I have no problem with the patriot's general policy of free agency: look for value in all the right places.
However, I suspect that you angst is almost all derivative from the decision to sign Amendola over Welker which had little to do with Walmart over Nordstrom. Not re-signing Lloyd comes closer. However, perhaps the team truly doesn't like his attitude and values him much, much less than he does.
I have no angst at all, at this point. I've written off what's been done as stubborn idiocy on the part of a head coach who, despite his general greatness, makes that same mistake time and again. It's a blind spot of his, and his owner's not strong enough to stop him from repeating the error, so it's something we'll probably continue to see as long as BB is here. Even the greats have problems, and this is one that BB can't seem to get over.
We can always point to our favorite free agent, who we may or may not have been able to sign at what he was signed for. However, I think that we did well on defense signing Talib, Arrington, Cole, Wilson and Kelley (and Armstead). And yes, I also want Abraham or Freeney in addition.
They've done essentially nothing but tread water, unless Kelly and Wilson rebound from what look like significant declines. I see no reason to pretend otherwise. They had millions to spend and decided to go on the cheap again. It's what they do in free agency. They'd rather gamble on 5 "d" players than 1-2 "a" players.
On offense I am less happy with the additions of Svikek, Washington, Amendola, Jones and Jenkins. However, the re-signing of Vollmer makes up for a lot.
Keeping your own players doesn't make up for anything.
The bottom line is that we had the big three. Vollmer and Talib were re-signed. And the team apparently chose Amendola over Welker. For now, we also have chose Jones and Jenkins over Branch and Edelman. I don't like this situation at all. Our options are very limited at this point. IMHO, the Front Office has already done a fine job at re-signing and filling holes at everywhere but flanker.
They screwed up the Welker situation, but that's not what I was posting about, and I don't want to rehash that, since it's a waste of time to do so around here. They chose to sign scrap heap players when they had money to make bigger impact signings. I hope it works this time. I expect that it won't, based strictly on the odds and recent history, and that the team will be in a position, for about the 7th or 8th time in 9 seasons, where it has to overcome the front office offseason FA/trade moves. Like the BB trade down policy, the BB sign scrap heap player policy works when it works, and it fails miserably when it doesn't.
Time will tell whether Tommy Kelly is more Derrick Burgess or Andre Carter, but this year had young players in the prime of their careers spring free, and this team passed on the opportunity to bring some of those in for relatively low money. I think it's legitimate to criticize that policy, just as it's legitimate to defend the "5 for 1" type of approach.
