I don't know whether the Pats should go after Andrew Luck or not. It's too far in the future and there's a lot of other stuff to worry us right now.
But, at some point, I think that we Pats Fans have to address a few questions that aren't easy to confront.
1) How many of those Lombardi's would be sitting in Foxboro without our HOF-calibre QB, Tom Brady? I haven't heard a whole lot of people say that they think Bledsoe, despite his stats, would have brought the Bling to Boston. In fact, quite the opposite.
2) What kind of a team with what kind of performance, even with BB at the controls, would the Pats have been over the last ten years without Brady? Matt took us to an 11--5 season, but that wasn't even enough to get into the playoffs that year. Would we have gone to five CCG's and four SB's with Hoyer or O'Connell or Cassel at QB? I think we all know the answer to that question is a resounding "no." With Bledsoe, the Pats would likely have been another "solid" team, in and out of the Playoffs, making threats at times, but likely never closing the deal, until his retirement in the mid/late 2000's. Think Ravens or even Eagles.
3) So, what do we think this team will be in three or four years, making the realistic assumption that, like virtually every HOF calibre QB of the contemporary SB era, except Brett Favre, TB's best days are well behind him when he hits 37 or 38? That's just four years from now.
I raise those questions because I think at some point we have to accept the fact that maybe the Pats will have to gamble on a top prospect, like Luck, if they are going to have the kind of team we all seem to expect.
Getting Tom Brady at a sixth round salary for two years was sheer luck, no pun intended. The Patriots didn't think they were getting one of the great draft steals of the century when they took him at 199; they were rolling the dice and Belichick has been honest enough to say that they assumed that "something was going on there" when LLoyd Carr didn't give Brady the starting job outright in his senior.
Are we, as fans, really hoping that lightening will strike twice in the same place, and that Belichick will be able to turn a Hoyer or an O'Connell or (now) a Mallett into a HOF-level QB who, by working with his system, will deliver Conference Championships and Rings and MVP trophies?
If not, will we be content with a "solid" team that is regularly competitive but rarely gets to a Championship game?
I think at some point the Pats will have to roll the dice again, this time for a lot more money, if they're going to continue contending for and winning Championships.
Remember. The Cowboys and Steelers are heralded as the two greatest franchises in the NFL, but it was 15 years between Staubach's last ring and Aikman's first; it was 27 years between Bradshaw's last ring and Roethlisberger's first. Is that what we want?
