FOXBOROUGH — Jamie Collins: unceremoniously traded to Cleveland. Logan Ryan: in and out of the starting lineup. Jabaal Sheard: left home from the trip to San Francisco.
What does each player have in common? They’re all in the final year of their contracts, and they’re all struggling with consistency, conjuring up the question of whether the pressure of playing for their future is affecting their play.
“It’s a good question,’’ Patriots president Jonathan Kraft acknowledged last week before the 49ers game.
The Patriots came into this season with a large core of their players entering the final year of their deals — including defensive captain Dont’a Hightower, cornerback Malcolm Butler, tight end Martellus Bennett, and the three players listed above.
Many of us expected the Patriots to lock up at least some of these players to long-term contract extensions, but the only players to sign new deals were a couple of veterans — defensive end Rob Ninkovich, who signed a $2 million deal for next year, and backup linebacker Jonathan Freeny, who also signed a modest deal to serve as a special teams player.
And while the Patriots are 8-2 entering Sunday’s game against the Jets, the defense is struggling, and many of the contract players are not playing up to par.
Collins was freelancing too much, not adhering to the program, and got shipped out of town. Sheard was also freelancing too much in the run game and has seen his snaps decrease from 57 to 16 to 0 the last three weeks. Ryan has given up a ton of receptions. Hightower has mixed in some great games with some average ones. Bennett was invisible last Sunday in San Francisco despite the absence of Rob Gronkowski. Duron Harmon has been OK but has only one interception.
Bill Belichick downplayed the contracts-as-distraction angle earlier this year.
“Look, we all have things in our life to deal with. We all have families, we all have personal situations,’’ he said. “That’s part of life. You can’t get around it. I mean, I don’t know if they’re distractions. It’s part of your life.’’
To be fair, not everyone in a contract year is struggling. Defensive tackle Alan Branch was having a great season clogging the middle of the defense before reportedly earning a four-game suspension last week for violating the league’s policy on substances of abuse, which he is appealing. Right tackle Marcus Cannon is having a great season with the return of offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia, and he has likely earned himself a spot for the future. Bennett had a great start but has tailed off lately. Butler, a restricted free agent at the end of the year (meaning the Patriots have the right to match any offer), has established himself as one of the top cornerbacks in the game.
“Nope, no distraction,’’ Butler said this past week. “Whatever happens, happens. I’m blessed to be in the NFL. Just here to play, man.’’
But as Kraft acknowledged, it’s fair to wonder if having so many players worrying about their contracts has soured the locker room and hurt the defense, which last year was one of the best in the NFL.
“Sometimes people feel like [the lack of an extension] is a slap in your face,’’ former Patriot Jerod Mayo said last week on Comcast SportsNet. “The coaches let me go out here and play a year where I could get hurt after I just gave them four years at a discounted rate?’’
Kraft said that while the question is fair, he ultimately doesn’t think that the contract situations have affected the locker room.
“Most professional athletes thrive on pressure,’’ he said. “And I’m not even commenting on whether people are having good or bad seasons. Most professional athletes I’ve met like it when the stakes get raised and enjoy pressure situations.’’
Publicly, the players say all the right things. No, they’re not worried about their contracts. If they play well and focus on doing their job, the contract will take care of itself.
Of course, that’s not really how it works.
“Those players are thinking about it every day,’’ former Buccaneers general manager Mark Dominik said. “Every day they wake up, they’re thinking about their contract, and that can be heavy on their mind. It’s a big deal. Some of these guys are getting ready for their first bite at the apple, and it could be their only big bite, so it’s a constant stress for them. And it’s not just them — it’s everybody at home, relatives, friends, whatever it is. So all those things kind of eat at them a little bit.’’
Dominik said the Patriots, like all teams, are toeing a delicate line with their young players. They want to see players be more consistent before rewarding them with a contract and job security for the next two or three years.
“If I see one down year, then it could happen again,’’ Dominik said. “To me, there’s no rush then to try to get that extension done, because I might get an inconsistent player. Why would I want to go lock up a player now, when I can just say, ‘Hey, prove it for four years or five years?’ ’’
Just because the Patriots haven’t signed many players to contract extensions doesn’t mean they haven’t tried, either. Sources have said that the Patriots have extended offers to their players, but none of the players were willing to bite. The Patriots are always looking for value, especially this time of year, and the players know that the salary cap has grown by $10-plus million in each of the last few years.
“A lot of times we in the media don’t know what’s actually been said between the agent and the club,’’ said Dominik, who now works for ESPN. “Maybe the agent is looking for $6 million and in your mind this guy’s a $3 million player. There’s nowhere to go, and that happens a lot more often than I think people realize. There’s a lot of people behind the scenes trying to get deals done, but the market and the way the cap’s going now, it’s hard to get it done.’’
The Patriots are in a tough spot with their players — good players who are solid NFL starters but aren’t superstars. With the salary cap increasing each year, all it takes is one desperate team to give a big contract to a Ryan or Harmon.
“They’re in that weird gray area,’’ Dominik said of the Patriots. “It’s the [players] in between that are so hard to do. Because you’ve got the agents trying to get them up to the numbers of the superstars, and you’ve got the club sitting there going, ‘Well, this guy is much better than an average starter but we see him as a $3-4 million player,’ and the agent sees him as a $7-9 million. They’re good players but not special players. They’re the hardest contracts to do, and I think the New England Patriots have a lot of those guys.’’
Plus, the Patriots have to be careful. Giving one player an extension can spoil the mood of everyone else in the locker room.
“As soon as you do one contract the rest of the locker room is going, ‘Why did you pick him over me?’ And that’s the balance you have to decide in your mind,’’ Dominik said. “I do understand that mind-set, though, that if you have a whole locker room that’s like, ‘No one ever takes care of anybody,’ that can be detrimental. You want to show that you reward consistent effort, consistent work.’’
The Patriots have shown that in the past. They have reworked the deals of Ninkovich and Patrick Chung to increase their pay as a reward for their effort.
They let Devin McCourty get to free agency two years ago and almost lost him to the Jaguars, but then stepped up at the last minute with a five-year, $47.5 million contract, the largest for a safety in NFL history.
“I think they’ll get guys done,’’ Dominik said. “I don’t worry about it because there’s a lot of salary cap room, and [Tom] Brady’s contract is still very manageable.’’
But over the next two months, as the Patriots hope to embark on another Super Bowl run, they’ll also be monitoring their contract players closely, to determine who deserves to be part of the team over the next few years.
“So, what you look for is, how is a guy preparing? And you really have to rely on your position coaches, your equipment guys, your trainers,’’ Dominik said. “What’s his attitude been like? How is he handling it? Has he been moping? You try to pull all that together to find out is this a guy that you think can handle the stress and handle his responsibilities.’’
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenVolin
