There are two key factors in any construction plan: cost and timeline.
And let’s be clear, what’s currently going on in the football offices inside Gillette Stadium is a massive construction project.
As can happen to any great structure, the Patriots organization deteriorated over the years thanks to improper upkeep to the point where finally something drastic just had to be done.
As such Eliot Wolf and Jerod Mayo are the new project managers on a massive down-to-the-studs remodel.
We know what the project entails. It’s all about upgrading talent at some of the most important positions in football, a modernization both on and off the field. There’s the most obvious of needs for a franchise QB, a lynchpin left tackle and an impetus to “weaponize” an offense that was pathetically underpowered in recent years.
And we certainly are well aware of the various costs. It already cost legendary coach and dynasty architect Bill Belichick his job. It’s going to cost well-executed draft picks, none more important than the No. 3 overall selection next month that’s the highest in the three decades of Robert Kraft’s ownership. And it’s going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars in both cash and NFL salary cap spending, even if we’re not quite sure exactly when/how those expenditures are going to come or what the return on those investments will be.
Therein lies the rub. We know what needs to be done. We know the various avenues toward getting the work done. What we don’t know is the timeline for the project. Although we may be starting to find out.
Clearly, after a rather frugal, conservative path through his first run at free agency, the de facto GM Wolf seems to be taking anything but a quick-fix approach. It wouldn’t seem he’s feeling any undue, ill-advised pressure from the Kraft family to snap his fingers, wiggle his nose and bewitch his way to rapid but maybe misleading competitive contention. That costly plan was sooooooooooooo 2021.
Nope. This feels like some sort of multi-step, multi-year plan that is in its early stages. A process with the right goals and right mindset in place.
Slow and steady wins the race, after all. And isn’t that what this is all about? Winning the race. Competing for Lombardis once again.
But sometimes sticking to such a plan is easier said than done.
It takes confidence and support from ownership.
It takes a thick skin from the central figures, most notably Wolf and Mayo, the latter likely to lose a lot of football games early in his first season as a young gun NFL head coach.
It’s also a bit harder to stomach a long-term approach to a remodel, rebuild or reboot in New England when it feels like the team has been spinning its collective reconstruction wheels for four post-Tom Brady seasons. Three losing records in those four years. A last place finish with a mere four wins last fall. A supposed franchise first-round QB who’s already been dumped via trade.
Mix in the overly simplified idea that a team like the Texans can go from the No. 2 pick in the draft following a 3-win season to a 10-win campaign with a Wild Card Weekend playoff win and there’s certainly plenty of pressure on the Patriots to return to at least competitive mediocrity sooner rather than later.
But winning this fall simply is not and never was in the cards, even if Mayo guaranteed more success on the field in 2024. “You have me on record. That we are going to win more than four games. I’m on record,” Mayo said in a January appearance on The Greg Hill Show on WEEI.
That confidence was admirable, even if the public assertion was as ill-advised as his “burn some cash” comment in that same interview.
There’s a reason that the Vegas odds makers have New England as, by far, the longest shot to win its division.
The roster is what it is. This daunting construction project is what it is.
It will likely end up, like most projects, over budget and behind schedule.
What exactly is that schedule? What internal timeline of expectations is Wolf working with? Is the Kraft family -- dealing with its own PR problems in the wake of the poorly-received “The Dynasty” docu-series on Apple TV – fully invested and committed to a longer-term approach?
Is the most realistic dream to have the Patriots back to competing for a Wild Card spot in the fall of 2025, Drake Maye leading a roster of contributing draft picks with various complementary or even splashy free agents from this and next offseason mixed in?
We know the task at hand in New England. We know what it takes to turn the Patriots or really any NFL team around, to pull it from the doldrums of last place finishes and top-5 draft picks.
We just don’t know what kind of internal timeline the Krafts, Wolf, Mayo and the rest are working with here.
And THAT may actually be the biggest question of all facing this once-great franchise.