The longest-tenured Patriots player was released by the team on Tuesday.
The New England Patriots’ long snapper competition is over before it even began. Joe Cardona, who had held the job for the last 10 seasons, has been released just three days after the team selected Vanderbilt’s Julian Ashby in the seventh round of the NFL Draft.
A team captain last season, Cardona is the latest veteran to be let go by the team this offseason. Before him, David Andrews and Ja’Whaun Bentley were released, while Jonathan Jones and Deatrich Wise Jr. were not retained in free agency.
With that out of the way, let’s assess what the move means for the Patriots.
The dynasty is officially over
Turnover is a constant in the NFL, and the Patriots were not immune to it over the last few years. As a result, their 2024 roster featured only five players who were part of the organization’s last Super Bowl team; the aforementioned quartet of Andrews, Bentley, Jones and Wise Jr. as well as Cardona.
As of Tuesday morning, the 33-year-old was the only one remaining. A few hours later, he too is gone and with him the last concrete on-field memory of the Patriots’ glory days.
There are still plenty of links to that era of football in Foxborough, starting with head coach Mike Vrabel and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. However, there is no denying this is an entirely new football team now.
Next man up at long snapper
As noted above, the Patriots invested a seventh-round draft pick in Julian Ashby over the weekend to add some competition to the long snapper position. It turns out, there might not be a competition after all. While New England could still bring in more depth to challenge the 22-year-old, the job is now Ashby’s to lose.
As a consequence, two thirds of the field goal and extra point operation will look different in 2025. Besides the change at long snapper, the Patriots also opted to not retain place kicker Joey Slye.
With Slye leaving in free agency — he signed a one-year deal with the Tennessee Titans in March — the Patriots will decide between former practice squad member John Parker Romo and sixth-round draft pick Andres Borregales. The latter should be seen as the favorite, but his draft status suggests that he is no roster lock either.
More leadership change
One of the primary goals of head coach Mike Vrabel this offseason was rebuilding the culture at One Patriot Place — a culture that seemingly deteriorated under his predecessor Jerod Mayo in 2024. That process included a full-on overhaul of the team’s leadership as a look at the following graphic illustrates:
And then there was one. pic.twitter.com/8UilX2bNqy
— Matt St. Jean (@mattstdream) April 29, 2025
As noted above, David Andrews, Ja’Whaun Bentley and now Cardona have all been released this offseason. Jacoby Brissett left in free agency after one season back in New England — he is now with the Arizona Cardinals — as did multi-year captain Deatrich Wise Jr. and Jonathan Jones, who was a team leader but no captain.
In addition, Jabrill Peppers was removed as a captain after an in-season arrest in 2024. He remains on the team, as do replacement captains Kyle Dugger and Hunter Henry. However, it feels like the two defenders in particular might be on relatively thin ice as well.
Not only has Vrabel shown a willingness to replace team leaders, his team also drafted safety Craig Woodson in the fourth round last Friday.
New longest-tenured Patriot
A fifth-round draft pick in 2015, Cardona had been the longest-tenured Patriot since Devin McCourty’s retirement during the 2023 offseason. Now and for the first time ever, that title is going to a player selected in the first post-dynasty draft.
Three of them remain on the team today: safety Kyle Dugger, outside linebacker Anfernee Jennings and guard Michael Onwenu.
If we use draft pick as the tiebreaker, second-rounder Kyle Dugger is now the longest-tenured Patriots player. If we use rookie contract signing date, it’s Anfernee Jennings.
Minor salary cap savings
Cardona’s salary cap impact was not the main motivator behind the Patriots parting ways with him, it seems. While he did rank sixth among NFL long snappers with an average annual contact value of $1.575, his 2025 cap hit of $1.594 million ranked only 33rd on the team entering Tuesday.
Not all of that cap hit will be erased from the books via Cardona’s release; his remaining signing bonus proration totaling $500,000 will remain as dead cap. The rest of the deal will be removed from the calculations, but with another player taking his spot on the Top 51 list the actual net gain stands at only around $100,000.
End of an outstanding tenure
Long snapper might be the most anonymous position in all of football, and yet Cardona managed to make a noticeable impact during his 10 seasons with the Patriots. Sure, the numbers are not eye-popping — 20 tackles and a forced fumble in 173 combined games — but he provided a steady presence in the kicking game as well as leadership both on and off the field.
Besides appearing in 160 regular season games and 13 playoff contests for the Patriots, Cardona also helped the team win two Super Bowls (LI, LIII) and earned the NFL’s Salute to Service Award in 2023 as well as the Ron Burton Community Service Award in 2018. As far as long snapper careers go, this is as good as it gets.