Could New England Patriots possibly have dropped the ball on a personnel move?
It may be that Minnesota Vikings head coach Brad Childress has gotten a small token of revenge for the abject humiliation the schematically far superior New England Patriots handed him in a 31-7 blow-out in the Twin Cities last season. Childress also got a solid player in fullback/tight end Garrett Mills while doing so.
Patriots cut Mills last Saturday but, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, was expecting to re-sign him to the practice squad. But Patriots didn’t get him back because Vikings snagged him, even after New England’s head coach Bill Belichick placed a call to Childress to clear Mills through the waivers. Here’s how the Star-Tribune reports it:
Speaking on WCCO-AM, Childress said the Patriots wanted to sneak Mills onto their practice squad. According to Childress, Belichick said he was interested in a Vikings castoff but would not claim that player if the Vikings passed on Mills.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m really interested in your guy, so we’ll have to let our guy slide,’ ” Childress said. “He didn’t really care for that. He was trying to leverage. You always find out who is honest and straightforward.”
Ultimately, Belichick followed through on his alleged threat: The Patriots claimed linebacker David Herron, who had signed with the Vikings as a rookie free agent and was among 22 players cut Saturday.
Here’s what Belichick had to say about roster-reduction weekend shenanigans at a press-conference on August 28 (I don’t know who asked the question, but whoever did deserves the proverbial pat on the shoulder):
Q: When you have to cut a younger guy, is it just a guessing game if he’ll make it through waivers if he’s someone you want to sign to your practice squad?
BB: It’s a guesstimate. It would be a guesstimate. I think that’s part of the overall decision-making process. If you think that you need to carry a player to have him or would he be claimed and how much interest is there in that player, you don’t know.
It only takes one team to claim him. 30 teams could not want him and one team could and that answers your question. It’s a very inexact science. I think in the end, you have to do what’s best for your football team.
Now sometimes there’s a little strategy involved in personnel moves, kind of like there is in the draft. Sometimes you can maneuver a little bit if you want to do a little bit of a draft strategy on who might be available, who might slide, who might not, that type of thing. I think there’s a little bit of that, but I think in the end, the best decision is to make decisions that we feel are best for our football team.
I would say that 95 percent of it is probably that and then there might be a little percentage of trying to figure out what’s going to happen. But I’ve seen it go the other way too. I’ve seen other teams call about a certain player and you think you’re going to be able to trade this player or trade this player and, okay, it doesn’t work out and then you release him and then nobody claims him. You say, ‘Well I know this guy is gone because these two or three teams have called and even thought about trading for him,’ and then you release him and they don’t pick him up.
This time of year there’s a lot of things in flux. There really are. A team could be interested in a player, but then somebody else becomes available and then they’re not interested in that guy anymore and vice versa. A lot can change in a hurry and everybody has injuries, everybody has particular situations on their roster by certain positions. Everybody has young players who are ascending but haven’t caught the veteran players yet, maybe veteran players who maybe aren’t what they were the year before, but they’re still better.
…
Q: Do you think teams play games with that?
BB: Sure. I’m sure there’s some of that. I’m sure personnel people try to figure out what’s going to happen on a roster just to try to get a head start on it. ‘All right, if they’re going to keep this guy, then maybe that means they’re going to release somebody else, or, that’s going to put them in a squeeze in another position,’ or something like that. Yes, I think there’s plenty of that going on. Absolutely.
I’m guessing Patriots had no interest in Herron, and I wish the team had done a better job protecting Mills.
(Via Boston Herald‘s John Tomase, who I am sure will dig deeper into the story. )
