The rumors continue to leak out of the combine as we stare down the start of the new league year on Thursday. The Patriots always seem to be “interested” in every major free agent, but more often than not those reports are often planted by agents looking to scare the rest of the NFL that the player could land in New England. So take them all with a grain of salt.
Here’s a couple noteworthy pieces from Ben Volin.
2 nuggets as I head home from the Combine: Pats remain interested in bringing back Marty Bennett, though Jags & Raiders are interested, too
— Ben Volin (@BenVolin) March 4, 2017
Of course I think we’d all like to have Marty back. After the Super Bowl it seemed less and less likely that he’d be back in New England, but it’s not hard to see why he has so much value to the Pats. Losing Gronk didn’t really matter all that much this year. Not that Bennett was as good as Gronk, but he can do everything Gronk does, so the Pats offense never truly missed a beat.
Ideally they could roll both monster tight ends out there. We only saw a brief glimpse of the potential that personnel package offered last year, and usually one of them was dealing with some kind of injury. The Pats have a ton of cap space and it has to go somewhere. If it ends up being “Byetower” it could open up a few extra dollars for Marty.
And two, don’t rule out Brandon Marshall coming to New England. There’s some mutual interest there
— Ben Volin (@BenVolin) March 4, 2017
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