“And it’s easiest to identify good players when they’re on your team, playing in your system.” “You want to identify who the good players are,” Belichick said. Sure, Belichick is ” looking for good football players,” a remark that elicited a silent “duh” from the media last year.īut the second part of the equation, which Belichick supports with actions, is the Patriots are looking for good football players at a reasonable price. The 2000 team that went 5-11 in his first season as coach desperately needed a transfusion of veteran talent and leadership, which is why 17 free agents brought in by Belichick figured so prominently on the Super Bowl team. Since the Patriots have gotten a lot of bang for their bucks, they have the luxury of sitting back and biding their time during the free-agency period, which began Friday.īut don’t expect Belichick to load the shopping cart this time. Cutting Johnson would save the Patriots more than $4 million toward the salary cap. Having jettisoned reserve defensive back Terrance Shaw and seldom-used receivers Charles Johnson and Curtis Jackson last week, the Patriots were $4.1 million under the cap and could be as much as $10 million under when they force their least productive big-money players, defensive end Willie McGinest and middle linebacker Ted Johnson, to restructure their contracts for the second consecutive year.īut Johnson, who took close to a 50 percent pay cut last season, is balking and could be cut before March 15, when he is to receive a $1 million bonus. Unlike most recent Super Bowl teams, the Patriots weren’t in a panic trying to unload big salaries when the Friday deadline for getting under the $71.1 million cap arrived. Here’s one even more amazing: They did it without bloating their roster with outrageously paid players they would have been forced to cut to comply with the salary cap for next season. Most people think winning the Super Bowl was an amazing accomplishment for the Patriots.

Patriots roster 2001