Why Bill Belichick Says Patriots’ Low Cash Spending Not ‘Relevant’

Of the 32 NFL teams, only one has shelled out less cash this year than the New England Patriots.

The Patriots rank 31st in the league in 2023 cash spending at $209,450,254, according to OverTheCap. Only the Los Angeles Rams rank lower. The league-leading Baltimore Ravens have spent nearly $100 million more than New England.

What do those numbers mean? In Bill Belichick's eyes, not much.

During an appearance Monday on WEEI's "The Greg Hill Show," Belichick said spending in relation to the salary cap, not overall cash spending, is the more "relevant" metric.

"Cash spending isn't really that relevant. It's cap spending," Belichick said. "So teams that spend a lot of cash one year probably don't spend a lot of cash in the next year, because you just can't sustain that. So we've had high years, we've had low years, but our cap spending has always been high. And that's the most competitive position you can be in. So that's really -- the cash spending, there's no cash cap. There's a salary cap, and we spend to the salary cap, that's what's important."

As of Monday, the Patriots ranked 11th in the NFL in available salary cap space (just over $15 million), per OverTheCap, though that could change this week as teams cut their rosters from 90 players to 53. They have the most cap space in the league for the 2024 season by a wide margin.

Belichick went on to note how recent Super Bowl-winning teams like the Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers now are paying the price for going "all in" on cash spending to win their respective championships. LA and Tampa both have more than $74 million in dead money sitting on their books this season.

"Temporarily, you can," Belichick said. "You can't sustain it, no. I mean, you can't sustain the 20 years of success that we sustained by overspending every year without having to eventually pay those bills and play with a lesser team. So I think if you look at the teams that have done that, that's kind of where some of them ended up. Jacksonville back in '14, the Rams are going through it, Tampa's going through it now. Not saying there's anything right or wrong with it, it's just a different way of doing things, and there's a result for doing that."

Belichick touched on that same topic back in 2020, when the Patriots, saddled with a hefty dead cap charge resulting from Tom Brady's departure, fielded a talent-deficient roster. That was the Cam Newton season, during which New England went 7-9 and missed the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade.

"I mean, look, we paid Cam Newton $1 million," Belichick said in November 2020. "It’s obvious that we didn’t have any money. It’s nobody’s fault. That’s what we did the last five years. We sold out and won three Super Bowls, played in a fourth and played in an AFC Championship Game. This year, we had less to work with. It’s not an excuse. It’s just a fact.”

The Patriots followed that up with an uncharacteristically extravagant spending spree during the 2021 offseason, followed by more modest hauls in 2022 and '23. The first two yielded similar results, with New England going 10-7 and losing in the wild-card round in 2021 and 8-9 and missing the playoffs last season. The Patriots have not won a postseason game since 2018, Brady's penultimate season with the franchise.

With upward of $100 million of available cap space for 2024, Belichick's club could be in a position to spend big again next offseason.

"You want to use all your cap space and put the best team you can on the field," Belichick said on WEEI. "So whether that's paying more cash this year and less next year, or less this year and more next year, is really ... to me, it doesn't have a lot to do with the cap spending. If you're not spending to your cap, then that means you could have players that you're choosing not to have. Whereas if you spend to your cap, you've fully exhausted all of your spending.

"But again, that comes over time. You can't look at it in Polaroid snapshots. It's a multi-year process. So you can overspend one year, then at some point, you're not going to be able to do that."