Re: Matt Williamson: The Pats will be "really involved" in trying to get Mario Willi
Ahh, very interesting. I'm curious which one you consider to be an A-level player, Vince or Mayo?
even so......2 A level players. it takes more than that. Spikes may be there next year. not sure if you can count on anyone else taking the next step.
again, williams may not be THE answer, but the defense is chock full of questions. even the scheme is starting to look like a dinosaur in the pass-happy NFL.
the resources are simply not committed to the defense to be able to expect it to be more than mediocre, even with good coaching.
even though people love to talk of value, and how BB creates it or uses it, the defense was loaded with talent and high price with early draft picks (warren,wilfork,seymour, mcginest, law) and free agents that brought some value, but weren't all that cheap (washington, phifer, harrison, vrabel, colvin, poole)....you don't have much of either now.......you have 3 first round picks on the entire starting defense.
The problem with the defense is that both money wise and draft pick wise, the resources have all gone to building a nice shell around the justification to pay brady.
look at it this way......what was being spent on the offense while the pats were winning SB's? brady was a minimum salary guy for the first one, had a 5.33M cap hit in '03 and 7.7M in '04. beyond that, the offensive rosters of the SB winning teams had daniel graham as its highest draft pick, and corey dillon as its priciest acquisition. The OL was cheap.
what we have now are resources that are prioritized on the offense. using money and draft picks that can no longer be used on defense.
the defense used to be good because just as much as anything, it was supposed to be good through superior talent.
the defensive roster now is like pissing in the wind
if this team spent its resources on the defense, it wouldn't NEED the best QB in the NFL