The Bills declined to match the Patriots’ two-year, $6.4 offer they signed running back Mike Gillislee on Monday, officially making Gillislee the newest Patriot and likely putting an end to LeGarrette Blount‘s time in New England.
Along with free agent signee Rex Burkhead, the Patriots have now added two running backs who should both contribute, along with James White and Dion Lewis. The entire spectrum of possibilities is now covered in the backfield, giving the Patriots multiple options to attack defenses with. There’s the pure pass catching threat that is White (though they’re no longer afraid to hand it off to him in short yardage situations as we saw multiple times in the Super Bowl), the elusive Lewis who will now be a full year removed from ACL surgery, the balanced run/pass ability of Burkhead (along with his four-down contributions) and the pure downhill running of Gillislee.
The two new additions are also a football analytics dream. Take this from PFT:
Analytics website FootballOutsiders.com ranked Gillislee as the most efficient running back in the NFL last year, and Burkhead as No. 2. Analytics website NumberFire also had Gillislee first and Burkhead second. Analyst Warren Sharp’s metrics had Gillislee first and Burkhead second in success rate, and Burkhead first and Gillislee second in the fewest “missed yards per attempt,” or how close they came to being successful on the plays that weren’t quite good enough to quality as successful.
I’ve been waiting for a couple seasons for this to happen. Nothing against Blount, he was just so hot and cold I felt like they needed someone like Gillislee in the offense who could be more consistent, especially against the tougher defenses.
I’m not quite sure we can grasp the potential of this Patriots offense at this point. On paper, there’s just as much to be excited about as there was in 2007. Maybe Randy Moss had a bit more name appeal, but top-to-bottom this edition of the Pats will going to be extremely difficult to match up with. They have speed. They have experience. They have hard-chargers.
The backfield may seem a bit crowded now, leading to plenty of “how do they manage the snaps” takes over the next few days, but all that will be determined in training camp, likely with injuries playing a factor.
This has been quite the offseason. Unfortunately there were lots of distractions with all the Garoppolo and Butler speculation, but once we get past those all that will be left is a loaded 2017 Patriots team that looks more like they’re pissed off how last season ended than satisfied with “#OneMore”.