When news broke that Milton Williams was spurning the Carolina Panthers to sign a four-year, $104 million contract with the New England Patriots, it genuinely took fans by surprise.
Now sure, technically no free agent actually agrees to a new contract during the first day of the legal tampering window, as it’s called the “legal tampering window” for a reason, but it’s not often a player closing in on a contract worth darn near $100 million has such a radical about-face, let alone agrees to the biggest contract in the history of a franchise that had Tom Brady for a decade and a half.
So how did the Patriots pull it off? Well, during his interview with reporters on Thursday, head coach Mike Vrabel broke it down, noting that his vision of New England football helped to seal the deal.
“Well, I think it’s always about the entire package. When you look at compensation, it’s the body of work; it’s what they’re going to do for us. We always want to be able to not rely on past performances, but that was something — there was a high ceiling and a great vision about the person, the effort, the skill set, the speed in which he plays. There’s a power,” Vrabel told reporters.
“So certainly there’s an aggressiveness, and being able to add him to our defensive line was something that was really exciting. But you talk about the character, and hopefully, we’re going to be able to — I hope you want to play more than you played in Philadelphia, and I know that you guys were extremely successful, but we want to play him a little bit more than that and hope we can do that.
“You just try to — you do your best in a short amount of time to make a connection with the player and kind of what we are. We don’t want to sell anything. What we want to sell is just who we are. We want them to want to be here, and then if they want to be here and we want them, we’ll figure out a way to make it work contractually. But we want people and players that want to be here, that want to be a part of what we’re doing, and that’s what these guys are, and there will be more that come along after them.”
Now granted, the Patriots offering the most money likely got the deal done more than anything else, but believing in Vrabel’s vision likely played into that decision, too, as no player wants to willfully give up their prime for a paycheck without a realistic dream of a Super Bowl win.
Will it work? Only time will tell, but either way, Williams has 104 million reasons why he signed with the Patriots, so he’s set either way.
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