With the 2024 season looking the way it did at receiver for the Patriots, it only makes sense that New England would start popping up in trade rumors for disgruntled stars around the league.
And on Tuesday, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler shared some Patriots intel he received from a “veteran NFC personnel man” in his “NFL exec predictions” column for ESPN.com
Here’s what Fowler wrote:
“Tyreek Hill will be traded from Dolphins to Patriots:
“This one is wild. But Hill's displeasure in Miami is out there after his Week 18 comments, and the Patriots hope to be on the brink of contention soon enough under new coach Mike Vrabel.
“In-division trades are not as rare as they were a decade ago. It's largely about which team offers the best value.
"‘The Patriots are desperate. They need a guy, that alpha that can be friendly for Drake Maye,’ a veteran NFC personnel man said. ‘And there's a higher chance of the draft picks [Miami would receive in a trade] being higher than with a contender.’”
Fowler went on to say that this would only make sense for New England if the team is unable to acquire upcoming Bengals free agent wide receiver Tee Higgins, and that the price tag for Hill may only cost as much as a package highlighted by a “Day 2 pick” in the NFL Draft.
The Patriots’ struggles with acquiring high-end talent in recent years is well-documented.
They swung-and-missed on acquiring both Calvin Ridley and Brandon Aiyuk at wide receiver last offseason, and traded down in the second round of the draft for a player in Ja’Lynn Polk, who had a disastrous rookie season as a pass catcher.
The spot they moved out of for Polk - pick No. 34 - went to the Chargers, who drafted receiver Ladd McConkey out of Georgia. McConkey not only torched New England when he came to Gillette Stadium in Week 17, but Pro Football Focus ranked him as the 19th best receiver in all of football at season’s end.
So yeah, it hasn’t been great. And there’s years of other examples worth pointing to (I’ll save you the N’Keal Harry pain). Maybe this prediction floated to Fowler is a better plan of attack than taking yet another swing on an unproven guy in the draft, or making a pitch to a sought-after free agent like Higgins.
Acquiring a proven commodity in Hill in a trade, albeit coming off his worst season since arriving in Miami, tamps down the potential for more receiver-egg on their face.
I don’t need to remind any Patriots fans of what the ceiling for acquiring a distressed asset at wide receiver for Day 2 draft capital can be. We all remember the brilliance of Randy Moss in 2007. It will almost certainly never be topped by another receiver in New England again.
But if the Patriots can get 70% of what Moss was in 2007 (65%? 60%?) from Hill in 2025, this trade would be a massive win for executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf - a man in desperate need of one after his first offseason on the job last spring.