The New England Patriots signed running back Donald Brown on Wednesday. That wouldn’t be notable except for the fact that the Pats brought in James Starks for a look last week.
The signing of Brown likely means the Patriots no longer have interest in Starks. The choice of Brown over Starks shows how little they think of Starks.
On paper, the only thing Brown has going for him is he’s a year younger than Starks. Brown has never been a No. 1 back and averaged a very meager 3.1 yards per carry in his two-year stint in San Diego.
The guy only scored one touchdown in those two seasons as well, despite starting five contests and playing fairly regularly.
In other words, you could say Donald Brown is a below-average NFL running back and you wouldn’t get much argument from anyone other than Donald Brown and Donald Brown’s mother.
Yet the Patriots — the supposedly shrewd talent evaluators that they are — chose this guy over Starks, who’s coming off a season in which he recorded more than 900 total yards.
What gives there?
We can only conclude that either, A. Starks has overvalued himself and is asking for far too much money or, more likely, B. the Pats think Starks actually has a lesser skill set than Brown.
And that brings us back to the Packers, who are said to be interested in bringing Starks back.
I guess this is where we should say something like one man’s trash is another man’s treasure or beauty is in the eye of the beholder or something like that.
Instead, we’re just going to state the obvious here.
We all know the Packers will end up re-signing Starks. The organization loves nothing more than the status quo.
This is pretty concrete evidence of how the rest of the league views the Packers’ free agents.
It’s a wonder continuously re-signing only your own free agents doesn’t result in improvement year after year.