Alliance... » Patriots sign RG Shaq Mason to a 5-year extension worth

up to $50 million In 2015 Authentic Rob Gronkowski Jersey , the New England Patriots invested considerable draft capital to solidify their trenches. Part of this investment was picking guards Tre’ Jackson and Shaq Mason in the fourth round. And while Jackson is currently out of the league, Mason turned into one of the NFL’s best interior offensive linemen over the last three years – one that apparently just signed a long-term contract extension to stay in New England.As first reported by NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, the Patriots and Mason have agreed to a five-year deal that will pay Mason as one of the best guards in the league:In 2017, Mason played 1,136 of 1,139 snaps during the regular season (99.7%) before adding a perfect 221 of 221 in the postseason. Despite playing the majority of those snaps beside backup right tackles Cameron Fleming and LaAdrian Waddle, he did not skip a beat and continued his improvement and growth into a reliable, all-around interior offensive lineman for the Patriots – and one of the best guards in all of football.Mason, who started 49 games over his three years with the team, was entering the final year of his original rookie contract on a modest salary cap hit of $2.02 million. A lock to make the team and again serve as its starting right guard, the main question this season was whether or not the Patriots would be able to lock him up to a long-term contract before he hit free agency next March. It looks like they succeeded. If you expected any Patriot, much less Rob Gronkowski, to say anything about what their assignments are other than “we’re gonna execute the game plan” Youth Tom Brady Jersey , you may be new here.Having said that, compared with some of the Mean Girls stuff going around in places like Pittsburgh and Jacksonville and Green Bay, the classic Patriot-speak is almost a blessing in disguise at this point. Think of it like a peanut butter sandwich or an old hoodie or something. It works, albeit sort of unspectacularly, so why change it?And now that we’ve at least tabled the Gronk-vs-Kelce debate for the time being, Gronk had some thoughts on the superior part of his game in that argument (that being, of course, the “end” part of the “tight end” position) and why he’s equally down with running up the seam or bench-pressing a defensive end.From PFT:PFT also notes, in the “can’t make this stuff up” department, that even with Gronk’s slow-ish receiving start to the season, which will happen when teams are throwing triple-teams and just praying something works, he’s still on pace for...wait for it...69 receptions and 1,080 yards. To hit the yardage incentive part of his re-done contract http://www.patriotsauthorizedshop.com/authentic-devin-mccourty-jersey , he needs 1,085, and the catch incentive kicks in at 70 grabs, so file that under “when you’ve got somewhere to be at 6pm and the GPS says you’ll get there at 5:59”. The touchdown incentive looks a bit more “well, we got some work to do” at this point, since (you may have heard) he currently has one (1), and the performance trigger kicks in at 9 scores, but with the way this offense has looked since “what happens in Detroit stays in Detroit”, is anyone really betting against Gronk possibly scoring an average of once a week?On the other hand, if there was ever a time to have a pair of tight ends that are both down to stay home and push guys around, it’d be when the Patriots roll into Soldier Field this weekend to take on the Bears, who are suddenly back to looking a lot more like your dad’s Bears than whatever it was John Fox was doing.