I think we're definitely in a huge net-positive position compared to where we were at the end of last season.
Moves that look fantastic in hindsight (so far):
- Getting Wilfork back. Many were about ready to wish the big guy a fond farewell given his age, injury, and middling play last year prior to the injury (though it's now obvious he was likely battling some other injury). He's been playing great - I honestly haven't watched him meticulously enough to know if he's lost a step, but it certainly isn't the drop-off we all feared.
- Brandon LaFell. Listen, I would have liked Emmanuel Sanders too, but I'd take LaFell at half the money every time. The biggest reason? Sanders is a stylistic redundancy for our offense with Edelman and Amendola already on it; Sanders may be the fastest undersized WR of the three, but we're getting better value with Edelman, who's also an ST beast, and our hands are tied with Amendola. With LaFell, we get a big, physical receiver the Patriots were sorely lacking last year who is quickly developing into a redzone and outside threat. This guy has the potential to become someone that can stretch the field for us. Normally I'd think our ideal setup would have him as WR2 with a true WR1 making our offense all but unstoppable, but Gronk skews this notion. If Tim Wright keeps developing, I think an arsenal of Gronk-Wright-LaFell-Edelman-Vereen is capable of shredding most defenses. At $3M per year, LaFell has been all value so far.
- Everybody Pat Chung tonight. Talk about redemption. I'm not saying he's lights out, and think he's easily the weakest part of our starting secondary, but when they brought him in I thought he was essentially camp fodder. From their he earned the starting role and has thus far done better than I think anyone expected. Again, so much value as we have him at $1.1M/year.
Moves that are living up to expectations:
- Our corner signings. It's because of the trust Bill is afforded in the secondary of Revis, Browner and co. that our defense can pull off some of the exotic looks we had the privilege of seeing against the Broncos. They've met all expectations I had for them thus far, and you can't put a price on what our secondary depth does for our defense. Well, you can. At approx. $17M this year, we're getting exactly what we paid for so far, but at that price, it'd be a pretty big disappointment if we weren't.
- Mankins trade. Initially this trade made my heart sink; overrated or not, Logan brought such an intensity and leadership to the field, and was one of my favorite Patriots. Unfortunately, overrated he was, and it's pretty easy to justify the trade knowing how much we were paying to keep him around. My biggest issue with the trade was losing a perceived top player at one of our biggest areas of need, but we got a player full of potential at another area of need. Plus a 4th rounder to boot.
Also, a little off topic but... *puts tinfoil hat on*.. you can count me in the camp of those who think BB is holding off using the 2 TE look as long as possible to keep opposing coaches from having anything on tape for when the playoffs role around. This would be a huge meta-game move on Bill's part, and requires the offense to be extremely efficient in its practices to have moves it might not reveal for months, but if you can somehow make it to the big dance with an offense the other team has almost nothing on, how could they possibly stop it? *takes tinfoil hat off*
Moves of crushing disappointment.
- The whole Kelly situation was just unfortunate. I know he asked to be released, but I really think the two sides could have probably worked something out.
- I've given it a year and a half. I'm finally ready to give up on my hopes for Amendola as resembling anything close to what we brought him in for. Don't get me wrong, I think he can make a great Patriot; he's an excellent ST'er, still has good hands and appears to be improving each week. But at this point he'd have to go on a 80-yards per game plus TD stretch to close out the season to be worth what we paid for him. If I were the Pats I'd actually want to keep him, but his contract clearly needs to be restructured and more realistic - I think Amendola has to realize this as well.
But yea, overall I think Bill the GM has been killing it this offseason. I find it funny that the area on which he's most criticized (his drafting) is the area that is the very definition of hypothesizing: an educated guess.
