I don't get the hemming and hawing so far before the season starts. Who was available? Peppers? If you sign Peppers there's no money for Wilfork and now we're looking for a nose tackle. Plus there's the morale factor of players not believing they'll get paid if they do their jobs. You need to reward your own for good performance; what the Sox have been doing is the right strategy.
There are not many teams out there that would swap situations with the Patriots. Any team with Brady on it is a contender. Belichick has consistently played for the long haul as opposed to loading up for one season. It's a strategy that sometimes comes back to bite them -- maybe they win in 2006 if they have Deion Branch, and maybe they win in 2007 if they have Lamarr Woodley. But what they haven't done is gone so far backwards as to be out of the playoffs, excepting the Brady injury year. You manage your assets so that you have a chance every year, you get into the tournament with Brady, and you take your chances. They had a relatively poor team (poor relative to their own standards) in 2006 and almost got it done because the club got hot at the right time.
Last year the exact opposite happened. They lost a star player in the last week, they went through some demoralizing close losses, and they had no momentum at all. But was last year's team really that much worse than the 2006 team? Not on paper. There wasn't anything close to the absurdity of trotting out Reche Caldwell as a #1 receiver, or relying on Artrell Hawkins in the defensive backfield, or starting Eric Alexander in a playoff game. Moreover that 2006 was very lucky health-wise, unlike last year's club, which had significant absences all year.
This current Patriots team has more talent than that 2006 club I think. They have many more emerging young players than that team (Vollmer, Meriweather, Mayo, Butler, Chung and Edelman are a better group than Mankins, Watson, Maroney, and Hobbs), they are bound to get some more good young players this year, and they're also not looking at losing key players before next season -- Watson is probably the biggest loss.
People have to remember that a lot of this is luck. Injuries, momentum, a couple of bad bounces here and there. If Kevin Faulk doesn't bobble that pass in Indy, what does last season look like? They key is to be consistently good and give yourself a chance at the end of the year. And they pretty much always do just that. I think they made good choices this year -- keeping their good players and trying to add through the draft. It's a solid strategy. Not terribly sexy, but smart.
, IMO BB and the rest of the FOs approach this off-season makes perfect sense. Keep the core guys who perform on the field and are solid locker room people. Exercise fiscal restraint in an uncertain economic climate and focus on acquiring solid veteran talent. Be patient with the 2nd and 3rd year players and let them develop and use the selections to better the team in some, way, shape or form.
