The writing is on the wall for everyone to see, which might help explain why the New England Patriots went out of their way to bring back old friend Trent Brown via trade this week.
The Las Vegas Raiders dealt Brown back to New England in a pick-swap trade that has the teams exchanging Day 3 choices in 2022. And now Bill Belichick's club has the flexibility to deal with what could be the imminent departure of free-agent-to-be Joe Thuney.
With Brown in the mix, the Patriots pick up a behemoth edge protector who can settle in on either side of the offensive line. When the Patriots acquired him prior to the 2018 season in a trade with the San Francisco 49ers, Brown quickly became the team's starting left tackle. Signing with the Raiders for $36 million guaranteed in 2019, he swapped sides and played on the right side.
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Brown (listed at 6-foot-8, 380 pounds with the Raiders) has eye-popping power regardless of where he plays -- the kind of power that often has other powerful men in awe of his on-the-field feats of strength.
"We were kind of blown away at some of the things he was able to do," center David Andrews said before Super Bowl LIII. " ... Some of the stuff in the run game he could do. He's so big he could kind of swallow up people. It was pretty impressive. Same thing in pass pro. He's just so big, hard to get around. He has great length, great strength. He's a good football player."
The Patriots could use as many good football players as they can get along the offensive line since Thuney, arguably the best player on the roster last year, is likely to receive a mammoth payday elsewhere in free agency. According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, the Patriots are not expected to use the franchise tag on Thuney, as they did last year.
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Thuney will get paid somewhere, though, even with the cap cratering as the league deals with the financial repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. He's considered one of the best in football at his craft, and those types of high-end talents are not expected to be impacted by the league's shrinking salary cap.
The Patriots have the cap space to keep Thuney around if they wanted to; with more than $60 million available (pending Brown's deal hitting the books), the team ranked in the top five in football in free cap space. But they also have a promising young guard in Michael Onwenu, a sixth-round pick in 2020 who shocked the league by quickly becoming one of the NFL's best young linemen as a rookie.
Despite being viewed by the Patriots as a guard-only prospect prior to working with him, Onwenu kicked outside to right tackle last season because the club had a need there. But in order to play to Onwenu's strengths -- and in order to maximize the team's financial flexibility -- the move that may make the most sense would be to allow Thuney to seek his massive contract elsewhere, play Onwenu at guard, then have Brown settle in at right tackle.
Late last year, when Belichick was asked about Onwenu's future, he said the 350-pounder's play had given the team options in terms of where he could be used in the long term.
"That’s something we’ll take a long, hard look at this year," Belichick said. "This year, putting him at tackle was kind of our way to try to get our best players on the field with Isaiah [Wynn] and so forth . . . I think he’s shown, maybe a little bit surprisingly to us and him, his ability to play tackle.
"Again, that’s something he really hasn’t done. So, that’s a great credit to him and it certainly increases his value to our team and we’ll have to take a look at what’s best for him, what’s best for the team. And honestly, the improvements he’s made at tackle, there’s probably a discussion as to how much difference is there between guard and tackle in his play and so forth.
"It’s been an opportunity that I would say we didn’t anticipate at the start of the year or even when we drafted him. We thought that he would be competing for the third guard position behind Joe and Shaq [Mason]. It’s turned into something different than that. So, we’ll see if we go back to the original plan or whether we don’t.
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"This is similar to when we drafted [Richard] Seymour. In the first year, he played nose and then he went back to defensive end. Then we drafted [Vince] Wilfork and the first year he played defensive end and then he went back to nose. And then we drafted [Nate] Solder and he played right tackle and he eventually moved back to left tackle where we drafted him, or where we thought we were drafting him for.
"So, sometimes that first year, first and second year, is maybe a little different than the original plan and sometimes maybe the original plan, you end up back there anyway, and sometimes you don’t. So, we’ll just have to take a look at that here at the end of the season and see where things are next year and have some kind of a plan. Maybe it’s some kind of combination of both. I don’t know, but he’s opened a lot of doors and opportunities for himself and we’ll see how that fits into our team concept."
Patriots center David Andrews, like Thuney, is about to hit free agency as well. If he can be retained, the Patriots could be looking at a 2021 offensive line group that includes Wynn at left tackle, Onwenu at left guard, Andrews at center, Mason at right guard and Brown at right tackle. Marcus Cannon could return after opting out of the 2020 season, and second-year player Justin Herron is available to provide tackle depth.