2009 Patriots players who met/exceeded/dissapointed your expectations

[Simkin]

Dissapoinments:

Light : He seems lazy sometimes in the games .

Maroney : dancing less than other years , but added fumble prone to his injury prone and awareness prone of last years .

Meriweather: one week probowler, next week he cat tacke a chair and cover a FB.

AD: Honestly he wont be here, I dont wait nothing from this guy .

Hanson : ditto AD . He cant be punter in the best football league . But we all knew that for last season

Exceded:

McGowan : exactly hte opposite of Brandon, he is not a star, but is solid, hard hitter , you can wait him around the ball every snap .

TBC: Our best pash rusher so far this year

Tom Brady: great season coming from a ACL . A hope for Wes Welker

Volmer: I throught he ll be our typical 2nd round bust, but he beast is a starter for next decade .

Mike Wright

Wilfork: improve every season, but need help at the front seven
Met

Mayo

Burgess

 

[Lansdowne]

For "met expectations", I have to break it into two tiers:

Met for better (did what I expected and what I hoped for)

Tom Brady
Randy Moss
Wes Welker
Dan Koppen
Kevin Faulk
Vince Wilfork
Ty Warren
Leigh Bodden
Stephen Gostkowski

Met for worse (did what I expected, which either wasn't much, or had hoped for more)

Laurence Maroney (only surprise was the touchdowns... he's not the lead back we hoped he would be)
Matt Light
Stephen Neal
Nick Kazcur
Benjamin Watson
Sam Aiken
Greg Lewis (wasn't expecting this JAG to make an impact even if he stayed with the team)
Chris Baker
Ron Brace/Darius Butler/Pat Chung (didn't expect any of the rooks to do anything this year)
Gary Guyton (was never sold on him as a starter)
Pierre Woods
Terrence Wheatley
Shawn Springs
James Sanders
Matthew Slater
Chris Hanson
Shawn Crable (fragile, handle with care)

Exceeded

Sebastian Vollmer
Julian Edelman
Mike Wright
Tully Banta-Cain
Brandon Meriweather (didn't expect him to play to the point of becoming a Pro Bowler)

Disappointed

Fred Taylor
Sammy Morris
Joey Galloway
Jarvis Green
Jerod Mayo
Derrick Burgess
Adalius Thomas
Jonathan Wilhite (looked good late last year, then transformed into Leonard Myers this year)

Incomplete

Kyle Arrington (didn't know the guy existed, but he was a nice surprise on special teams)
Brandon Tate (didn't have any remote expectations or hopes for 2009)

 

[Markchris524]

tom brady met my expectations
julian edelman exceeded
fred taylor dissapointed. DRAFT A RUNNING BACK!

 

[SunnyDenmark]

I think most of the posters are right on....only disagree with a few posts. I think though a few players got overlooked.

Exceeded :
Ingram (LS) great that a rookie in such a pressure position can deliver again and yet again. Did he even have a bad snap all season?
Boddin: too bad we couldnt have worked out a longer deal earlier. Now his price skyrockets.
Pryor: that area scout who identified him needs a raise
TBC: WOW.

Met: most of the team including Chung and Brace (people easily forget Merriweathers' and Wilforks first year). Bill usually brings rookies along slowly unless they are exceptional (Mayo, Mankins, etc). And neither of those rookies (Brace nor Chung) were first round picks so I expected them to not make much of an impact this year. I think Pryor bypassing Brace is more a positive on Pryor than a negative on Brace. (At least I hope so!)


Dissapointed:
The usual suspects (Galloway, Wheatly, etc).
OC - enough has already been said in other threads

BB's FA trades (not draft day trades). WARNING - Rant about to start!
From Greg Lewis (WR) trade to that Tampa TE (name?) trade to trading away Dave Thomas for only a comp plane ticket and a pack of peanuts. What the eff is Bill doing?

I think Bill is a near genius and I love his draft day trades and value strategy. But his hits on FA's and especially FA's trades is just atrocious the last few years. And this year was worse than most of his other bad FA player aquisitions. What I can't fathom is that projecting college players into the NFL is supposed be an art (not a science) and yet Bill and Pats FO do as good a job if not much better than most all the other teams. Yet when it comes to FA's - when you have a vast amount of game tape of the player competing AGAINST ACTUAL NFL competition (some of the same teams the Pats have played against) - how can as someone as smart as Bill screw this up so badly? I can't understand this irony.

