Hurley: Some offseason Patriots content will be painful and stupid

BOSTON -- I get it. Sort of. I really do. It's hard out here on these content streets sometimes. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Yet even when the pickings are slim, the content creators still must ... create content. Come hell or Hightower, offseason content needs to be created.

Some of the offseason content is forgettable. Some of it may be passable. But other parts of it? Well, they show just how dreadful the latter halves of winters can be when the local team shifts from perennial Super Bowl contender to NFL also-ran in a short period of time. (Remember all those Super Bowls? Like, going to four in five years at the end? Or three in four years at the beginning? Or nine in 18 years overall?? That was wild.)

We're seeing some of that already. 

Power Rankings

The NFL season, as you surely know, ended on Sunday night, when the Chiefs beat the 49ers in overtime of the Super Bowl. It was a humdinger.

Teams have not had any chance to really improve since last season because, as just stated ... the season ended two days ago. Teams could have agreed to the frameworks of trades, and they could fire and hire coaches, but the meat and potatoes of the offseason has yet to come close to beginning. Free agency starts in mid-March. The draft will be held at the end of April. Lower-tier free agents will sign after that.

Those are the times when teams can really add to their win total from the previous season. Those are the times when bad teams can get better.

Nevertheless, ESPN opted to release "Early NFL Power Rankings" right after the Super Bowl ended.

As you might expect, they're stupid.

The Patriots ranked 30th, better than only the Commanders at 31 and the Panthers at 32. They're accompanied by the Cardinals (29), Titans (28), Giants (27), Falcons (26) and Chargers (25). The only teams from the bottom of the 2023 NFL standings to move up are the Bears (because they own the top overall pick and the ninth overall pick) and Jets (because Aaron Rodgers will be back).

The Ravens were the best team in the NFL last year during the regular season and land at the top of these power rankings, followed by the Chiefs and 49ers. Playoff teams (in order: Detroit, Buffalo, Miami, Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston, Green Bay, Cleveland, L.A. Rams) fill out the next nine spots.

Summing that all up: The 12 teams that made the playoffs rank as the 12 best team in these power rankings. The worst teams all rank as the worst teams.

Thank you for this exercise. Not only was it tremendously insightful, I'd argue it was important. We're all better for having seen it.

The world has been changed.

Mock Drafts

Mock drafts exist to keep everyone busy. That's the long and the short of it. Once the real draft happens, nobody thinks about all 19 versions of the mock draft they had read over the previous six months. They are occasionally compiled via heavy-duty reporting from diligent reporters. They are also sometimes slapped together by someone whose main qualification is having a lot of free time.

(Opinions may vary on mock drafts. Whatever. Move on.)

That being said, you always have to wonder about some mock drafts that stop you in your tracks and make you double-check if you're on NFL.com or The Onion.

The mock draft from Chad Reuter on NFL.com this week would fall under that category. In this mock draft, Reuter has the Patriots trading away their No. 3 overall pick. Oh, you might say, for what? A superstar?! Sounds so juicy. Tell me more. 

Well, that's the thing. The mock draft has the Patriots trading away the No. 3 overall pick, a fourth-round pick, and a 2025 conditional fifth-round pick to the Chicago Bears.

In return, the Patriots would get ... Justin Fields and the No. 9 overall pick.

"[It's] similar to the trade between the Packers and Jets for Aaron Rodgers last year," Reuter wrote.

If we can move past the comparison in value of Aaron Rodgers to Justin Fields, we can then try to grasp the concept of moving backward six spots in the draft from No. 3 to No. 9 to obtain a quarterback a team is giving up on after three years. And then throwing a fourth-round pick and a fifth-round pick in to boot.

It's a bit bananas.

(This magnanimous move by the Patriots allows the Bears to draft Caleb Williams first overall and Marvin Harrison Jr. third overall. This mock draft reads like a Bears fan's biggest fantasy.)

Dropping from No. 3 to No. 9 would already be a significant overpay for a quarterback who might fetch a third-round pick in a straight swap. And considering this concept was hatched under the idea that the Bears are drafting Caleb Williams and thus will have to get rid of Fields, there won't be a team willing to overpay for the quarterback who's thrown 40 touchdowns and 30 interceptions with an 82.3 passer rating in 40 career games.

Mac Jones has posted similar passing stats (albeit without the 2,200 rushing yards and 14 rushing touchdowns of Fields), and yet you won't read too many mock drafts where teams give up top-three picks to get him this offseason.

It's just all ... silly. And pointless. 

But maybe that's the point!

It's February. It's cold. It's dreary. It's gray. There's no real football for seven months, and people have to stay busy one way or another. There will be different avenues for different folks to accomplish that goal, and riling up the masses could be one strategy. Simply relisting this past season's standings and calling them "power rankings for next year" might work too.

Whatever. Gonna be a long winter in new England.