Patriots by Position: A few core special teamers could jump ship

With the 2018 season in the books, The Providence Journal will take a look at each position group on the Patriots, analyzing how the team performed last year and where it might be heading in the future. Today, we finish the series with special teams.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Stephen Gostkowski, Joe Cardona, Ryan Allen, Matthew Slater, Brandon King, Nate Ebner, Albert McClellan, Ramon Humber

Contract situation: The Patriots have a lot to work [...]

With the 2018 season in the books, The Providence Journal will take a look at each position group on the Patriots, analyzing how the team performed last year and where it might be heading in the future. Today, we finish the series with special teams.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Stephen Gostkowski, Joe Cardona, Ryan Allen, Matthew Slater, Brandon King, Nate Ebner, Albert McClellan, Ramon Humber

Contract situation: The Patriots have a lot to work to do.

At the moment, Gostkowski and Allen are scheduled to be unrestricted free agents. There has been speculation that the Patriots would use their franchise tag on Gostkowski, which they did back in 2015, but that didn’t happen at Tuesday’s deadline. Gostkowski now is one of the top kickers available in free agency.

Allen enters unrestricted free agency as one of the top punters available. He was phenomenal in Super Bowl LIII.

The lone man left in the kicking operation is long snapper Joe Cardona. He is signed through 2022. Cardona has a cap hit of $955,000 in 2019. His cap will never be more than $1.21 million and won’t get to be more than a million until 2021.

Three of the Patriots' top core special teamers are in the final year of their deals.

Slater enters 2019 on the final year of his contract. He will have a cap hit of $2.9 million. He’ll turn 34 next September. King is also in the final year of his contract. The core special teamer has a cap hit of nearly $1.36 million in 2019 and will be an unrestricted free agent next year. The same goes for Ebner. He’ll have a cap hit of nearly $2.8 million in 2019 and will be a free agent in 2020.

McClellan and Humber are free agents.

2018 review: Things were not great for the special-teams units overall to start the season but the group finished the season on a high note.

The Patriots' coverage units struggled for a big part of the 2018 regular season. Entering Week 11, the group ranked 29th in kickoff return yards allowed and 31st in punt return yards allowed. The team finished 26th in covering kickoffs and punts. The Patriots haven’t finished out of the top six in opponents kickoff return average since 2010.

To shake things up, the Patriots added McClellan and Humber in the middle of the season. Both helped the special-teams units get back on track. McClellan was outstanding, blocking two punts.

Ebner (13), King (12), Slater (11) and Keion Crossen (seven) led the Patriots in special teams tackles. In the playoffs, Humber tied Slater for the team lead in special teams tackles with three.

Gostkowski had an up-and-down season. He made 84.4 percent of his field goal attempts. That number was down from 92.5 percent the previous season. He was automatic with extra points, hitting 49 of 50. Gostkowski was perfect in the playoffs before missing his first field goal attempt in Super Bowl LIII. He finished 2 of 3 in the game.

Allen had a solid season. He averaged 45.1 yards per punt and pinned 21 punts inside the 20-yard line. Allen played a big part in Super Bowl LIII, too. Three of his five punts were pinned inside the Rams’ 10-yard line.

The future: The Patriots have some choices to make.

They probably do not want to lose Gostkowski. The 35-year-old was a little inconsistent in 2018 but he has always been an above-average kicker. The Pats probably feel lucky to have had Gostkowski after seeing some of the problems other teams have had at the position.

If they can’t retain him, they’ll have to either sign a free agent or draft someone in April. This is an important position and one that the team has had a lot of success with over the last two decades with Adam Vinatieri and Gostkowski.

The Patriots brought in some real competition for Allen last summer with rookie Corey Bojorquez. Allen won the position battle and, although the Patriots tried to sneak Bojorquez onto their practice squad, the Buffalo Bills foiled that plan by signing the rookie punter. Now, the Pats don’t have a backup plan.

If they lose Allen to free agency, the Pats could look to sign a veteran or bring in a rookie. It’s an interesting quandary.

The Patriots would also be wise to try to bring back McClellan. He was an ace special teamer and provided solid leadership in the locker room.