Patriots 2025 roster reset: WR room desperately needs a facelift

Editor's Note: With the beginning of NFL free agency looming on March 12, our Patriots Insider Tom E. Curran is resetting each Patriots position by assessing their 2024 performance, laying out their 2025 contract status and ranking their offseason priority on a scale of 1 to 5.

After quarterbacks, running backs and tight ends, next up is wide receivers.

Here’s a list of the wide receivers brought aboard by the Patriots since 2019:

• Through the draft (and one undrafted): N’Keal Harry, Jakobi Meyers, Tre Nixon, Tyquan Thornton, Kayshon Boutte, DeMario Douglas, Ja'Lynn Polk and Javon Baker.

• Through free agency (and a trade): Dontrelle Inman, Demaryius Thomas, Damiere Byrd, Nelson Agholor, Kendrick Bourne, DeVante Parker, Jalan Reagor, JuJu Smith-Schuster and K.J. Osborn.  

Focus on Meyers, who was undrafted in 2019. He left after 2022 having caught 150 balls for 1,670 yards and eight TDs over his final two seasons in New England. Bill Belichick decided the Patriots would be fine without Meyers. He’s now caught 158 balls for 1,834 yards and 12 touchdowns with the Raiders.

Belichick, you may have read, is gone. Eliot Wolf and Matt Groh -- at the top of the personnel food chain since 2021, when much was made of the new collaboration initiative -- are not. They (Wolf, primarily) ran the show last year. Their draftees -- Polk and Baker -- and the free agent addition Osborn combined for 20 catches and 156 yards.

Tyquan Thornton, who had to have Wolf and Groh fingerprints on him SOMEWHERE, was released halfway through the season. He was a second-round pick in 2022. No need to go on. It’s just an avalanche of ineptitude.

Now, the perpetually wide receiver-needy Patriots are looking at a less-than-meh crop of wideouts in the draft while veteran free agents have been resoundingly uninterested in coming to Foxboro.

In fifty f&*%$#$ years, the best wideouts the team has selected are Stanley Morgan (1977), Irving Fryar (1984), Troy Brown (1993), Terry Glenn (1996), Deion Branch (2002), Julian Edelman (2009) and Douglas (2023). I’m serious. Look it up.

Fifty years. Seven better-than-average, Pro Bowl-level wide receivers who combined for a total of seven Pro Bowl appearances in New England (four for Morgan and one each for Fryar, Glenn and Brown).

Will the Drafted Wideout Curse continue toward the 2030s?????

Bright spots

It took a minute for the Patriots to embrace the fact that they have exactly one hard-to-guard offensive player in Douglas.

He had three total targets in the first two games, then saw 84 targets in the next 15. He finished with 66 catches for 621 yards and three touchdowns. Not exactly a glorious output, but the best the team got from the position. The young man is quick as a hiccup, but I’m not sure Douglas is always in the right place at the right time.

There may be still-untapped production that a more experienced Drake Maye will be able to plumb with Josh McDaniels running the offense.

Kayshon Boutte was the other bright spot. He had 43 catches for 589 yards and three touchdowns and averaged 13.7 per reception. He’s got excellent hands and body control and doesn’t lack for confidence.

He had four drops, which were really maddening because, well, he’s got excellent hands and body control. His confidence can also be maddening because it leads to him saying things like this or this or this.

Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images

Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images

The disappointments

Tyquan Thornton, a second-round pick in 2022, played six games, had four catches and was waived in November. He had 39 catches in three seasons.

K.J. Osborn, signed to a one-year, $4 million deal, played in seven games, had seven catches and was waived in December.

Kendrick Bourne, returning from his ACL injury, played 12 games and had 28 catches, the second-lowest output of his career.

Polk saw 33 passes and caught 12. He dropped four. The Patriots' passer rating when throwing to him was 52.5. He might have had the worst wide receiver season in the NFL. Baker, meanwhile, didn’t have a catch until the final game.

Most disappointing about the two rookies is how detached from football reality they seemed to be. Polk, after a spate of drops, proclaimed he had the best hands in the league. Baker, when drafted, instructed fans to bring their popcorn and promised he’d make “people in wheelchairs stand up.” 

You cannot make this stuff up.

Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images

Brian Fluharty-Imagn Images

Contract statuses

Kendrick Bourne has a base salary of $5.5 million and a cap hit of $7.7 million. He'd save the team $6.3 million in cap space if he’s released post-June 1, and $12.8 million in total over the next two seasons. (He has a $7.9 million cap hit next year). So even though the cap is going up rapidly, that’s not an insignificant outlay for a guy whose production has cratered since 2021.

Polk received a four-year, $9.69 million deal with $8.2 million guaranteed last year. He’s on the books for a $2.2 million hit this year. Baker got a four-year, $4.8 million deal and made $1.6 million last year.

Douglas, meanwhile, has earned $1.8 million in his two years of actually producing. His cap hits over the next two years are half of Polk’s.

It’s hard to hold out when your team stinks and you’re just a little better than average. But Douglas has to make more than the other two. Boutte, taken in the sixth round of 2023 like Douglas, has a similar contract.

Offseason priority (Scale of 1-5)

FIVE. Cinqo. Cinq. Fünf. Cinque. Fem. Fijf. Пять. Πέντε. In every language.

The need remains DIIIIIRRRRREEEEE. The notion of turning over the entire room and starting fresh is -- believe it or not -- justifiable. Won’t happen. Can’t happen. But has to be tempting.

The Patriots need to kick over every rock to improve the room with professionals who get the total concept of the NFL. That’s why a Cooper Kupp trade or brief but expensive Davante Adams signing should be explored.

Hell, what would it take to get Meyers back from the Raiders? Curse-breaker!!!