Patriots' Additions Of Cunningham, Eluemunor Show O-Line Depth Was Noted Roster Weakness
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- With the whole football world focused on the Patriots' deficiency at tight end, the team's real weakness may have been on the offensive line all along.
That's the message that was delivered on Wednesday afternoon, when Bill Belichick and Nick Caserio made a pair of last-minute additions to the roster to help bolster the offensive line.
In the wake of the surprising and frightening news on David Andrews, a move should have been foreseen. But the fact that the Patriots felt compelled to go out and add two players who weren't going to make their respective rosters does not speak well to the depth the Patriots had on the line prior to the deals.
The Patriots sent a sixth-round pick to Arizona for tackle Korey Cunningham, before sending a yet-to-be-disclosed pick to Baltimore for guard/tackle Jermaine Eluemunor.
A seventh-round draft pick in 2018, Cunningham started six games for the 3-13 Cardinals last year, with Arizona going 1-5 in those games.
Eluemunor was a fifth-round pick in 2017. He's dressed for a little more than half of Baltimore's games over the past two seasons, getting three starts -- two at right guard and one at left tackle. The Ravens went 0-3 in those games.
Despite both players being made available by their respective teams less than 72 hours before final cuts are due, the Patriots nevertheless felt compelled to add the players to their own roster. That says quite a bit about how Belichick and Caserio -- and, likely, Dante Scarnecchia -- felt about the players who have been working in Foxboro all spring and summer.
That's despite investing a third-round pick in Yodny Cajuste and a fourth-round pick in Hjalte Froholdt last spring. Cajuste has been injured and thus unable to play, while Froholdt has largely underwhelmed. The January addition of journeyman/practice squad tackle Dan Skipper has essentially delivered what should have been expected, Cole Croston has yet to impress since joining the team in 2017, and veteran interior lineman James Ferentz has not looked ready for prime time on the interior.
And with Ted Karras moving into the center position left open by Andrews' absence, the Patriots felt as though they had to add the roster scraps from two teams who were assuredly going to cut ties with their players by week's end.
That's not to say the situation is necessarily doomed. Certainly, across the board on both sides of the ball, a staple of the Belichick era has been the coach's ability to maximize talents that other coaches failed to extract. The same could be true with Cunningham and Eluemunor, even though their careers in their first NFL stops did not work out as planned.
It does, however, speak volumes to the way Belichick looked at his current roster that he felt it necessary to make these additions to the team just days before the roster must be trimmed down to 53 players. For the players who have worked through OTAs, training camp, and the preseason, that's not exactly an encouraging vote of confidence heading into cutdown day.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
