NFL Notebook: Will new helmet-to-helmet rule rob Patriots of valuable offensive option? Plus, Belichick tree, draft & more

In this week's notebook, we take a look at how 2018 will bring a new coaching milestone for Bill Belichick, why the 2004 Patriots were so special, some potential late-round gems for New England to consider in the draft and some key dates to remember over the next month-plus. But first: Will a new rule mean bad news for one of the most effective parts of the New England offense?



1. One of the most successful plays the Patriots have been able to execute over the last decade-plus is the quarterback sneak. From 2001 to 2016, New England ran 139 sneak attempts on third- and fourth-and-short situations, and the Patriots converted 90.6 percent of them, best in the league. Tom Brady can do it because he’s been able to read the field and lower his head while driving forward for a first down. But with the new helmet-to-helmet rules we wrote about here, it could have a serious impact on that specific option in the New England offense — if Brady lowers his head and plunges forward as he's done in the past when it comes to most of his sneaks, by the letter of the law, that’s now a penalty. I spoke with multiple former Patriots over the last week, and they all said they anticipate the league coming to its senses before the start of the regular season, with some saying they could see the league altering the rule to help protect quarterbacks, as it has many times over the last few years. (One player said he anticipates it being “laughed out of the league.”) But from a Patriots’ perspective, it’s certainly something worth keeping an eye on as the 2018 season approaches.

2. With the ascension of Mike Vrabel to the Tennessee head coach job, we started to wonder about just how many ex-Patriots’ players have gone into coaching. We divided them up by year in the early stages of the Bill Belichick Era in New England, and the group that came out on top was the 2004 team, which was honestly stacked when it came to future coaches. We counted 10 guys who were on that team at some point in the season who have ended up in coaching or football administration. That goes all the way from the likes of Vrabel and Kliff Kingsbury (the current head coach at Texas Tech) to Larry Izzo, Roman Phifer and Joe Andruzzi (who have had assistant coaching jobs in the NFL) to guys like Hank Poteat, Adrian Klemm and Terrell Buckley (college positional coaches) and guys who have been part of the football administrative staff at the college level like Kevin Faulk (LSU) and Shawn Mayer (Rutgers). Not sure how that stacks up against some of the other teams of recent vintage, but it’s fair to say that when we talk about the Belichick Coaching Tree, we’ve reached a point in history where we have to start accounting for a whole new branch: ex-players.

3. Oh, and as far as we can tell, this year’s Patriots-Titans game will be a first for Belichick in that it’ll mark his first-ever head-to-head head coaching matchup against a former player. For what it’s worth, it’s happened multiple times in league history, including when Tom Landry faced the likes of Dan Reeves and Mike Ditka. But it’ll be the first time for Belichick.

4. We’ve been proponents of the Patriots taking a late-round flier on Penn State wide receiver DaeSean Hamilton for a few reasons, not the least of which is the fact that he is considered an extremely high-character individual, as well as the fact that he had a dynamite 3-cone time at the combine. One more reason popped up this week — in an interview with Pro Football Weekly, Hamilton noted that his three favorite receivers were Doug Baldwin, Jarvis Landry and Julian Edelman. “Edelman is a mixture of them both,” Hamilton said. “He obviously plays bigger than his size, but at the same time he's got that quickness at that size. It's just such a mismatch for the guys who are trying to cover him. He's great in the slot, but he also can move outside and Tom Brady can find him that way as well.” For the record, Hamilton, he’s considered a mid- to late-round possibility in part because he isn't a wildly overwhelming offensive option (53 catches as a senior), but he’s a former team captain who started all four years for the Nittany Lions. A second-team All-Big 10 performer as a senior, almost 80 percent of his catches in 2017 went for a first down.

5. It’s the last big week for the Pro Day circuit. Here’s what’s on tap for the next few days. If you’re a Patriots’ fan, I’d pay attention to Boise State (linebacker Leighton Vander Esch) and LSU (a number of possibilities, including Russell Gage, a prospect who our pal Eric Edholm says is a “straight up Troy Brown clone”).

Monday: Indiana State, Southeast Missouri.
Tuesday: Boise State, Duke, North Carolina.
Wednesday: Ball State, LSU, New Mexico State.
Thursday: Arkansas State, New Mexico.
Friday: Georgia Southern, Memphis, South Alabama.

6. Speaking of Troy Brown clones, one guy we’re keeping a close eye on — and someone Nick Caserio had a chance to eyeball at Louisville’s Pro Day — was Reggie Bonnafon, a do-everything type who played quarterback, running back, wide receiver and punt returner in his four years with the Cardinals. (He had 805 rushing yards, 446 receiving yards, 1,056 passing yards and 18 total touchdowns in 45 college games.) The 6-foot-2, 212-pounder, who was the starting quarterback at Louisville before Lamar Jackson took over, worked out as a back this past week at Louisville, and is expected to be a late-round/UDFA possibility. “I’m just going to do, like I did today, everything that’s in my power,” Bonnafon told reporters. “Hopefully somebody likes me, and if the opportunity presents itself to get drafted, I’ll be happy. And if not, I’m definitely going to go into camp ready to go. Whichever way is fine with me.”

