Wednesday Patriots Notebook 5/31: News and Notes

Some news and notes for this morning:

Hopkins Impact May Not Be Enough

While the questions continue to swirl around where DeAndre Hopkins might eventually end up, Tom Curran appeared on WEEI’s Gresh and Furia on Tuesday, and he believes that New England would be a surprise, albeit for different reasons.

Curran believes that the issue is less to do with Hopkins and more to do with where the team is currently at.  Given the amount of money it would take to bring him in, Curran isn’t sure the team would get the necessary return back on its investment.

“I think the chances would be remote, but at this juncture in his career, I’m sure he’d be happy to find out what all offers are out there?  It would be crazy not to,” said Curran.  “I guess the question, for me is, do you guys think that he is a missing piece for the Patriots?  I mean, you can always use a player of that ilk, but if he’s going to be $15 or $16 million, does he bring you $15 or $16 million worth of different play that are going to take you someplace that the six wideouts they have or not?  Is he the one missing piece?”

The Patriots lost Jakobi Meyers to free agency this offseason and parted ways with tight end Jonnu Smith.  From there, they added JuJu Smith-Schuster and Mike Gesicki both being signed as their likely respective replacements.

As it currently stands, they have Kendrick Bourne, DeVante Parker, and second-year wideout Tyquan Thornton to round out their receiving corps, with incumbent practice squad player Tre Nixon still with a chance to be in the mix after he flashed at various points before getting squeezed out during last year’s roster cutdown.

They also added Kayshon Boutte and Demario Douglas in the sixth round last month, with both offering some intangibles that could potentially pay dividends should one or both emerge.

Either way, Curran does have a point that we don’t really know what this team has at this stage.  It’s sort of hard to build off of something that is essentially a bunch of pieces spread out on the ground that they’re still trying to figure out how to put together.

Jets Predicted Steelers-Patriots Trade

While many of us lauded Belichick for making the trade with the Steelers to trade back on draft night, which gave Pittsburgh the chance to grab Broderick Jones, it appears they saw that coming.

The team posted a video of Jets general manager Joe Douglas calling that move before it even happened on draft night.

“I bet somebody is going to trade up in front of us for Broderick Jones with New England,” said Douglas in the clip.  “Pittsburgh,” he said, with that clearly being his prediction.

Moments later, you can hear the announcement being made as the Steelers did indeed take Jones, and Douglas reacted, making notes and obviously moving on before taking Iowa State defensive end Will McDonald.

Obviously, they saw it coming, but it at least kept Jones away from their Division Rivals.  Although McDonald is a talented player who will still likely be tough to deal with on what’s already a pretty tough Jets defense.

Belichick Dodged a Bullet

While the $50,000 penalty Belichick was hit with for the team’s violations last week was fairly hefty, it appears it could have been worse.

Mike Reiss pointed out that the maximum fine the club could have faced was $100,000, which is what Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy was hit with last year for a similar infraction.

They also avoided any financial penalty to the team, which was another positive.  The league praised the team for its transparency, which likely helped them avoid any worse penalty.

OTAs Open to The Media Today

Today marks the first open session to the media of this offseason, with Bill Belichick set to address reporters this morning, along with media members having access to view the players up close for the first time.

Some of the biggest questions will be the impressions and what we see from some of the new players.  The hope this time of year is to see a couple of guys stand out and try to establish themselves, with the goal of trying to build some momentum ahead of training camp.

Granted, what happens this week doesn’t necessarily guarantee a roster spot in September.  We’ve seen quite a few players over the years stand out during minicamps and OTAs, only to fizzle during training camp.

But at the same time, we’ve also seen some players start writing the first chapters in their careers before ending up surprising everyone while becoming key pieces with this football team.

That tends to be probably the most interesting part of the process.  After losing out last week following the club getting penalized for violations that cost them two practices, hopefully, after today, we’ll start to get a little bit of a sense of how things might play out.