New England Patriots: Reviewing the Offseason Moves

The Patriots traded their 2017 first and third-round picks to the Saints for Cooks, and a fourth-round pick.

Meanwhile, the Saints are stockpiling draft picks and will have five selections in the first three rounds in April.

Cooks is coming off his second consecutive productive season – 78 receptions, 1,173 yards, eight touchdowns – and he has caught a combined 162 passes for 2,311 yards and 17 touchdowns in the past two seasons.

After Butler arrived, he went to dinner with some members of the team, according to a source, though it’s unclear exactly who dined with the 27-year-old cover man. And while the two sides have not met for a regular-season game since 2013, they’ve kept within shouting distance through joint practices – as well as trades.

“So to come in (to New England) and now have the opportunity to play for another Hall of Fame quarterback – I guess I know how to pick quarterbacks, right?”

Brandin Cooks doesn’t mind trading in Drew Brees for Tom Brady. And there are plenty of other signs that this is the same hoodie-wearing grump who has been running the show in New England for years and not some free-spending impostor. If the Patriots were missing anything it was s a deep threat receiver that can make plays outside of the numbers to pair with their talented slot receivers and rookie Malcolm Mitchell. The Patriots have a high chance of retaining Butler because of the $3.91 million first-round restricted free agent tender they placed on the star cornerback.

At just 5-foot-10 and 190 pounds, Cooks is also the latest guy to obliterate the notion that receivers can’t make it in the National Football League if they’re less than 6 feet tall.

If Patriots’ CB Malcolm Butler does wind up leaving, more than one team may be interested in the former Super Bowl hero.

“There is no question in my mind that I could have played two or three more years”, Ware told MMQB.com.

“I think a lot of that and what was going on got taken out of context and a little exaggerated”, he said. The Patriots have been aggressive in free agency and making trades just a week into free agency.

Typically a pejorative used to mock the desperate efforts of mismanaged franchises to leapfrog into title contention, the term “off-season champion” is seldom applied to the New England Patriots. Bennett will boycott the Patriots upcoming visit to the White House, and that can’t sit well with the owner (Kraft) and the coach (Belichick), both good friends of the president. Do they increase the workload of Eric Rowe and return to more of a 2014 look when Revis and Brandon Browner roamed the secondary?

So, while it’s probably too early to determine if New England is actually better than they were two months ago, it is safe to say that they definitely aren’t in worse shape.