Pats Pulpit
Notes and thoughts on the Patriots’ offseason capital, uniform changes, the All-Bill Belichick team, and more.
The NFL season is officially in the books, and all 32 teams are now on to 2025. The New England Patriots have been in this position for some time now, entering the offseason back in January after an underwhelming 4-13 campaign.
With the fundamental changes over — i.e. hiring a new-look coaching staff — the team is now full steam ahead toward rebuilding the roster. With that said, welcome to this week’s edition of our Sunday Patriots Notes.
Last January, Jerod Mayo made headlines when he suggested the Patriots would go out and be “ready to burn some cash” in the offseason. The team’s then-head coach later went back those remarks, and New England eventually invested most of its financial resources in re-signing its own players in free agency.
Fast forward to 2025, and Mayo’s words could finally turn into reality. While he himself is no longer part of the organization — Mayo was fired after the season and replaced with Mike Vrabel — the Patriots are in a position to make major swings over the coming weeks.
In fact, no other team in the league is as well-prepared from both a salary cap and draft capital perspective to make waves.
Not only are the Patriots the current owners of the fourth most valuable draft portfolio — one that includes four selections in the top 100 picks — they also lead the league in salary cap space by a wide margin: at the moment, cap expert Miguel Benzan projects them at $128.69 million under a $275 million cap.
Given that there are no must-re-signees on their current list of free agents, the Patriots can be quite aggressive in their pursuit of talent. Players at positions of need such as WR Tee Higgins, OT Ronnie Stanley, DT Milton Williams, ED Chase Young or LB Zack Baun all could be on their radar as a consequence — as could highly-rated draft prospects to complement the free agency investments.
Who will be brought in remains to be seen, but the expectation is that the Patriots will be quite active.
“I would anticipate that they are very active,” NFL Network insider Tom Pelissero said earlier this month. “I know that Eliot Wolf was working it on every receiver. It didn’t work out last year, but whether it was Calvin Ridley or Brandon Aiyuk or other guys who came up, they were in on everything.”
Last year, the Patriots found themselves as a tough sell; they were coming off a 4-13 season and had just gone their separate ways with long-time coach Bill Belichick and promoted the inexperienced Mayo as his successor. This year, however, they find themselves in a different spot: not only is Mike Vrabel an established head coach, Drake Maye also provides them some serious potential at quarterback.
The Vrabel-Mayo duo also is part of what the Patriots can...
