New England Patriots: Evaluating Patriots offseason moves

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Brian Hoyer No. 2 (Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images) /

New England Patriots 2020 free agency grade

There are two aspects to free agency. Whom did you lose and whom did you sign? Let’s take a quick look at some of the highlights and lowlights of that exercise for New England this offseason.

First, how did the Patriots fare in lost players? Grading that is pretty easy. They blew the offseason in not keeping free agents who were valuable contributors to the team.

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I’ve written before that the loss of Tom Brady himself consigns this grade to an F. Nothing has changed in my feelings on that.

In addition, however, key players like Kyle Van Noy a truly underrated performer, Danny Shelton, and Jamie Collins (to some extent) were key subtractions. Lesser lights like Ted Karras and Elandon Roberts who did contribute were also lost. So that doesn’t help the grade here either.

Now let’s talk about the players that the Patriots signed

Brian Hoyer is a signing that could contribute and that speaks volumes about how well the Patriots did in this aspect of team-building. It looks like not very well at all. Hoyer is a journeyman quarterback and any significant role this season for New England would presage a very bad season, indeed.

Danny Vitale, the fullback (and maybe more) they signed, formerly of Green Bay is an interesting signing. I like the Vitale signing especially in light of James Develin’s retirement. He could be the sleeper of the entire group. But he’s not a game-changer.

Finally, there is Beau Allen the free-agent defensive tackle signed from Tampa Bay I hope that Allen does well.. The Patriots really did nothing to beef up the interior of the defensive line other than Allen.

Yet, Allen hasn’t been very productive over his 6-year NFL career. He only has 117 tackles and 2.5 sacks during that period. Not exactly mind-numbing statistics.

Conversely, the departure of Danny Shelton was a very underrated player for the New England Patriots in 2019. He had a career year for New England with 61 tackles and 3 sacks before departing for Detroit.

The other free agents failed to excite. Hopefully, they will pan out but there’s not really much production there to count on. Anywhere. The losses far outweigh the possible gains. I have to keep my grade on the offseason free agency at an F.

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