New England Patriots: Bill Belichick needs to be aggressive in offseason

With a plethora of cap space, the New England Patriots need to retool the roster in order to avoid another mediocre season.

The 2020-21 season is mercifully over for the New England Patriots.

Many, like myself, are young enough to the point where we hadn’t watched a Patriots team that wasn’t at least in the playoff hunt at the end of the regular season. Needless to say it was a weird year, especially following the past two decades which contained nothing but perpetual success.

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You don’t have to look through a magnifying glass to see why the Patriots struggled in 2020. The roster was flat out bad. Losing Tom Brady didn’t help matters, but that wasn’t the only void that remained unfilled throughout the season.

Opt-outs due to COVID-19, the biggest of them being Dont’a Hightower and Patrick Chung, were also a huge blow. The Patriots did not have enough depth to make up for that.

Adrian Phillips, whose natural position is at safety, was playing linebacker for most of the season. As result, the team finished 25th in run defense.

The offense was dismal, as anyone with eyes is aware of. Cam Newton generated excitement upon being signed but he turned out to be a dud.

Jakobi Meyers, an undrafted free agent from 2019, lead the team in receptions and receiving yards. Meyers has proven he has a future in New England, but he’s not supposed to be a number one target.

The run game was actually pretty good statistically, but that doesn’t matter if the team is trailing for most of the game.

All of this falls on Bill Belichick. While it’s actually kind of impressive that Belichick managed a 7-9 record with a roster this bad on paper, it’s also his fault that the personnel was the way that it was.

The lack of talent and depth at wide receiver, tight end, and linebacker, was absolutely embarrassing. As the general manager of the team, Belichick’s work in the last couple of years has been spotty at best.

You can get away with a few bad draft picks when you have the greatest quarterback of all time to mask the team’s deficiencies, but Brady’s absence really exposed just how devoid of talent the Patriots are at this point in time.

Remember in the 2017 offseason when the Patriots signed Stephon Gilmore to a big contract seemingly out of nowhere? I’d say that worked out pretty well. That’s the type of aggressive move they need to make in free agency this year, preferably on the offensive side of the ball.

Whoever the starting quarterback is in 2021 needs better weapons to throw to. Whether it’s a rookie or an established veteran, they have no chance if they are throwing to a similar group that Newton was. There is a solid collection of pass-catchers who will be on the market. Not bringing at least one of them in would be a colossal failure.

It would do the Patriots some good to draft an offensive player with the 15th pick in the draft as well, but I wouldn’t mind seeing them improve the front seven with that selection either. As I stated earlier, the run defense was pathetic and the pass rush wasn’t much better.

Three players who ended 2020 on a high note. dark. Next

Either way, the two aspects of the team (aside from quarterback) that need improvement the most are the receiving corps and the front seven. With plenty of cap space to work with, Belichick cannot be passive about upgrading these areas or the Patriots will have the same issues in 2021 as they did in 2020.

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