Brady-To-Branch

I can't help but think about the prospect of getting a great young talented player like Briggs to fill in at WILB next year. If the Bears don't tag him of course. The Pats are in good enough shape to make a play for him in the open FA market.

I've seen Briggs play a number of times and he can do it all: cover, run support, blitz. He was all over the place yesterday. With BB's poor track record with developing rookie LBs into his system and with the current state of our LB corps, FA is the only way to get an impact LB. Thus, I come to the conclusion that the Pats will at least take a good, hard look at Briggs.

Discuss...

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New England Patriots Super Bowl Champions:
2001 2003 2004

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SeanBruschi54

Hes going to get Brian Urlacher money. Unless we think he is going to anchor our defense for years then we have no chance to throw up that sort of money at a player.

MoLewisrocks

Clark Judge was on with Felger earlier and Mike asked what our chances were. Judge said he will get pretty much what he wants, and the Bears value him enough that they will probably give it to him themselves.

SeanBruschi54

No way. If the Bears give him that kind of money they would be the Colts of defense.

Brady-To-Branch

The Pats will pay that money for a defensive player. They doled out big money to Colvin in 2003.

I see your point, but mine is that the Pats can't afford to go into 2007 with the same collection of aging LBs and expect to be SB competitive. This team is still young and strong at both lines and they still have Brady. If the Pats fail to improve the LBs, all that goes to waste.

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New England Patriots Super Bowl Champions:
2001 2003 2004

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BelichickFan

Belichick paid Colvin pretty damn well. If he likes Briggs A LOT I could see him making a big offer, just not the BIGGEST offer. He won't get the biggest offer but I could see Belichick making a serious offer to him.

Brady-To-Branch

There's no such thing. You can never have enough good players on defense. Heck, I don't think that they have enough good players on D now. If Samuel walks, then the Pats will be desperate.

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AzPatsFan

BB doesn't have a poor record with developing LBs. On the contrary he has doneextremely well, with the few where he has tried. Mostly he prefers established starting veterans for his Team.

There are three examples where he has done very well. He started the conversion of Tedy Bruschi from a star collegiate DT into first an OLB, and then a ILB/MLB back under the Tuna.

He took an un-established FA veteran pickup and turned him into the Mike Vrabel we now know.

He is taking a seventh round DE pick and has already converted TBC into a pretty good OLB; we don't fully know how this will turn out but he surely isn't a stiff at all.

He has also taken an UDFA and made Matt Chatham into a pretty good reserve LB, too.

SeanBruschi54

First of all Lance Briggs is represented by Drew Rosenhaus.

After doing some small researching i found this tidbit on wiki:

Urlacher makes what? 6.5 million a year ballpark?

I cant see the Patriots spending that much or more for a weakside LB.

I really wish they could but i have a hard time seeing it.

PonyExpress

Junior Seau has won us all over with his heart and effort. But even an aging Seau, called out of retirement, was productive playing behind our magnificent front 3. It may be a misuse of cap space to spend big bucks on an interior LBer when a steady veteran can perform well enough to have the Pats rank 2nd in the league against the run with the #1 scoring D in the AFC. An outside LBer is a different story because of the pass rush impact; But Kawika Mitchell or London Fletcher or Napoleon Harris et.al., lower priced Lbers, may be able to hold down the fort for 2007 while the coming rookie class (which should include several LBer prospects) gets acclimated for 2008.

OTOH, Maybe BB sees that Bruschi's time is almost up, and is planning on replacing Bruschi long-term with Briggs, and wants to invest in a new "Defensive Captain" type. One Arizona man for another.