NFL Notebook: Tug-of-war over Caserio underscores value, uniqueness of Patriots’ personnel man

In this week’s NFL Notebook, we deconstruct the Patriots’ roster by age, check out the importance of unplugging at this time of year, and see how a former New England cornerback is doing as a college coach. But first, with the Texans and Patriots ending their battle for Nick Caserio, the back-and-forth highlighted Caserio’s role in the New England organization, and serve as a reminder as to just how rare his talents are when it comes to being a front-office man.

1. The back-and-forth for Nick Caserio this week between Houston and New England really served to spotlight the value he has within the Patriots’ organization. He has a unique role in New England — he’s the director of player personnel, sure, but he’s a ubiquitous presence on the practice field (usually working as a quarterback during drills), he’s on the headsets on game day, and he plays a sizable role in player evaluation, both at a college and professional level. No wonder the Patriots apparently have a clause in his contract that says he can’t interview with other teams.

The bottom line is that there are very few individuals like him throughout the league who have as much input into the day-to-day running of the operation and the big-picture planning as Caserio. Ultimately, for all the praise we lavish on the likes of Belichick, Robert Kraft and Tom Brady, in his behind-the-scenes role, Caserio deserves a lot of credit as one of the architects of the second phase of the Patriots’ dynasty, and deserves to be rewarded accordingly, especially if 2019 is really the last year of his contract. (Talk about your unrestricted free agents.)

“He does a lot of different things for us,” Bill Belichick said of Caserio earlier this year. “I’m sure he does more than anybody in the league at his position in terms of his interaction with the team, the coaching staff and the college and pro scouting. He's involved in a lot of different things, and does a great job at all of them. His job description would be several pages.”