Originally Posted by State

We nabbed Ron Brace as "insurance" at 40. He's supposedly a one-dimensional player. There are persistent questions about conditioning.

Originally Posted by spacecrime

That's was the knock on Seymour when he was drafted, except that his work ethic was also questioned.

Will you just chill the hell out? Training camp hasn't even started yet. Isn't it a little early to find fault with the draft?

You really crack me up. You read a one-paragraph synopsis of a player in a draft magazine and suddenly you have more info than a 50-man staff dedicated to scouting.

We all have binkies we wanted drafted. None of us understand all of the picks made. Most of us will acknowledge that our picks are tinged more with emotion and intuition than factual information.

What you are missing is that most teams have a draft philosophy in place. No one hits on all players. But a team has a plan that they hope will have tham hit on more than they miss. The Pats plan is working just fine. What team would you think has done better that the Pats on the field this decade?

Originally Posted by BradyFTW!

Since the decade turned over, we've won 3 SBs, set a ton of records, had the longest winning streak in history (twice), and more. Dunno wtf you're smoking, but you have no idea what you're talking about. BTW, my whole point is that none of us have any idea if Crable or Woods can bring it as a pass rusher. Woodley is a second-year player. At the start of the 2007 season, Tuck was a third-year guy who had 40 career solo tackles. James Harrison, before he became the DPOY, was an UDFA who bounced around the league for years.

I think we all agree that the Pats need to be able to rush the passer. The difference is that you live in some fairy tale where we can just sign all-world players at every position, and where we never need an unproven young guy to step up and prove his worth. All of those pass-rushing tandems had that happen, and now the Pats need it too.

If you were a Steelers fan, you would have been over on the board this past offseason freaking out over how the Steelers should have re-signed Joey Porter in 2006, rather than trust their pass rush to some second-year player with only 4 career sacks (Woodley).

If anything, the Giants and Steelers are case in point: to develop a strong pass rush, you need to have room for your Crables and Woods's to step up and prove their worth. We're going to see Meriweather, Mayo, Seymour, and Thomas all getting after the QB this year, and if some combination of TBC/Crable/Woods produces meaningful results alongside them, then we have the potential to develop a scary-good pass rush.

Originally Posted by PatsBoy12

BradyFTW, you never cease to amaze me (most of the time). Seriously, your commentary always brings perspective and I can tell that although you're probably a die-hard fan, you still attempt to approach things objectively and sensibly. Thanks. It's very refreshing. Needless to say, I agree with this post and many of the others I've read.

This past day or so of reading various posts has made it ridiculously obvious that there is a growing contingent of fans panicking about the LB situation. It has also made it painfully obvious that BB and staff really don't know anything about real football players, especially not those that fit their grossly overrated and lackluster, ineffective system. These posts make it obvious that the Patriots have a long way to go before they win anything at all, much less a SB. And here are at the end of training camp with the first game of the season to start in a week and no clear answers at LB.

Originally Posted by BradyFTW!

Since the decade turned over, we've won 3 SBs, set a ton of records, had the longest winning streak in history (twice), and more. Dunno wtf you're smoking, but you have no idea what you're talking about. BTW, my whole point is that none of us have any idea if Crable or Woods can bring it as a pass rusher. Woodley is a second-year player. At the start of the 2007 season, Tuck was a third-year guy who had 40 career solo tackles. James Harrison, before he became the DPOY, was an UDFA who bounced around the league for years.

I think we all agree that the Pats need to be able to rush the passer. The difference is that you live in some fairy tale where we can just sign all-world players at every position, and where we never need an unproven young guy to step up and prove his worth. All of those pass-rushing tandems had that happen, and now the Pats need it too.

If you were a Steelers fan, you would have been over on the board this past offseason freaking out over how the Steelers should have re-signed Joey Porter in 2006, rather than trust their pass rush to some second-year player with only 4 career sacks (Woodley).

If anything, the Giants and Steelers are case in point: to develop a strong pass rush, you need to have room for your Crables and Woods's to step up and prove their worth. We're going to see Meriweather, Mayo, Seymour, and Thomas all getting after the QB this year, and if some combination of TBC/Crable/Woods produces meaningful results alongside them, then we have the potential to develop a scary-good pass rush.

