robertweathers

Top 5.

Brady- No Cassel to back him up. With what we have at backup QB, 9-7 or 8-8
Mayo- His speed and playmaking ability cannot be made up anywhere on the roster
Neal - Running game improved and sacks went down when he came back in 08. Look at Sb 42. Line was porous w/o him.
Faulk-See Neal
A. Thomas- Respected pass-rush threat. Knows the defense.

My .02$

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BradyFTW!

Comparing a versatile ILB's sack totals, in any respect, to a pass-rushing specialist OLB is misguided. I'd be pretty surprised if he gets more than 5, simply because he'll have far, far fewer opportunities than a standard pass rusher. ILBs are the guys who keep you honest because you know that they can rush the passer if you don't account for that, but they don't actually do it very often.

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Sicilian

ILB are not known for high sack numbers. Don't start judging him on numbers.

But even if you do, he has 1 sack in two preseason games only playing the early fraction of the game. That's eight sacks over sixteen games, even if he never played a second half all year.

BradyManny

Agreed. While Brady and the offense has won 3 SBs w/ lesser receivers, Moss is just so key to their success now.

Mayo would be a huge loss, and I don't even want to think about losing him, but I feel like AD's versatility, Guyton's emergence, and Bruschi's ability to provide average play at either ILB position would help overcome a loss of Mayo.

Losing Brady, Seymour, Moss, Wilfork, those would all be potentially catastrophic events that would require one player - like Cassel did last year - to step up in a huge way, beyond expectations.

robertweathers

This is such a hard agrument. Moss is incredibly important to this team no question. Last year, IMO Moss and Welker MADE Cassel. But if Moss goes down, you don't think they would find a way with Brady, Welker, Galloway, Lewis, Endleman, the TEs and the RBs to get 22-25 ppg?

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“I'm not really concerned about the other 31 teams,” - Bill Belichick

"If a player has talent and doesn't succeed, that means that they either don't want to be successful or I have failed as a coach." - Bill Belichick

Robdude

Hey I can see the arguements for Mayo and Moss. I was surprised that not so many people voted O-Line. I know people complain about Light but if he was lost for a season I would be very scared. Other people in this thread stated Neal has a bigger impact, I am not sure but if you say so I would vote Neal over Moss or anytone on defense

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robertweathers

Good point. We don't know what kind of quality depth we have a backup LT. Slide Kazur over and plug in O'Callaghan at RT. That sure doesn't inspire a lof confidence in me.

__________________
“I'm not really concerned about the other 31 teams,” - Bill Belichick

"If a player has talent and doesn't succeed, that means that they either don't want to be successful or I have failed as a coach." - Bill Belichick

BradyFTW!

Mostly agree, although I'd swamp Mayo and Wilfork for your list. The problem with losing a guy like Mayo is that it either forces Bruschi to step into a starting role or forces Adalius inside, and I'd rather not see either happen. In the former case, you're taking away what little depth you have, and in the latter you're downgrading the WOLB as well.

With Wilfork, on the other hand, you're probably plugging in Brace and spelling him with Wright and/or Pryor. Not something that I want to think about, but it's... less unappealing to me than the thought of losing Mayo.

So my list would be similar to yours, really:

Tier 1 (Basically, these guys are just so good that they're irreplaceable, period): Brady, Moss, Seymour, Mayo

Tier 2 (Maybe not as irreplaceable as the tier one guys, but extremely important to our scheme and the makeup of the roster): Wilfork, Welker, Neal and Adalius

Tier 3 (We have the depth to replace them better than we could the T2 guys, but would still be bad news): Meriweather, Warren, Light, Faulk

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ScottieC

Moss hands down - You take him away and you just gave the opposing team a huge gift in game planning and preparation.

Mayo goes down and you have a huge problem as well, but you also have a coach that can probably scheme to overcome it to a certain degree.

You have NO answer for Moss, period.

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Sicilian

Except, you know, every other successful offense we've ever run here.

Just sayin.