Patriots' Last Task of Offseason is Getting Joe Thuney to Sign Extension
One of the New England Patriots' biggest moves this offseason was bringing back starting left guard Joe Thuney. But that move brought an already cash-strapped team even closer to "cap hell."
The Patriots are lacking in cap space. Right now they have the least amount of space in the entire NFL ($650,000). This makes the tagging of Thuney rather problematic. He is now the 2nd highest-paid guard in the entire NFL, making $14.78 million on his one-year deal. That is a situation that the Patriots don't want themselves to be in. They likely will want to add more weapons to help out Jarrett Stidham, and that will be hard to do with the cap space they currently have.
The Patriots are masters in reworking contracts to work in their favor. If they want to make more cap space, an easy solution seems to be reworking Thuney's deal. Even a short term deal would help out the team. One idea that was hypothesized by Michael Lombardi on the "GM Shuffle" podcast was a two-year deal for around $26 million. This would allow for New England to dampen the financial impact of having Thuney on the roster. The problem is that type of deal seems to be growing more unlikely by the day. Thuney would be doing the Patriots a big favor by signing an extension.
The most likely scenario seems to be that Thuney will play on the franchise tag. ESPN's Mike Reiss stated earlier this week that this course of action has around an 80 percent chance of coming true.
"With the sides no closer to an extension than they were in mid-March, and the coronavirus pandemic leading more teams across the league to be cautious with long-term deals, the odds are highest that Thuney plays on the tag in 2020."
This makes sense for Thuney. Why would he take a pay cut when he is entering the prime of his career? He is already a Super Bowl champion, so now seems to be the perfect time to cash in.
New England has to somehow motivate Thuney to strive for more. They need to make promises of Super Bowl runs and individual awards. Belichick will need to prove that Thuney would be making a wise investment by staying with the team. He could possibly even turn a short-term deal with New England into a long-term payday somewhere else.
So the Patriots have a tough challenge ahead. If they want to make some moves to boost their offense they will need to create some cap space. Even just signing Thuney to a short-term extension would make a world of a difference for the team. But getting the All-Pro guard to agree to an extension is one of the toughest tasks the six-time Super Bowl champions have faced this offseason.
