well, the corner situation worries me, like a lot of people, but I think the pats are loaded.
this isn't meant to be pedantic, or redboarding in any way, but going into last season I said a lot of people were sleeping on the pats even despite their fairly high 'power ranking'.
not to make excuses, but as pats fans, we all know the kind of injury issues the pats have had to deal with in recent years, and we all know the situation we've had at corner, so a healthy team with actual corners figured to dominate, imo, and they had an amazing season playing one of the toughest schedules you'll ever see, and beating the best in the league.
the point being, we might've lost the corners, but a healthy pats team is still loaded, and still looking great.
on offense, maybe people don't appreciate how good they were last year, but if we discount the first 4 games and just look at the final 12 + playoffs, they were scoring on pace with the 2007 team, going against one of the tougher defensive schedules in the league, and I think they have reason to be maybe even a tick better this year.
I think the running game should be pretty strong.
I've seen people knock it last year, but blount played in 7 'meaningful' games, subtracting week 17, and 3 of those 7 happened to be against det, balt, and sea, who were the 3 best defenses in terms of ypc allowed, and another week he only got 10 carries against green bay, but picked up 58 yards.
this year, stork enters as the starting c with a year's experience, a healthy cam fleming is available with some experience, and they added a couple
awesome looking rookie prospects.
defensively, pats had one of the younger teams in the league, last year, but I'm concerned about losing wilfork and revis, of course.
we'll see how terribly things shake out at cb, but as has been mentioned quite a bit, front 7 looks great.
I don't think brady misses 4 games, but even if he does I'm not worried about that a bit --- just the corners getting lit up by some of the better qb we might face.