7. Last week, we touched on the looming release of the preseason schedule, which has been unveiled anywhere between March 30 and April 10 over the last decade. That got some folks wondering about the same window for the regular-season slate — over the last decade, the league has dropped the schedule anywhere between April 14 and April 23. If you’re in the business of trying to predict when the Patriots will be home (in the preseason or the regular season), it’s worth consulting the Gillette Stadium event calendar. On Friday, August 24 and Saturday, August 25, Kenny Chesney is slated to play at Gillette, which likely means the Pats will be on the road that week for the preseason. And Sept. 14-15 (the second week of the NFL’s regular season), Ed Sheeran is playing in Foxborough. Please mark your calendars appropriately. And as long as we’re starting to figure out some looming dates, according to the league, the first day that teams with returning head coaches (like the Patriots) are allowed to start their offseason workout programs is April 16.

8. As of Saturday evening, here’s a list of the notable remaining free agents still on the market:

Quarterback: Jay Cutler, Geno Smith, Matt Moore
Running back: DeMarco Murray, Darren Sproles, Adrian Peterson
Wide receiver: Jeremy Maclin, Eric Decker
Tight end: Marcedes Lewis, Antonio Gates
Offensive line: Austin Howard, Luke Joeckel
Edge defender: Junior Galette, Connor Barwin
Defensive line: Nick Fairley
Linebacker: Jonathan Casillas, Brian Cushing, Navorro Bowman, James Harrison
Cornerback: Bashaud Breeland, Delvin Breaux, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie
Safety: Kenny Vaccaro, Eric Reid, Mike Mitchell

At this stage of the calendar, it’s likely most of these guys are going to end up in a holding pattern between now and the draft — teams will reassess at the end of the month and end up going from there.

9. This week's draft note is on the waiting game and the longest stretch between Patriots’ picks. In 2013, they had 124 selections between pick No. 102 and No. 226, the most space between picks of the Belichick Era. This year, the longest span is between No. 136 (fourth round) and No. 210 (sixth round) — 74 selections. (Of course, this all goes out the window when Belichick makes some of his traditional draft weekend swaps.) In this same vein, you can also consider this our annual reminder that Belichick approaches fifth-round picks unlike anyone else in the league. Dave Archibald had a great piece here at Inside The Pylon from a couple of years ago, detailing the fact that Belichick seemingly prefers to use fifth-round picks as trade currency instead of their intended purpose. But all you really need to know is that Belichick has had only three fifth-round picks in the last seven years (Joe Cardona, Marcus Cannon and Lee Smith), and two of them (Cannon and Smith) came in the same draft.

10. Earlier this offseason, we talked about some quarterbacks in this year’s draft class embracing the Brady training approach. That apparently extends to some of the guys who are already in the league — Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reported this week that Denver quarterback Paxton Lynch has already connected with Alex Guerrero, and plans to come to Foxborough in April to spend some time with Guerrero. “They’ve made some nutritional adjustments,” reported Pelissero. “Paxton Lynch knows he’s at a crossroads here: Year Three of his career, former first-round pick, they traded up to get him. He’s not going to just hand the job over to Case Keenum. He’s trying to get himself in the best shape possible to still keep himself in the mix.” From a New England perspective, it’s going to be interesting to see how many quarterbacks around the league adopt the Brady training technique. It also raises some legitimate questions: Will Guerrero lend a hand to quarterbacks who might end up facing the Patriots down the road? It could add another layer of intrigue to the relationship between Brady’s body coach and the team.

11. The next big contractual deadline for the Patriots is May 2. That’s the deadline for the team to pick up the fifth-year options on defensive tackles Danny Shelton and Malcom Brown and wide receiver Phillip Dorsett. (All three were first-rounders taken in the first round of the 2015 draft.) The defensive tackles would cost roughly $7 million, while the wide receiver would cost $9 million. If New England exercises the option, their salary becomes fully guaranteed for 2019 season. From this viewpoint, it seems logical to pick up the options for both Shelton and Brown, and then revisit Dorsett’s deal following the 2018 campaign after he spends a full year in the system.

12. With all the talk of Johnny Manziel drawing the attention of the Patriots these past couple of weeks, esteemed Houston Chronicle John McClain football writer put it best here, saying that the best thing for Manziel at this stage of his career is to head north to the CFL and play for June Jones in Hamilton’s uptempo passing system for two years and repair his reputation. It’s a point we echoed here. It’s terrific that he’s tried to make amends for his past missteps. But now, Manziel needs to take the next step and go to a league somewhere other than the NFL and show evidence he can grind through a full year (at least) back in the game, all while producing results and showing himself to be a leader. If he can do that, there should be a place at the table for him again.

13. I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the Patriots’ Hall of Fame Nomination Committee for almost the last decade, and with this year’s meeting set for this week, there are a ton of worthy candidates who are worthy for nomination. We’ll have more updates for you next week, but here’s a thumbnail sketch of how the nomination process works: A candidate must be four years removed from his playing/coaching career to be eligible. Committee members can nominate a candidate of their choice and explain why that player should be considered. At the end of that process, each committee member votes for their top three choices with 5 points for the first choice, 3 for the second and 1 for the third. Those finishing in the top three in points are then placed on the final ballot, which is announced and then voted on by fans via www.patriots.com.