Originally Posted by BradyFTW!

Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated. I think the majority of this board is pretty even-tempered and rational about all of this, but, as in most walks of life, the vocal minority is going to find a way to dominate the conversation. I like most of the people on this board a lot, and like the discussions that we have most of the time. I was going to say that it's particularly bad this time of year, since you have so many people throwing around wild claims that are based on literally nothing (we haven't seen the 2009 Patriots in any capacity yet), but I took it back pretty much as soon as I thought it. The first time the Pats give up a third-and-long conversion in preseason, let alone the regular season, it'll get worse. At least then, though, opinions will be based on actual plays, even if those opinions are likely to be comically massive overreactions.

Originally Posted by TriplecHamp

Since the second half of the decade the Pats haven't won S**t. Is that clear enough for you? The Steelers have won S**T. We Clear on that?

Originally Posted by TriplecHamp

Woods has been around for 3 seasons and hasn't shown me enough to believe that he is the answer at OLB and Crable is an unknown, hes never seen action in a meaningful NFL game so has E.Brown but I belive that Brown has more potential just by watching the two play.

Originally Posted by BradyFTW!

Hey check it out guys, we're talking to an



It means quite a bit to a lot of true football players.

You must have not played football because if you did you would know that it dosnt mean anything, all that matters is that you end up on the left hand side of the scorecard and eventually win it all.


So what? You know who else was a 3rd round pick? Justin Tuck. Woodley was a mid-2nd rounder. James Harrison wasn't even drafted. Just because every team passed on a guy doesn't mean that he can't be good, and doesn't even mean that multiple teams didn't like him a lot. And I only bring those names up because they're the specific guys that you keep harping on.

Are we now comparing Justin Tuck, Lamarr woodley and James Harrison to Crable, TBC, and Woods?

I'm making an educated guess based on the fact that we've already seen it fro them. Or maybe you missed the part where Seymour got 8 sacks (more than any other 3-4 d-lineman in the league), Mayo said that he's going to be rushing the passer more this year, and where Meriweather got 2 sacks in the last 4 weeks after the secondary shored up a bit. I don't know any of this for a fact, but at least I'm basing it on something.

Yeah I also missed the part where we were Very average in the Pass Rush Category. If it was as easy as you said it was why didnt we do it last year? Mayo may blitz more and so may Merriweather and then again they may not. With the additions of springs and company will it be better? I would hope so but Mayo was good in coverage last year and I dont know that he will be "tinkered" with too much.


Different scheme, different responsibilities. He has a track record as being a competent third-down pass rusher in this system. Don't know if he can replicate it this year, but he doesn't necessarily have to. We only need 1 or 2 of these ifs to come through.

If he was so "Competent" then why did we let him walk so easily?

Ok, so which is it? Brown has never seen action in an NFL game either, and Crable had a lot of success in college too. As a super-awesome extra bonus, Crable has a year of professional coaching and education in the Pats' system. And you know why you didn't see a lot from Woods last year? Because his jaw was broken. It's not anymore.

Brown had 23 sacks in his career 13.5 in his last season, He was a RS Junior.
Crable had 17 sacks in his career as a RS Senior 7 in his last season. Have you seen both play?

Obviously, none of these guys are sure things, but the fact that you're still harping on that just shows how appallingly low your reading comprehension is, since I addressed this at length in the post that you quoted. Maybe if I put it in bold you'll get it? Probably not, but it's worth a shot I guess: every team has question marks. Even the examples that you cited had massive question marks leading into the seasons that you mentioned. Woods hasn't shown any less, from the perspective a fan, than Woodley had in 2008 pre-TC or Tuck had in 2007 pre-TC. Neither had proven that they were starters in the league, and you know why? Because it's impossible to prove anything until you're put in a position to prove it. Pierre is being put in a position to prove that he's a starter. If he can't do it, we have other guys who will get a crack at it.

If that's the biggest question mark that your team has, you're in pretty good shape. If you'd been a Pats fan before they started winning SBs, you'd understand that.