It wasn't long ago that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft opened up his checkbook and allowed Bill Belichick to go on a spending spree at the start of 2021 free agency.
Belichick and the Patriots added "better players" available on the open market and spent close to $170 million. It was the class that awarded the Patriots players like Matthew Judon (four years, $56 million), Jonnu Smith (four years, $50 million), Hunter Henry (three years, $37.5 million), Nelson Agholor (two years, $26 million), Jalen Mills (four years, $24 million) as well as Kendrick Bourne (three years, $22.5 million) and others.
Since their respective arrivals, however, the Patriots have not come any closer to competing for a Super Bowl. New England missed the playoffs after Sunday's Week 18 loss to the Bills, and the 2021-22 campaign ended when the Patriots were dominated in Buffalo during the wild-card round.
During his season-ending press conference Monday morning, Belichick was asked whether he thought the Patriots got the best bang for their buck with that aforementioned 2021 class. The Patriots head coach pushed back at the idea of New England's flurry of spending and pointed to the law of averages.
"When you look at the National Football League and the salary cap situation, it's the same for all teams," Belichick told reporters, per a team-provided transcript. "What we try to do is we look at it over a time frame. One year is a polaroid snapshot, but actually, there are multiple years involved. At some point, the reconciliation has to come.
"Our spending in 2020, our spending in 2021 and our spending in 2022, the aggregate of that, was we were 27th in the league in cash spending," Belichick said. "Couple years we're low, one year was high, but over a three-year period, we are one of the lowest spending teams in the league. Had we averaged that out in those three years, you would have had the same numbers."
To Belichick's point, the Patriots didn't have nearly the same offseason in 2022. It was expected given the previous year. They re-signed their own like Devin McCourty, Matthew Slater, James White, Ja'Whaun Bentley while adding those like Jabrill Peppers, Malcolm Butler and Ty Montgomery on the open market -- both Butler and Montgomery combined to play a single game during the 2022 campaign.
"I thought that in retrospect, the free agency, we added a lot of really good players to this football team," Belichick said in reference to the 2021 class. "Some guys have been very productive for us, some guys have had less production than some of the highly productive players, but overall, we're a much better football team with the players that we added.
"I think when you look at the aggregate of all those players, that we improved our team quite a bit with that group of players, yes," Belichick concluded.
The truth is that the 2021 class, however, has been a mixed bag. Judon earned his fourth consecutive Pro Bowl nod in 2022 after a career-high in sacks (15.5) and quarterback hits (28). But he's been by far the best signing from that offseason. Besides that, the versatile tight end Smith has had one touchdown in 30 games with the Patriots and Agholor's 31 catches in 2022 were his fewest since his rookie season in 2015. The law of averages in this case probably would have the Patriots in the red.
Belichick indicated there is going to be some soul-searching this offseason, especially on the offensive side of the football. And for good reason. Because as it currently stands, the Patriots offense has not got the most out of its spending splurge.
