SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...owl/index.html

ted

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

I agree with him. I have been thinking that the loss last year may have been good for the long-run health of the Pats.

If we had held Indy off in hte second half, would BB/SP have gone on thier FA feeding frenzy?

I think what we did in the long run, the change in attitude, will make the Pats better for years to come, and cement them as one of the greatest teams ever, once they collect a total of five or six Lombardis over a 10 or so year stretch.

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

lets just hope the salary cap doesnt cause problems.......

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

If we play this right, it sets us up for another 6 year run before Brady retires.

We'll need to draft well and do a good job of getting as many of the upcoming FA signed - even if that means letting Samuel go so that we can re-sign Wilfork and Warren. But with a good group of young veterans and 5 first day draft picks next year . . . if the front office does a good job, we should be legit contenders until Tommy retires.

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

In a word: yes.

If we gave up 30+ points in the second half but still won the game, do you think BB/SP wouldn't have realized that our defense needed speed and coverage skills at LB, and therefore passed up on getting a guy perfect for our system who was willing to take 30% less per year to come here instead of San Fran?

Do you think scoring 4 more points in one game would change BB/SP's opinion over whether our receiver corps needed major additions, an opinion culled over a season+ of practices and games? Would he have turned down guys like Stallworth + Washington, who were willing to come here for a year for peanuts? Would he not recognize Moss for $3 mil and a 4th is a steal?

I don't think this year's off-season represents any departure in philosophy, and I certainly don't think BB operates in such a knee-jerk manner as to go on a spending blitz because his team came up the tiniest bit short.

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

Think again. Those who know him and who are close to the players say the flight home from Indy was one for the ages. Had they lost in SD it would have been one thing. Too many season long deficits and tough breaks to overcome. But to be up big in the first half on the road, and make it to within a minute of another superbowl with a team featuring a rag tag assembled on the fly WR corps and ill or injured RB's save the FB, and rotating PS defenders subbing for OLB's only to come up 1 conversion or stop or pass not dropped short really stung these guys from Kraft to the towel boys. Finding out they almost could have squeeked by, and faced a Bears team that wasn't in their league under the worst of circumstances, galvanized this FO to become agressive as a means to insure they never miss an opportunity like that again.

We've held teams off and squeeked by in the past and it didn't trigger anything approaching this. Losing by a hair is what triggered it.

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

I don't remember anything about this, can you go into a little more detail ?

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

So which moves don't we make if we didn't lose by a hair?

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

Being anointed the Superbowl favorite is a ball and chain. While it's the price of success, I liked it better when the Pats could do it with stealth. We'll be hearing this ad nauseum until they're knocked out or they win it. You can believe that Belichick will not be buying any of this, and the media hasn't even begun to experience the depths of his gruff demeanor.

Re: SI:Don Banks-Patriots will be driven to handle unfinished business
 

From what I've read the only major difference between this off-season and previous ones is that the Pats' targets actually accepted their offers. We went hard after Drew Bennett and Joe Jurivicious in past years. We thought we could wrap it up with Deion for a big extension. If those or any one of a number of other moves had worked out -- instead of the player going someone else for more money -- we would all be saying "oh, this is just a typical offseason full of headline deals for the Pats."

But none of the other big moves worked. Why? Not because of how the season ended, but because of the salary cap. This is the first off-season where the full effects of the new salary cap are completely apparent. So Beloli went hog wild - again. This time they just did it with a bit more money, so it worked.

To me, that has much more to do with the offseason moves than losing by a hair to the Colts. You know what Belichick always says: "we look at every option to make the team better." This isn't just empty BB rhetoric, this is actually true. But prior to this year it didn't work out quite as well.