Colvin, however, was replacing an earlier departee, which is how you keep the team from declining. The Colvin problem arose because one of the very things you're saying they couldn't do was, in fact, done, but had a disappointing result due to injury.
From where I'm reading, you've confused a determination not to pay certain people money with the inability to do so. The team could certainly have paid Branch, just as an example, but it refused to move on the last year of Branch's rookie contract. Givens was paid far more than he reasonably should have. You let those players walk regardless of any salary cap. We see that in sports like baseball, all the time. You're also focused mainly on players that I noted: Seymour, Law and Law, all of whom were given large number contracts while still with the Patriots and all of whom played at least a season with the team at those high numbers.
Johnson and Pfifer weren't cap casualties. Johnson retired due to concussion issues, but he was already in camp. Seau certainly was an adequate replacement brought in the next season. Phifer was no longer the player he had been. He was 36 in 2004. Replacements were brought in. They were simply less successful.
I understand what you're saying, but you've combined two separate assertions. One regards talent replacement and the other regards salary cap issues. I'm in complete agreement with the idea that great players were not replaced with great players over the course of time. I'm simply pointing out that the facts don't support the argument that this was due to the salary cap, at least in most cases.
Stop the strawman.
Nowhere in anything I have said am I talking about whether they could, would, wanted to or didn't want to replace individual players.
I am saying they could not afford to either:
A) Keep EVERY player or
B) Replace them with an equal player for the same cap cost
Players contracts expired throughout the the subsequent 5 years.
They kept some. They replaced every single one. They maintianed 53 man rosters.
But it was impossible to retain them or replace them with SIMILAR talent, because what it would cost to replace them that way would have enormously exceeded the cap.
We haven't been as good at corner since Law left. One of the consequences of what I am describing is that we could not spend as much on a replacement as we were spending on Law. Not if we intended to give raises to any players, or to replace the ones that leave with equal ones. Its not about the decisions that were made. A player who left due to age rather than money means no difference.
Once again:
The total level of talent on the 03-04 Patriots was by far the best in the NFL.
As soon as those contracts started expiring, there were 3 choices:
1) Give the player a raise
2) Let the player go and replace them with an equal talent costing substantially more
3) Let the player go and replace him with a player costing about what he did, which would be a big dropoff in talent
You can look at individual instances where we did 1 or 2 but every time we did that it meant we had to do 3, or even the 4th option which is fill out the back of the roster with more rookies, minimum salary free agents, etc, because there wasnt cap space left.
You want to strawman this into saying players were replaced. That is ignorant. Of course they were replaced, we maintained 53 players on the roster. But the overall talent level was destined to decline.
Here is an analogy.
The Yankees payroll is far above everyone elses. If we stipulate agree for the sake of argument that players are paid about their value, if you introduced a salary cap into baseball and made every player a fre agent, the decrease in overall talent on the roster of the Yankees would be the greatest in the league.
That is exactly what happened to the Patriots, but it happened over time as the contracts expired one by one. "Bargain" contracts were signed as the dynasty was built and players outplayed their contracts. Its foolish to think the talent level could be maintained under a salary cap.
