The New England Patriots signed tight end Jake Ballard off the waiver wire, stealing a piece from their Super Bowl rival, the New York Giants. It’s an interesting move for a lot of reasons, first and foremost because Ballard is expected to miss the entire 2012 NFL season as he recovers from microfracture knee surgery and a torn ACL suffered in the Super Bowl.
Of course, there are also a couple of other reasons that the move is so interesting. The Patriots are already stacked at tight end with Aaron Hernandez and Rob Gronkowski, who was recently signed to a huge contract extension. And then there’s the obvious fact that the Patriots have lost two Super Bowls to the Giants in the last five years.
So was it a chance to grab a great player (38 receptions for 604 yards in 2011, third on the Giants behind Victor Cruz and Hakeem Nicks), or primarily a chance to hurt the Giants? Patriots coach Bill Belichick can be spiteful, and if that was his goal – mission accomplished.
“Discouraged is a minor description,” Coughlin said following the news. “Very disappointing. I am not going to have a lot to say about that one, just the fact that we are disappointed. We are very disappointed.”
When Coughlin was asked why the team didn’t keep Ballard on their 90 man roster to not risk someone picking him up, his response was equally testy. “Don’t ask me those questions,” he responded. “I don’t have the answers for you. We are all disappointed. That’s all.”
And finally, when asked if he was surprised that Ballard was picked up by the Patriots, who are already stacked with the best pair of tight ends in the league, his response was, “I don’t have any comment on that one.”
Belichick on the other hand stated plainly that he felt that the Patriots didn’t break any unwritten rules, and denied any unwritten rules existed. “First of all, there aren’t any unwrittens,” he said. “You can’t negotiate a contract, release him, and then renegotiate another contract with him that was already done in advance. I’m sure the Giants weren’t doing that. So the player is on waivers, he’s on waivers — ours or anybody else’s. I don’t know what unwrittens you’re talking about. …”
Very nicely done. His statement that “I’m sure the Giants weren’t doing that” references something that would have been against the rules, so of course they weren’t doing that.
From the Patriots, they will need to wait a year for Ballard to recover before they can see what they’ve gotten. In the mean time, they have Gronkowski and Hernandez for this year, who were second and third on the team in receiving last year, with 1327 yards and 910 yards respectively. Ballard is another young gun, at age 24, and provides some insurance in case they are unable to resign Hernandez, who still has two years left on his contract.
No matter how you slice it, the Patriots picked up some insurance at tight end, which has become a key position for them, and managed to make one of their main rivals weaker in the process. Call it spite, or call it strategy, it looks to be another solid move by the Patriots.
