Patters

... that his ideas have been dissected by other coaches and pundits since 2001. Other teams mimick what worked, and in many cases the main difference between the Pats and them is what we do wrong. A lot has changed since 2001. I think BB made situational football and the use of timeouts into an art, he brought a new level of professionalism to the sport, championed the versatile player, and he changed the way defense is played. But, now that many other teams have copied his best ideas, what do we have that they don't? Not much.

That said, the one area where the Pats seem to do well is in their cap management and the accumulation of draft picks. BB should be GM, and he should find a new coach for the Pats -- one who represents a new generation of thinking.

spook75

Nice way of throwing the man under a bus .. There are alot worse teams in the league , you cant always win a superbowl.. come on now be real.

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pats1

I'll throw another one out there: cap management.

In 2001, the cap was $64M. In 2009, it was $127M. That represents just about a 50% increase over nine seasons.

But is the $5M player of 2001 getting paid $10M in 2009? Not usually; I'd say it's closer to $7.5M.

Teams that used to be in cap hell in 1999, 2001, 2003, are now easily under the cap in 2005, 2007, 2009. The success this league enjoyed financially over the last decade has allowed for this.

So back in 2001, the Patriots made a living managing the cap and bringing in bargain basement players to fill their needs. Other teams overspent and found themselves in "cap hell," a term you never hear anymore. You never hear about "June 1" cuts anymore, even though the 2006 CBA and the 2009 final capped year made that distinction obsolete.

Some of that can be attributed to teams just getting better at managing the cap and making sound contractual decisions and other teams just spending as they usually have and getting away with it because of the cap expanding so rapidly.

That's where teams have caught up to the Patriots. They've tried to go for lower-priced options for their free agents, assuming whoever signs the higher-priced player will have made a mistake. They've gotten burned on that philosophy lately (Asante, Gaffney, Branch) because the cap simply isn't a problem for teams anymore. And we're not even into the uncapped year.

It used to be a strength for the Patriots; now it's a pretty level playing field.

For anyone who's read James Lavin's "Management Secrets of the New England Patriots," which came out in 2005, there are pages and pages of charts and graphs on the Patriots' cap management, versus other teams. That was five years ago! The effect of that cap management has been drastically reduced because other teams are not as bad at it as they used to be. That's all that matters.

Bottom line is, there are more well-run franchises in the league then there were when Belichick became the Patriots' coach. As teams have emulated the "Patriots Way," the number of well-run organizations has gone up.

KontradictioN

Yeah... maybe stick to the political forum?

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carolinatony

The biggest problem with Belichick is ...he keeps losing his coaches.
Once the raiding started it hasn't stopped.
He can't have any continuity when he has a new coach or 2 every year.
Things about your work when you have to keep training someone new.

Patspsycho

I think the answer is more simple. This is a period of transition. The defense that we had that won us our three superbowls were already aging in '07, and was the oldest it was, last year, and this year, we made a tremendous leap.

Is there another team that we could remotely compare this to, that made such an in-depth gutting and remodeling of their defense?

That being said it WILL take a while before our defense hits its stride. People keep forgetting that Bruschi, for example, didn't hit his peak until his fourth or fifth season. That is usually the peak in a player's career- the maximal relationship between physical talent/execution and mental toughness/experience.

upstater1

He'll be on top again in short order and then none of this will matter.

KontradictioN

Agreed. Just based on what he was saying and the way he sounded today in his press conference, he knew that there had to be changes in the personnel, coaching staff (or at least the way they do things), and scheme. However, this is a cannot miss year. The mistakes have to either be non-existant or minimal. If they are not, the window closes. It's as simple as that.

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pats1

What "window?" This team doesn't operate that way.

KontradictioN

The proverbial window to win another championship. The team may not operate that way, but every team has a window to compete year in and year out for championships. Given the age and injury issues of our star quarterback, another year or so of bad decisions will effectively close that window.

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