The New England Patriots want to extend Christian Barmore's contract, here's how much that will cost them
On a team that is currently bereft of high-end talent, Christian Barmore stands out as a premier talent on the rise in New England. The former second-round selection is coming off of a 2023 season where he registered 64 tackles, 8.5 sacks, six passes defensed and a forced fumble to go along with 49 pressures. […]
On a team that is currently bereft of high-end talent, Christian Barmore stands out as a premier talent on the rise in New England. The former second-round selection is coming off of a 2023 season where he registered 64 tackles, 8.5 sacks, six passes defensed and a forced fumble to go along with 49 pressures.
New England may want to jump on extending Barmore this year before he finishes his rookie deal and they have to start considering what will be a very large franchise tag option. As the Philadelphia Eagles have recently shown, locking aplayer who you want to commit to long-term up a year early can come with massive savings over the life of the deal.
There has been a surge of large value deals for interior defensive linemen recently that provide a very illustrative path to model a potential extension for Barmore after. Six defensive tackles have all signed this offseason to large money deals.
Jones is in a league of his own, but how does Barmore compare to the rest of the group in the most important area for defensive linemen: pass rushing? Here is his production over the last three years stacked against the rest of the group:
His pressure rate is the best of the bunch, just shy of 11%. But Barmore suffers from a lack of usage that may work against him in negotiations. He has the least amount of snaps and pass rush snaps. Due to that he only ranks 5th of the six in sacks, but jumps up a bit to 2nd in pressures.
Barmore will no doubt point to recent production as the best indicator for future performance. His 2023 was fully in-line with the rest of the group:
Here you can see his usage more closely tied to the group and as a result his sack production jumps to third on the list while his pressure rate and total pressures both rank 5th (in a tight grouping). There is a solid case that Barmore should be paid like the rest of this group. The question then becomes where within the group should he fall?
Williams’ deal represents the floor of the group at $21.5 million APY. But this is his third contract and will cover his age 30-32 seasons. Wilkins is at the top of the group at $27.5 million. Wilkins did well for himself in his negotiations as his pass rush production doesn’t quite match the others on this list. He signed with Las Vegas and they may have had to pay a premium to secure his services over other bidders. Nonetheless Barmore would be hard-pressed to secure a commiserate rate of pay.
That leaves a narrow band of $23 – 24.5 million that he should be able to slot into. As far as fully guaranteed money goes, outside of Buckner, who like Williams just signed his third contract, most of these deals have been ranging from 40-50%. New England would likely want to go for a longer term on an early extension meaning there is a good chance Barmore can secure A little over $45 million in full guarantees.
