“He’s had a year in the system now, so hopefully with that year, you’ll see a jump in performance and they’ll get what they were going to get from him or a higher level. The other thing you have to remember is when you cut someone, there’s acceleration that comes onto the cap. So even though they may lose, whatever the number is that they owe him this year, the savings may only be half that. And you still have to go get a replacement player, so there’s economics involved in this too.

People develop in systems at different rates. He was in one system his whole career (before coming to New England). If you give him the opportunity to show that he belongs … and a lot of times in these contracts, when players renegotiate, you give them incentives so they can earn the money back and you’ll give them a chance to earn even more money if they outperform the contract.”