If you thought it was going to be tough to top the Stephon Gilmore signing, Bill Belichick just said, "Hold my beer."
We're just two days into free agency and I already want the season to start tomorrow. On Day 2, Bill Belichick added a very good young edge defender in Kony Ealy to pair with rising star Trey Flowers and then he traded for speedy wide receiver Brandin Cooks and didn't have to give up Malcolm Butler to get that deal done. And Dont'a Hightower still hasn't signed with another team.
Logan Ryan is gone, of course. Martellus Bennett will be catching passes from The Great Aaron Rodgers next year. The good citizens of Patriots Nation can't have everything, after all.
Even if it kind of feels like that right now.
I hope - and yeah I'd bet the mortgage - Brandin Cooks and Tom Brady have already exchanged texts. Local pigskin pundits and bobbleheads have already cast Cooks as a bigger, faster Deion Branch. Yes please! Check out his 2016 highlight reel and you'll see him beating man and zone coverage with equal ease, making tough catches on the boundaries and jetting away from defenders. Then picture Cooks lining up with Chris Hogan, Julian Edelman, Malcolm Mitchell and Rob Gronkowski with James White or Dion Lewis wheeling out of the backfield. The Patriots offense just got better. New England scored 27.6 points per game (3rd best in the league) in 2016 and did that essentially without Rob Gronkowski. I'm already thinking we could see 2007-level offensive production in 2017.
Am I going to miss Danny Amendola? Not if Brandin Cooks just posts his career average numbers and yeah, I think he'll post career bests in 2017.
Kony Ealy is this year's Jabaal Sheard in that he was highly rated coming out of college but hasn't really lived up to his potential with the team that drafted him. Maybe you remember Ealy from Super Bowl 50? Should a man of his size be able to drop into coverage and make a one-handed interception? The shake he showed on the return might've been even more impressive.
If Belichick traded away 32, does that mean he's going to get 12 for Garoppolo?
It's easy enough to connect those dots, isn't it? I'm trying not to count on it but okay, I'm kind of counting on it. And I'm counting on Belichick trading down from 12 for multiple 2nd or 3rd round picks.
By the way, if you're the chief information security officer for Instagram, don't you ever get tired of everyone claiming their account was hacked?
So, what happens with Malcolm Butler?
It now seems more likely than not the Patriots will have the best secondary in the NFL next year.
Still waiting…
Could Hightower re-sign on Day 3? Please?
Somewhere, a sad clown is weeping…
At moments like this, I like to imagine Roger Goodell sitting alone in a room that is dark except for the flickering light cast by the NFL network on a wall mounted television. He has a half-drunk tumbler of scotch in one hand and a loaded gun in the other. A tear stings his cheek as he considers the all too real possibility of the Patriots winning back-to-back Super Bowls and the reality that he is too much of a coward to pull the trigger.
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