Getty Stephon Gilmore
The New England Patriots traded Stephon Gilmore to the Carolina Panthers for a 2023 sixth-round pick last week, and the modest haul had members of the media and fans asking why more wasn’t collected for such a talented player.
Gilmore is still arguably among the league’s best cornerbacks. While injured, Gilmore played at a Pro-Bowl level in 2020 and he just might be set for a prove-it-again season with the Panthers. Still, why didn’t the Patriots get much for Gilmore?
Patriots Analyst Explains the Patriots Modest Haul for Stephon Gilmore
According to NBC Sports’ Phil A. Perry, there were three primary reasons the Patriots couldn’t get more for the former NFL Defensive Player of the Year.
On a recent episode of The Pats Podcast, Perry explained:
There were a few barriers to a deal getting done prior to … Wednesday afternoon. No. 1 was the fact that he was a 31-year-old cornerback coming off of injury. He hadn’t practiced, he hadn’t played in a game. So for the Patriots to trade him to a team that had not been able to see how his rehab was going, that was a hindrance to the Patriots getting the compensation they were hoping for. Maybe you can package those two hurdles into one hurdle: No. 1, some uncertainty in Gilmore’s health from teams around the league, and No. 2, the asking price from the Patriots being a little too high for some teams. There were also some teams, I’m told, that just didn’t have the cap space to be able to acquire the remaining portion of Stephon Gilmore’s base salary that had not been paid to him at this point in the season. Additionally, there were teams that were concerned about the fact that Gilmore would just be taking the issues he was dealing with here in New England to another location if he was sent in a trade where he still doesn’t have a new contract. So, if you’re a potential acquiring team and you don’t love the asking price the Patriots are looking for, you don’t love the fact that you don’t know for sure how healthy he is and you don’t love the fact that you might be looking at having to pay him a lucrative contract before he event gets on the field or before he even gets on the practice field — all of those things could be blockades to getting a deal done, and they were, from I understand talking to people around the NFL on Wednesday.
While it’s easy to see the Patriots’ challenges in this predicament, it is still hard to accept such a weak return for a great player like Gilmore.
Week 9 Should Be Interesting
The Patriots venture south for a matchup with Gilmore and the Panthers in Week 9. Gilmore is generally a level-headed player, so he seems likely to keep his emotions intact for this game. That said, you’d expect there to be some extra motivation to perform against a franchise that he helped win a Super Bowl, but yet didn’t value enough to reward with a deal that matched his impact.