Adding former Patriots to new teams is no guarantor of future success.
The tweets wrote themselves: “the Detroit Patriots.”
That’s the common reaction to how Matt Patricia’s Lions kicked off his second foray into free agency as their head coach. Detroit dedicated its first day of free agent wheeling and dealing by reuniting the former New England defensive coordinator with a trio of ex-Patriots — wide receiver Danny Amendola, cornerback Justin Coleman, and pass rusher Trey Flowers.
The signings work on paper. Amendola will be 34 this season, but he’s a reliable third receiver. Flowers was one of the league’s most underrated defensive linemen before a deluge of thinkpieces about his unknown greatness swung the needle in the opposite direction, but he’s still a great player. Coleman has never been a full-time starter, but he’s a budding young cornerback who can make the most of his opportunity in Michigan. All three should help the Lions and the coach once plucked from Bill Belichick’s coaching tree.
But it rarely works that way.
The Patriot Way (tm) has proved untransferable outside of New England. Coaches like Josh McDaniels and Mike Vrabel found out paying the players who price themselves out of Belichick’s circle of trust doesn’t lead to improvements. And now Lions general manager Bob Quinn — who was with the Patriots franchise from 2000-15— and Patricia are trying to buck that trend.
Signing the players Belichick isn’t willing to pay market value isn’t a recipe for success.
Let’s start in 2009. Josh McDaniels left his post as the Patriots’ offensive coordinator for the head coaching job with the Broncos. While the biggest move tied to his arrival was shipping Jay Cutler to Chicago, he also made a handful of moves to bring his former charges to Denver. Wide receiver Jabar Gaffney, who’d earned $2.38 million over three years with the Patriots, inked a four-year, $10 million contract with the Broncos. Trades for bit players Le Kevin Smith and Russ Hochstein followed.
While McDaniels would race out to a 6-0 start that included an overtime win against New England — where Gaffney had six catches for 61 yards — his new players underwhelmed in a 2-8 finish that kept the Broncos out of the postseason. The following season he traded for former Patriot Laurence Maroney to beef up a tailback rotation led by the inconsistent Knowshon Moreno. That fall, McDaniels clashed with his owners and turned in a 3-9 record before being fired in December.
Gaffney turned in two perfectly solid seasons at wideout and was then traded to Washington. Hochstein spent three years as a useful interior lineman who could start games in a pinch. Maroney and Smith were non-factors, with the former lasting just four games with Denver.
These players were all fine-to-disappointing additions who filled gaps, but none were able to replicate the team success they’d found in New England. This isn’t the only time that’s happened.
Mike Vrabel was never a Patriots assistant coach, but his familiarity with the franchise goes back through eight seasons and 10 touchdown catches with the team. He inherited a Titans club in 2018 that already had a pair of overperforming former Patriots in defensive back Logan Ryan and lineman Josh Kline, who’d helped push Tennessee to its first playoff berth in nearly a decade in 2017. Vrabel spent big to reward two major Pats contributors on the open market last spring, dishing out more than $81 million in contracts to Dion Lewis and Malcolm Butler and re-signing Kline to a $26 million deal.
Unlike Gaffney and Hochstein, these names failed to pay off in their first year outside Foxborough. Butler struggled early in the season before making adjustments late and rated out as Pro Football Focus’s 57th best cornerback. Lewis had the worst full season of his pro career as his yards-per-carry average dropped from 5.0 to 3.3. Even Kline struggled, vacating his throne as one of the best guards in the league and earning a somewhat-surprising release at the start of the league’s new year.
As a result, a 9-7 Titans team set to take over the AFC South thanks to the Jaguars’ sudden decline in 2018 went ... 9-7, missing the playoffs in the process. Tennessee made a concerted effort to shore up some of its glaring weaknesses by luring two big-time competitors to its locker room and got zero improvement in the standings.
There are other examples, too. Mark Anderson rehabilitated his career with a 10-sack season for the Patriots in 2011. He signed a four-year, $19.5 million deal with the Bills the following year and recorded one sack over the remainder of his career — which ended in 2012. Wes Welker couldn’t get the cash he wanted from the Pats in 2013 so he signed a two-year, $12 million deal with the Broncos — and gained fewer yards in the final three years of his career than he had in 2012 with New England. Patrick Chung and LeGarrette Blount each signed lucrative deals with teams based in Pennsylvania only to underwhelm and then return to the Pats as major contributors to championship teams.
It’s not all bad, though. Aqib Talib turned one year in New England into a return to stardom and a Super Bowl ring with the Broncos. Jabaal Sheard has been an understated piece of the Colts’ ahead-of-schedule rebuild. Akiem Hicks is a fearsome piece of the Bears’ front three.
Still, past results don’t bode well for a team loading up on former Belichick students — especially when playing for a former Belichick student.
The Lions’ signings could be different, because they make a lot of sense.
Patricia is diving back into that void by signing Flowers, Amendola, and to a much lesser extent, Coleman. This isn’t to say the Lions have made bad decisions this offseason. They haven’t!
Flowers is a great young dynamic player who can provide the pass-rushing presence Patricia thought he’d be getting from Ziggy Ansah last season. Amendola should thrive in the gaps left behind by Marvin Jones and Kenny Golladay, who each should see lighter coverage as a result. Coleman improved significantly away from New England, and while he’s getting starter money after making only 13 starts in his four-year career, he’s a rising player who addresses a distinct need.
And if throwing money at the players the Patriots like but not at a top-of-the-class price were a for-sure losing bet, the rest of the league wouldn’t be on that same tip. The Raiders handed a record-setting contract at Trent Brown to get him to protect Derek Carr’s blindside (this may not work out well). Cordarrelle Patterson’s Swiss Army knife of a season earned him a healthy raise with a two-year, $10 million deal with the NFC North champion Bears.
Even Vrabel’s still on that hook, snatching former Buccaneers slot receiver Adam Humphries away from New England’s gaze by offering him a no-way-the-Patriots-will-match-this four-year, $36 million contract.
There’s still plenty of room for the Detroit Patriots to work out. Landing a handful of Belichick favorites addresses some of the team’s biggest needs at wideout and along the defensive line. Adding non-New Englanders in tight end Jesse James and a useful backup interior lineman in Oday Aboushi will help as well.
Patricia’s Lions should be better than last year’s 6-10 version. But history suggests splurging on the guys New England wasn’t willing to pay market value for won’t lead to the turnaround for which the second-year coach is hoping. Paying former Patriots is no panacea — and Patricia’s going to have to coax improvements across the board and not just the areas where the Lions been willing to spend this offseason to make them a contender in 2019.
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