After one day into the legal tampering period, the Patriots have lost Jakobi Meyers to the Las Vegas Raiders on a 3-year $33 million contract with $21 million in guarantees. My initial gut reaction is that I’m surprised it was for that little. Going back to our pre-Free-Agency predictions, Eric and I both predicted that someone would overpay for him and it looks like Jakobi received a pretty fair contract for his production.
The question on everyone’s minds then is well if it’s so reasonable, why didn’t the Patriots match this? Well before we dissect the Patriots reasoning for this lets first look at Jakobi’s words via Josina Anderson:
“It’s hard to turn down Las Vegas. When you look at their offense, when you look at their coaches. They wanted me, I wanted them. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out with the Patriots. I put a lot of effort in my time there. I appreciate them, but God works in mysterious ways. I’m blessed.”
Meyers’ Perspective
“When you look at their offense, when you look at their coaches”
If you take Jakobi at his words it’s possible this past season’s disaster on the offensive coaching staff soured Jakobi on whether or not he wanted to return. Jakobi, like many, have great respect for McDaniel’s offensive system and the idea of returning to that familiarity and knowledge base could have been quite intriguing. Also, the Raiders are in much better position right now offensively than the Patriots are. They have Adams, Renfrow and Jacobs to take some of the pressure off and he no longer needs to be out of place and can fit in better in a 2 or 3 role rather than being miscast as a number 1.
It’s also possible that New England even matched their offer and weighing the offense and coaching overruled returning to the same team. Also to note, there is no income tax in Vegas, so if New England did indeed match their offer Jakobi would have lost 9.1% (~$1.001 million AAV) of that contract to the state of Massachusetts.
Patriots Perspective
One possibility was mentioned previously where New England may have matched the deal and lost out to either state income tax or the situation in Vegas. It’s likely that if this was the possibility, the Patriots figured the comp of the contract to Nelson Agholor made the most sense and didn’t want to go above that.
The other possibility I’m hoping is the case is that while Jakobi is a nice player to have, the Patriots didn’t value him too much and thought they could get similar production at a cheaper number that way they could use more resources to obtain a true #1 WR. As we’ve stated before in our pre-free agency predictions:
The Patriots are going to have a price set on him and likely won’t budge nor should they since while Meyers is a nice piece to have, he’s not an elite WR or even a number 1 WR…The Patriots like we’ve said for a while lack difference makers on offense and need to get more production from the WR group.
Who Will Stay and Who Will Leave in the Upcoming Class of Patriots Free Agents: Kevin
We all know the Patriots lacked speed and play maker ability at the WR group last year. Would it really make much sense to bring back 4 of the 5 WRs from that group by re-signing Jakobi to a medium deal? Looking at the remaining group of Tyquan Thornton, Devante Parker, and Kendrick Bourne, there is something to be had there with the right coaching and another move or two. Thornton showed some flashes in pre-season and against Cleveland but ended up regressing and Bourne had a major dip from his previous year. It is possible that Bill O’Brien will be able to get more out of this group since I think Bourne and Thornton have a lot of talent.
If the Patriots are able to acquire an outside WR like either Jeudy, Sutton, Hopkins¸ or someone that’s not currently on the trade block and then also draft another WR, I think the Patriots would be in better position than if they were to re-sign Jakobi and do only one of those two options.
Remember everyone, it’s only day 2 of the tampering period and not even technically the start of Free Agency. The Patriots’ have a lot of time to figure out the WR group and it doesn’t have to be done overnight. As many would think I’m just being Frank Drebin….
This is the status quo for how things have been done around here over the last 20 years where everyone thinks the sky is falling the first few days and then things end up working themselves out.
PS: While I’m writing this, I noticed that Phillip Dorsett has also signed with the Raiders…Hunter Renfrow anyone??
