The New England Patriots offensive line stabilized in recent weeks, but it’s still the weakest positional group on the team.
The Patriots haven’t done much to improve the unit during the season, bringing in a castoff like Ben Brown and signing Michael Jordan from their practice squad.
But there was an opportunity for the Patriots to add a Pro Bowl left tackle, albeit fresh off recovering from a torn ACL. New England decided to bypass that chance and instead watched the Kansas City Chiefs on Friday sign D.J. Humphries to a deal that will pay him a max value of $4.5 million for the rest of the season, according to NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport.
Given the state of New England’s offensive line, diehard Boston sports fan and Ringer founder Bill Simmons was irate over the Patriots not pushing harder to sign Humphries.
“This makes me mad,” Simmons wrote on the X platform. “The Pats have a (expletive) of cap space, a lousy O-line, a fantastic rookie QB and the ability to take creative gambles for someone like this. It’s a cheap franchise that pretends they aren’t cheap. They’re cheap.”
The Chiefs, of course, offered Humphries something the Patriots can’t: a chance to win a Super Bowl this season. But perhaps the Patriots could have negated that by throwing more money at Humphries, who at 30 years old and coming off a severe injury probably doesn’t have many big paydays left in his career.
Humphries was medically cleared Friday, per Rapoport, and has a track record of being an impactful performer at a vital position. The 2015 first-round draft pick spent eight seasons with the Cardinals and played nearly every offensive snap for the Cardinals from 2019-21. The Cardinals clearly liked Humphries and handed him a three-year, $66.8 million contract extension in 2022 before cutting him two years later.
Rapoport noted Humphries visited the New York Giants earlier this season, but no rumors ever surfaced connecting him to the Patriots. And even with Humphries available, the Patriots decided to stand pat instead of upgrading and will continue to roll with Vederian Lowe and Demontrey Jacobs at their tackle spots.
According to Over The Cap, the Patriots have the third-most cap space at the moment in the NFL at $38.2 million. And by not signing Humphries at a position of need, they will have to go on a spending spree this offseason to try to ditch the cheap narrative that currently surrounds the franchise.
