The Belichick Temp Agency was again up front and center on Tuesday as the crafty defacto general manager of the Patriots swung a deal to dump the speedster and his $8.46 million cap hit on the Rams after just one season with New England. As the deal is finalized, the Patriots will have a little over $15 million in cap space, while the Rams are going to have to cut $3 million off of their current cap to fit Cooks into the fold.
Perhaps the Rams are taking a page out of Belichickian philosophy so far as acquiring temporary players as one year rentals, but their devil-may-care approach and flamboyant disregard for their long-term cap success is sure to land them on the bread lines as soon as 2019, while Belichick's fiscally temperate approach will ensure, once again, that his Patriots will trudge along like a rag-tag band of freedom fighters.
Such are the core beliefs of "Belichickonomics":
1. The market will set the price for free agents, and that a player's worth is determined not solely in what the player has accomplished in the past, but mostly in what age and experience tells us he will accomplish in the future;
Sometimes this backfires, mostly because teams like the Rams overpay and drive up the price tag for other like-free agents. Four of Belichick's now-former charges have gone on to where the turf is greener - cash wise - and all were over-paid. Left Tackle Nate Solder signed a record deal with the Giants, cornerback Malcolm Butler and running back Dion Lewis got huge deals from the Titans and Miami poached wide receiver Danny Amendola on a contract that must have his head still swimming.
In accordance with Belinomics, the market set their price tags so high that there was no way he was going to strap his salary cap to appease their financial demands. Such is the nature of free agency, though there are plenty of examples of players whom Belichick insisted try the open market to set their value, only to return with a solid but financially feasible offers - the latest of which includes Dont'a Hightower.
Some (many) call him cheap and/or heartless when it comes to retaining players, but he has a salary cap to attend to and he's not going to risk cap stability and the resultant rotational depth chart - nor should he. If the market sets a value on a player, he will come as close as he can without disrupting the cap balance. If it doesn't work, there's always:
2. Focus on players who have either been miscast or misused or under-utilized in their current employs, sign them at a salary commensurate with their tenured status and put them in position to bring out the best in their skill set - many times that turns into a win-win scenario for both the player and the team;
Chances are, players who have been miscast or misused or under-utilized are not on the minds of the suckers who dive into the free agent pool head-first, spending obscene amounts of money on the big name that will get their fan bases fired up and put butts in the stadium seats. Hey, NFL head coaches double as public relations mavens sometimes...
But once the initial feeding frenzy has subsided, piranhas like Belichick show up and make five or six or seven smaller-scale moves in a row, in the interim keeping the fan base in an absolute mad dog froth with their inactivity. These are the guys that find roles on the team that ensure two things: first that they will toil in relative anonymity unless they do something really good or something really bad and second, they will contribute enough for every team in the league to have good tape on them.
Rex Burkhead is an example, as are Marquis Flowers, Lawrence Guy, and Eric Lee - and it seems that Belichick always seems to land a handful of former 1st round draft picks in the haul, often for little or nothing because their former team had given up on them - a volatile lot for sure, as they are often boom-or-bust prospects, but Belichick has had enough success with them to keep doing it...
...and now oft-injured tight end Troy Niklas can be added to the mix, with an opportunity to thrive in a new system that uses tight ends differently than most.
3. The rookie salary cap is our friend. It is far less expensive to stock players through the draft and develop them in-house than to pay top free agents. The ones that perform well and are team-first both on the field and within the salary cap form the base core of the team - the others get washed out through attrition.
Of the 72 players currently on the roster, exactly half of them are Belichick draft picks and an additional dozen were originally undrafted rookie free agents picked up after the draft by the Dark Master - and a new class is on it's way with probably eight of them either making the team or the practice squad.
Belichick takes a lot of flack for his draft picks at times, and there probably is some truth to him missing in certain spots, especially with wide receivers, as his disastrous picks in the 2013 draft will attest - even though that same draft is considered successful on the defensive side of the ball. With that in mind, wide receiver is a position that Belichick usually addresses via trade and free agency...
...even so, 13 of the Patriots projected 22 starters are original Patriots' draft picks, two were acquired via trade and the rest were obtained in free agency, lending credence to the notion that Belichick does draft well, but many times will draft with a year or two of development in mind.
In trading Cooks, the Patriots add to their stockpile of top-end draft capital, which is important since the receiving corps and secondary are stocked with players either approaching or over the age of 30, and the quarterback position so aged that when Brady sliced his hand in practice before the AFC Championship game last January, dust came flying out instead of blood.
In contrast to Belichickonomics, the Rams are certainly saying all the right things, including some talk of working on a long-term extension for Cooks, but in the end, that might just be lip service for their fans, who apparently can't see the forest for the trees.
At the end of the 2018 season, Los Angeles will have four major free agent issues to address in addition to Cooks - those being for defensive tackles Aaron Donald and Nadamukong Suh, cornerback Marcus Peters and running back Todd Gurley - along with two more Pro Bowl quality players entering their contract years in defensive end Michael Brockers and cornerback Aqib Talib.
In using the franchise tag numbers for this season, which factors in the top five salaries for each position, Cooks could be in line for $16 million per year, Donald and Suh for $14 million a piece, Peters in the range of $15 million and Gurley, whose number will likely depend on what the Steelers end up giving Le'Veon Bell, should see $15 million at the least...
...which would add up to a top-heavy $74 million just for those five - a full 42% of their total cap space, with Brockers in line for $17 million if extended.
New England, on the other hand, by dumping Cooks has pared down their list of potential free agents to kicker Stephen Gostkowski, punter Ryan Allen, defensive end Trey Flowers, defensive tackles Malcom Brown and Danny Shelton, right guard Shaq Mason and wide receiver Chris Hogan - with Flowers really the only player who could command north of $8 million per year.
Gostkowski and Allen are most likely looking at $4 million and $3 million, respectively, Mason should net around $5 million and Hogan - who is on the wrong side of thirty - probably won't see much over what he's making now, which is close to $4 million. Brown and Shelton are both subject to fifth year options, which would pay them around $6 million each.
My math tells me that even if Flowers does agree to $8 million per season, that's just $36 million in cap space eaten up by seven players, or just 20% of the Patriots' cap space - and that doesn't count whatever the Patriots are going to roll over into 2019, which could be significant given that tight end Dwayne Allen and running back Mike Gillislee are likely to hit the waiver wire at some point this summer, freeing up another $8 million....
...the kicker being that the Patriots have loaded up on prime draft capital for which can be signed with a cap hit barely registering on the seismograph.
But now, what does Belichick do with his fortune in draft capital?
That remains to be seen, but with Cooks being dealt combined with the minor blip signings of depth players in subsequent moves, it appears that Belichick is done with his free agency splash, and is preparing for the draft.
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