The Patriots have easily spent the most money of any team in free agency so far, dominating the NFL news cycle over the past week with one signing after another.
Whether they have spent that money -- roughly $290 million in contracts -- wisely is a different question.
While pretty much everyone is in agreement that the Patriots addressed some of their biggest needs -- tight end, wide receiver, front seven on defense -- not everyone is a fan of the specifics of some of their signings.
Take, for example, Bill Barnwell. In a new piece on ESPN.com looking at the worst free-agent signings so far this offseason, Barnwell has two Patriots deals on his list: wide receiver Nelson Agholor and tight end Jonnu Smith (and he makes it clear he isn’t a particularly big fan of the Patriots’ other tight end signing, Hunter Henry, either).
In his analysis of the Agholor signing, Barnwell writes that “it’s clear the Patriots misread the market” at the wide receiver position. He criticizes the team for signing Agholor off one breakout season after several disappointing years before that and for guaranteeing him $16 million over two years when better wide receivers with more consistent track records signed for better value later in the week when the market never really took off, highlighting Will Fuller’s one-year, $10.5 million deal with the Dolphins and JuJu Smith-Schuster’s one-year, $8 million deal with the Steelers.
“Usually the Patriots are the ones who foresee the market, wait things out and get the right player at the right price,” Barnwell writes. “This time, out of desperation, they went all-in on the first day at the market's deepest position and gave out a deal that's difficult to justify.”
As far as the tight ends, Smith and Henry, Barnwell’s biggest point of contention is that the Patriots made them two of the highest-paid tight ends in the NFL despite the fact that, while talented, neither “has come particularly close to making a Pro Bowl during their careers.”
“These contracts are paying the Pats' two new tight ends like they're All-Pro candidates, and there's little in their collective track record suggesting they are at that level,” Barnwell writes.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft acknowledged over the weekend that the team has "made fun" of teams that have spent big money early in free agency in the past, but that they believe it's what they needed to do this year to get back to winning.
We won't really know whether the Patriots' signings work out or not until we get into the season, but it's clear that some analysts seem to believe the Patriots may have fallen into that same over-spending trap that those other teams they've "made fun" of did.
You can read the full article from Barnwell here (ESPN+ subscription required).