’t get your hopes up, though, if you’re a Patriots fan. Parsons ending up anywhere outside of Dallas would be shocking.
