I was just driving home from a meeting and listening to WEEI, the sports radio station here in Boston. Peter King was on for his regular weekly segment and had a very interesting story about the Patriots and how they handle player salaries.

The Pats have an offensive lineman named Billy Yates. He was one of the final cuts from the 53-man roster, but the Pats have been developing him for a while on the practice squad and really like him. The Patriots signed him to the largest contract in the history of NFL practice squads. The general salary for a practice squad player is $80,000. The Pats are paying Yates $425,000 -- basically, the salary he would have made if he actually made the team. They said to him, look, we know we're going to need you later this year, we don't want you to sign with another team if they want to take you from our practice squad, so we're going to give you a normal active salary as a show of our support. The Pats have two other players making $150,000 on the practice squad, Bam Childress and a second guy King did not name.

No analysis here, but this drove home to me the basic Patriots philosophy: You overpay players 30, 31, and 32 -- and 52, 53 and even 54 -- not players 5, 6, and 7. The Patriots are not cheap, just different.

Post by Aaron Schatz