PatsPropaganda

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Updating Patriots’ Salary-Cap Situation After 1st Wave of Free Agency

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Updating Patriots’ Salary-Cap Situation After 1st Wave of Free Agency

Kicking off Thursday with an updated look at the Pats current salary cap situation with a huge hat tip to Miguel Benzan of PatsFans.com. There are a lot of sites that claim to be up-to-date on the Pats’ numbers but Miguel has been doing this far longer than anyone and is the only one I truly trust.

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[The Patriots are] getting a steady player, very smart, headsy guy. A very intelligent football player,” Rivera said of LaFell, who had 49 catches for 627 yards and five touchdowns last season for the Panthers. “He’ll know all the wide receiver positions. He played all of our wide receiver positions, plus he knew the tight end position as well. … I love his tenacity. He’s a willing blocker. He’s a want-to blocker. He wants to block. He won’t block because he has to. He’ll block because he has to. He’ll block because he wants to. And I think that’s impressive. And he’s a solid person. He’s a good person.” “One thing he isn’t — he isn’t a fast, quick-twitch elusive guy,” Rivera added. “But he presents a good target. And they’ll probably play him as a Z in their base personnel group or if they do use him as a slot, they’ll motion him down in and use him to crack as far as the running game’s concerned. And I think they’ll be pleased with him.

It Is What It Is » Getting scouting reports on two new Patriots from their old coaches

https://www.patspropaganda.com/brandon-lafell-patriots/

Patriots may take look with Logan Ryan at safety | Boston Herald

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Patriots may take look with Logan Ryan at safety | Boston Herald

Don’t get this report about Logan Ryan moving to free safety at all. I get that Ryan is promising and is kind of in a log jam at cornerback at the moment, but as much as the Patriots want to put their best guys on the field, I don’t think they want to do it at the expense of not putting them in the best position to succeed.

Ryan seems like he does have the skillset to play safety, but here are the other factors:

– Moving Devin McCourty to strong safety would be his third position change in five seasons. Not that it’s that much different than free safety, but McCourty excelled last season at free safety.

– Duron Harmon looked pretty promising to me last year, especially showing great back end range that might even be better than McCourty’s. I also think he’s the more physical player than Ryan.

– Ryan excelled in the slot and blitzing (see the second Jets game). Maybe strong safety makes more sense for him, but it’s not like he’s the thumper everyone is hoping for.

Ultimately I think you let Ryan go head-to-head with Arrington to start in the slot. Harmon should get the initial first-team reps at strong safety and then let things play out from there.

Maybe Harmon sputters. Maybe Arrington gets hurt. Things can change quickly. But to throw everything into chaos just to put Ryan on the back end of the defense seems extreme to me at this point.

No question, he’s a good player who needs to be on the field, but he was in a similar position last offseason as a rookie, behind a bunch of vets on the depth chart, and then due to injuries he ended up playing a significant role.

Point is, this doesn’t have to be figured out on paper in March.