At first glance, the item reads like a standard late-Friday news dump: the Patriots released disappointing punter Jake Bailey before the start of NFL free agency. But this wasn’t a typical situation.
Back in August, the Patriots inked Bailey to a four-year, $13.5 million deal — quite sizable for a punter. While Bailey earned First Team All-Pro honors in 2020, the move was still questionable at the time, considering the team’s other needs. Signing a punter for $6.25 million guaranteed seemed superfluous.
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Then Bailey started struggling. The punter posted the second-worst net punting average in the league last year (35.3) before winding up on IR in November. That’s where Bailey remained until early January, when he was suspended under mysterious circumstances along with rookie cornerback Jack Jones.
Bailey’s camp claimed the suspension arose from disagreements about when he could return from IR. The following day — one day before New England’s season finale against the Bills — Bailey’s agent filed a grievance against the Patriots fighting his client’s “unknown suspension.”
So what happened here? When a player is placed on the suspended/reserve list, his future guarantees are voided, meaning the Patriots seemingly came up with a clever way to cut bait with the punter early in his deal.
But the Patriots’ decision to award Bailey, whom they drafted in the fifth round of the 2019 NFL Draft, with a lucrative extension was curious in the first place. It appeared to be a misallocation of resources.
His bad punting only further reinforced that notion. The Patriots may have escaped their guarantees, but they created an unnecessary mess.