If Jerod Mayo set the upbeat, aggressive, optimistic tone of the Patriots offseason with his comments about how New England would approach free agency last month, then his collaborative brother in Kraft-appointed arms reset the team’s message on Tuesday at the NFL Scouting Combine.
Recall that in his first appearance on WEEI’s Greg Hill Show in late January as the newly-promoted head coach, Mayo declared that a Patriots team that could approach $100 million in salary cap space with which to do business this offseason was ready to “burn some cash!”
Whelp, little more than a month later and with free agency barely more than a week away, Eliot Wolf was far less committal at his Combine press conference when, after noting that he has final say on the New England roster, he said that the team’s approach to free agency was still “TBD.”
“We’re going to aggressively try to help the team,” Wolf said. “Take that however you want it but we will try to do what’s right whether that means spending or saving…TBD.”
Saving?
TBD?
More like WTF?
The Patriots have a massive amount of money at their disposal this offseason with massive holes to address all over the roster, most importantly on the offensive side of the ball.
A couple years removed from an “uncharacteristically aggressive” offseason of spending, Mayo rightly made it sound like another significant flurry of spending was in the plans this spring.
Then, Wolf pumped the brakes as they say. At least a little.
Why?
Maybe this is just a way to avoid tipping their hand. To try to keep targeted free agents from taking advantage of the situation, which includes a market lifted by a growth in the salary cap across the board than most projected.
Maybe this is just a more measure, experienced executive talking rather than a young, ex-player giddy to get going on the rebuild. Maybe it’s a little bit of the theory that it’s better to under promise and over deliver than vice versa.
Or, maybe the Kraft family wasn’t too excited with Mayo’s tone and tenor. Robert Kraft voiced his displeasure on the lack of return on his massive investment back in 2021 and even expressed disappointment that a series of bad drafts had forced the Patriots to pursue the fool’s gold of free agency the way New England watched others do so frivolously and fruitlessly over the years.
It’s one thing to have to spend money. It’s another to be excited to do so and express such publicly.
Maybe this is something. Maybe this is nothing.
Regardless, Mayo said what he said.
And those of use on the outside took it to mean another aggressive, financially active free agency period was on the horizon.
Burn some cash.
It had and still has all us expecting fireworks, to steal phrase from the Celtics back in the Danny Ainge NBA Draft days.
It’s got us dreaming of an actual full throttle approach to turning things around on the roster in Foxborough. A tact that might teach the Red Sox how to talk the talk and then walk the walk.
Now, though, Wolf’s “saving” money comment and “TBD” has to at least temper the expectations and exultations of Patriot Nation.
It has to at least bring pause to the excitement and cause to the idea that the Patriots could fail to live up to their self-promotion the way the Red Sox oh-so-recently did.
It also brings into question exactly how this relationship between Mayo and Wolf is going to work.
For two decades Bill Belichick – that loveless, relationship-less meanie with an ego who didn’t treat people right if you’re inferring things from comments made by Mayo and Wolf in recent weeks – did things his way and only his way in New England. For better for a long time. And then for worse.
One face. One voice. One plan.
One person at which to target with either the credit or the blame.
Now, now there’s a collaboration. There’s Mayo. And Wolf.
Wolf and Mayo.
There’s a plan to “burn some cash.”
There’s the possibility of “saving.”
And there is the most critical offseason in modern Patriots’ history hanging in the balance.