Stephon Gilmore’s future has been extremely murky since the end of the last season.
The 31-year-old is entering the final year on his five-year, $65 million contract but he’s only due $7 million for 2021. It’s been made clear that Gilmore won’t play for such a low price tag and it also makes sense to trade him this offseason to get the maximum value. For these reasons, along with his age, it seemed likely that Bill Belichick would let him go. It also didn’t make sense to extend Gilmore’s contract if the Patriots were to look like the 7-9 team they were last season.