The Patriots haven’t won a playoff game since capturing their sixth Super Bowl title. They’ve missed the playoffs two of the last three years.
So what’s wrong with the team that became the first true dynasty of the salary-cap era? Via Khari Thompson of MassLive.com, Patriots owner Robert Kraft believes the problem never should be blamed on a willingness to pay for players.
The issue emerged after Greg Bedard of Boston Sports Journal asked Kraft about comments from coach Bill Belichick that seemed to explain the team’s struggles on failure to spend.
“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 in his 2022 end-of-season press conference. “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.”
What did Kraft have to say about comments that some interpreted as a shot by Belichick at Kraft.
“He says, ‘He has never come to me and not gotten everything he wanted from a cash-spending perspective,” Bedard said. “‘We have never set limits.’” Kraft also said, per Bedard, “‘Money spending will never be the issue, I promise you, or I’ll sell the team.’”
Belichick’s comments imply that spending hasn’t been where it needs to be. Kraft’s comments from late March imply that, unless things turn around in 2023, things could change in 2024.
The Patriots are currently closer to mediocre than great. They could finish fourth in the AFC East, for the first time since Belichick’s first season, in 2000. It will be very interesting to see what that might do to the dynamic between Belichick and Kraft.
