Steelers Rumored Trade Sends $146.5 Million 5-Time All Pro to Resurgent Patriots

Getty

Patriots coach Mike Vrabel

As the New England Patriots look ahead to what they hope will be a comeback season after consecutive years of finishing at 4-13 and posting sub .500 records in four of their last five seasons, the six-time Super Bowl champions still face personnel questions up and down their roster. While it would be difficult to pick the single most important deficiency in the New England lineup, the pass rushing game would have to be at or near the top of the list.

In 2024, Patriots pass rushers recorded fewer quarterback sacks than any other team in the NFL, with 28. They also managed to land just 66 hits on opposition quarterbacks, second fewest league-wide. They were dead last when it came to making tackles for negative yardage, with only 62.

Under new head coach Mike Vrabel — a former Patriots pass rushing linebacker himself — the team tried to address the problem with the free agent signing of Jacksonville Jaguars 2020 first-round draft pick K’Lavon Chaisson. With five sacks in 2024, his first and last season with the Las Vegas Raiders, the 25-year-old should provide at least some level of upgrade for the Patriots attack on opposing quarterbacks.

Vrabel Adds Former Protege in Pass Rush

In their free agent spree, the Patriots also added one of Vrabel’s first draft picks when he became head coach of the Tennessee Titans in 2018. Harold Landry went to the Titans in the second round that year and has sandwiched seasons with 12 and 10 1/2 sacks in 2021 and 2023 around a year lost to injury in 2022. Landry sacked opposing QBs nine times in 2024, his final season with the Titans.

Landry had high praise for Vrabel at New England’s voluntary workouts last week.

“I feel like one of the main jobs for a head coach is to make sure your team’s prepared situationally,” Landry said, as quoted by the Boston Herald. “And all I know is, as long as I played for Vrabes, there was never a situation I wasn’t prepared for. Like, I don’t care what the score was in the fourth quarter. I don’t know. We just always had a feeling that we was going to pull this out.”

But the Patriots, according to one currently hot NFL trade rumor, may be about to make their pass rush into a truly fearsome force by adding a four-time first-team All Pro (plus one second-team selection) and seven-time Pro Bowl selection who will enter the final year of his four-year, $112 million contract in 2025.

Blockbuster Deal Makes Pats’ Pass Rush ‘Legitimate Threat’

The sports business site SpoTrac estimates the value of pass rusher T.J. Watt on the open market as $146.5 million, so Watt may turn out to be a single-year rental for the Patriots. Watt has reportedly been attempting to negotiate a contract extension with the Pittsburgh Steelers, but according to media reports is still asking for to much money.

At the same time, Watt’s impending free agency is driving down his trade value. Though just a year removed from leading the NFL with 19 sacks — his third season of eight in which he topped he league in that category — according to the reports, Watt’s current contract status means he will net little more than a single, third-round draft pick.

But if Watt is dealt away, Bet Online lists the Patriots as the favorites to reel him in, at odds of thee-to-one.

“They currently sit with the league-high remaining cap space ahead of the draft, with a projected $68 million left to spend this offseason, so they could easily accommodate trading for Watt and offering him an extension,” wrote Fansided‘s Sara Marshall. “He would immediately make the Patriots defense a legitimate threat.”

Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. Vankin is also the author of five nonfiction books on a variety of topics, as well as nine graphic novels including most recently “Last of the Gladiators” published by Dynamite Entertainment. More about Jonathan Vankin