Tim Wright

AFC East Notes: Pats, Mankins, Wright, Hill

Two sources tell Jason Cole of Bleacher Report (via Twitter) that the Patriots asked guard Logan Mankins to take a pay cut before today’s trade sending him to the Buccaneers. Mankins gave the club the same answer as when they asked him right after last season’s Pro Bowl: No. Here’s more from the AFC East..

  • The Patriots were interested in trading for tight end Tim Wright for two weeks now, a league source tells Rand Getlin of Yahoo Sports (on Twitter). The Pats got their man earlier today in a deal that sent Mankins to Tampa Bay.
  • Former second round pick Stephen Hill has been having trouble dropping the ball and Jets coach Rex Ryan isn’t giving him much of an endorsement, writes Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post. “He’s had some strong moments, but there are others where we wish maybe he had hung on to a ball or so,” Ryan said. “But he’s had a pretty good training camp. I don’t want to say it’s been outstanding, but it’s been pretty good. “He’s blocked consistently, but he just hasn’t had a lot of shots at catching the ball. We’re still evaluating that receiving group, and we’ll see how it shakes out.”
  • Free agent addition Earl Mitchell is already looking like a gem for the Dolphins, writes Adam H. Beasley of the Miami Herald. The defensive lineman signed a four-year deal with Miami early in free agency. Mitchell is smaller than the departed Paul Soliai, but he’s shown that he can be rather effective.

Bucs Acquire Logan Mankins From Pats

1:03pm: The Pats will receive Tampa Bay’s fourth-round pick for 2015 in the deal, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN.com (via Twitter). Meanwhile, the Bucs have officially confirmed the trade in a press release.

12:38pm: The Buccaneers and Patriots have reached an agreement on the parameters of a trade that will send Pro Bowl guard Logan Mankins to Tampa Bay, reports Jay Glazer of FOX Sports (via Twitter). In exchange for Mankins, the Pats will receive a future draft pick and tight end Tim Wright, says Glazer.Logan Mankins

After recently parting ways with another former Pro Bowler, Carl Nicks, the Buccaneers had been on the lookout for an upgrade at guard, where Oniel Cousins and Patrick Omameh were viewed as the team’s probable starters. Inserting Mankins into the starting lineup will immediately upgrade a Buccaneers line that also added Anthony Collins and Evan Dietrich-Smith in free agency this offseason. The move also likely means that the Bucs will no longer be in play for other notable free agents and trade candidates on the market, such as Richie Incognito and Alex Boone.

Additionally, although Wright was a pleasant surprise a year ago for Tampa Bay, the team fortified the tight end spot significantly this offseason, first signing Brandon Myers as a free agent, then selecting Austin Seferian-Jenkins with the 38th overall pick in the draft. So the team still has plenty of depth at the position.

While the move makes sense from the Bucs’ perspective, it’s somewhat surprising that New England would give up Mankins – who has earned spots in five straight Pro Bowls and six overall – less than two weeks before the regular season gets underway. Still, Bill Belichick and the Pats have shown in the past that they’re not afraid to move on from veteran players in the right deal, and at the right time.

We’ll have to wait and see what sort of pick New England lands in the trade, but in Wright, the Pats will add a talented young tight end who hauled in 54 passes for 571 yards and five touchdowns during his rookie season in 2013. With Rob Gronkowski‘s health once again not a certainty, it makes sense that the Pats would be interested in adding another promising pass-catcher at tight end.

With the 32-year-old Mankins no longer in the mix, the Pats figure to turn to a younger player like Marcus Cannon or Josh Kline as their starter at left guard. It’s also possible that the team will peruse the free agent market or the waiver wire for other options.

From a cap perspective, the Bucs will absorb Mankins’ $6.25MM base salary into their available space, while the Pats will carry $4MM in dead money in 2014 and $4MM in 2015, since the guard still had plenty of prorated bonus money left on his contract. As an undrafted free agent, Wright is on a minimum-salary deal with prorated bonus figures of about $3.3K per year, so his contract will hardly have an effect on either team’s books.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Extra Points: Manziel, Onobun, Wright

Let’s round up some links from around the league on this Monday evening, wherein the players and the officials in the BrownsRedskins preseason tilt have conspired to transform the Twitterverse into an alternately bemused and enraged cacophony:

  • Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com offers his first entry in what will be a three-part series examining how Super Bowl champions work within the confines of the salary cap to build a winner. Part I examines the percentage of the cap that different champions spent on their highest-priced player. Interestingly enough, the teams who invested most heavily in one player had the most success in the three-year period immediately following their Super Bowl victory.
  • The Ravens might need some out-of-house reinforcements depending on the severity of Jimmy Smith‘s chest injury and Jon Meoli of the Baltimore Sun looks at some of the names out there on the open market. Some of the more recognizable names are Asante Samuel, Chris Houston, Corey Webster, Dunta Robinson, and Quentin Jammer. However, as we learned yesterday, there is a reason most of those players are still on the market. GM Ozzie Newsome has never been one to make moves out of desperation, and if the injuries to Smith, Lardarius Webb, and/or Asa Jackson are more dire than initially thought, the Ravens are probably more likely to trade for a corner or sign someone who will be released in the coming weeks.
  • Buccaneers coach Lovie Smith is less-than-thrilled with tight end Tim Wright‘s play and Pat Yasinkas of ESPN.com writes that he needs to show improvement quickly if he doesn’t want his spot on the roster to be in danger. “He hasn’t played as well as Tim should be playing,” Smith said. “He’s dropped some balls. If you watched practice, he’s dropped balls. But he’s a big part of what we want to do with the two-receiver, two-tight-end set. Tim hasn’t blocked as well inside. Once you’re that H-back and you don’t block, now they say you’re just another receiver and teams start going nickel. If they do that at least you have to be a good pass catcher. Tim’s a good player. He just hasn’t played as well as he needs to lately.”
  • Jaguars tight end Fendi Onobun has been diagnoses with a torn quad and will require surgery, which means he’s done for the year, tweets Ryan O’Halloran of the Florida Times-Union.
  • Mike Rodak of ESPN.com writes that Bills defensive tackle Marcell Dareus did not take part in team drills on Monday, and the Bills used a combination of Landon Cohen, Corbin Bryant, and Stefan Charles in his stead. Although Buffalo could keep all three of those players as depth behind Dareus and Kyle Williams, they could choose to keep just two and release the third.
  • If the Cowboys tabbed Johnny Manziel, as a newly-released book says owner Jerry Jones nearly made happen, the Browns‘ rookie quarterback would be Teddy Bridgewater, tweets Tony Grossi of ESPNCleveland.com.
  • In Jim Dent’s new book “Manziel Mania,” the author wrote that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wrote Johnny Manziel’s name on the draft card for the No. 16 pick only to have his son, Stephen Jones, literally yank the card out of his hand. As great as that story is, it’s simply untrue, a source tells Sean Lester of the Dallas Morning News. As Lester notes, given that the actual draft card is delivered in New York and Jerry and Stephen Jones supervised the draft from the team’s Valley Ranch war room, it seems unlikely the episode occurred as Dent described.

Rory Parks contributed to this post.