The only reason I can come up with why our FA acquisition goes so wrong (and FA trades in particular) - is that Bill doesnt have the time to do the game tape 'cutups' (or whatever they are called of a players gametape highlights/lowlights). So whomever is doing the FA's cutups to put on DVD is working on a commission. The best analogy would be a personnel recruiter for a headhunting firm. This person in the Pats video room must get a bonus or such for each FA player aquired! So they only show the FA's best plays (aka highlights) and minimize their lowlights. So Bill watches the DVD and is SOLD. No other reason can I comprehend when Pats do such a (at least) decent job on player aquisition from the collegiate level and so poor job on the Pro level.

 

[BradyFTW!]

Met:
Wilfork, Welker, Moss, Brady, Warren, Maroney, Watson, Meriweather, Bodden, Light, Neal, Mankins, Sanders, Morris, BJGE, Gostkowski, Ingram, Slater, Hanson (I didn't expect much), Aiken

Exceeded:
McGowan, Vollmer, LeVoir, Edelman, TBC, Wright, Faulk, Butler, Pryor.

Disappointed:
Mayo (no fault of his own), Thomas, Green, Guyton, Springs, Wilhite, Wheatley, Crable, Galloway, Koppen, Kaczur, Chung, Brace, Burgess, Taylor (by no fault of his own), Baker, Woods, Pees, O'Brien

 

[BradyFTW!]

The only reason I can come up with why our FA acquisition goes so wrong (and FA trades in particular) - is that Bill doesnt have the time to do the game tape 'cutups' (or whatever they are called of a players gametape highlights/lowlights). So whomever is doing the FA's cutups to put on DVD is working on a commission. The best analogy would be a personnel recruiter for a headhunting firm. This person in the Pats video room must get a bonus or such for each FA player aquired! So they only show the FA's best plays (aka highlights) and minimize their lowlights. So Bill watches the DVD and is SOLD. No other reason can I comprehend when Pats do such a (at least) decent job on player aquisition from the collegiate level and so poor job on the Pro level.

How long do you consider the last few years? Because since 2007, that includes Bodden, Taylor, Springs, Thomas, Moss, Welker, Galloway, Stallworth, Morris, Baker, and a bunch of others- plenty of hits, plenty of misses.

IMO, a lot of it has to do with Belichick drafting the positions where he knows he can get hits: OL, ILB, DL, and S. OL and DL in particular are pretty much strictly-draft areas. And that's where a lot of the Pats' draft hits come from. Conversely, we rely a lot on FAs at WR, LB, CB, RB, and our track record for those positions isn't great, whether in draft or FA.

In short, I don't think it's that the Pats scout college players better than they scout free agents' I think it's that there are some positions that they scout better than others, and they tend to draft players at those positions, and fill out the roster with FAs at the other positions.

 

[SunnyDenmark]

How long do you consider the last few years? Because since 2007, that includes Bodden, Taylor, Springs, Thomas, Moss, Welker, Galloway, Stallworth, Morris, Baker, and a bunch of others- plenty of hits, plenty of misses.

IMO, a lot of it has to do with Belichick drafting the positions where he knows he can get hits: OL, ILB, DL, and S. OL and DL in particular are pretty much strictly-draft areas. And that's where a lot of the Pats' draft hits come from. Conversely, we rely a lot on FAs at WR, LB, CB, RB, and our track record for those positions isn't great, whether in draft or FA.

In short, I don't think it's that the Pats scout college players better than they scout free agents' I think it's that there are some positions that they scout better than others, and they tend to draft players at those positions, and fill out the roster with FAs at the other positions.

Interesting observation - (re. positions we tend to draft vs. positions we target instead in FA. Certainly this is obvious at LB as we don't draft that many higher round LB's and instead go the FA route. BUt I think you are onto something about the other positions as well. I think this topic should be discussed further in its own thread sometime.

Or since most teams have different people evaluating personnel in the Pro player department while there are different people (area scouts) scouting for collegiate talent - it could also be Pats don't have the same level of competance in the two respective areas. Both your idea and mine are possibilities.