I'm working now with a brilliant chemist, top1% in his field, to help him bring an invention to market, with Nobel quality potential. The guy is absurdly smart, designing changes to molecular structure in his head and then finding out in the lab that most of the time, he was right.
Most of what I know about chemistry and its impact on human health, I've learned from hanging out with him over the past few months. I really enjoy listening him talk about science. I could dedicated the rest of my life, 24x7, to studying chemistry and never get to the point where I could question anything he said about this topic with any legitimacy or authority.
It's the same basic relationship for us fans and the coaching staff of the Patriots. Any one of us on this board could spend every waking hour studying tape, learning about football, and still only have 5% of the knowledge that BB and his crew have about any player, prospect, strategy, or tactical decision faced by the Patriots. The difference between my situation with the chemist, and the our situation with BB, is that the difference in intelligence isn't so wide, but the difference in knowledge and inside information is just as great.
And it is in this context that so many pretend otherwise, make strong, sometimes even absolute, evaluative statements about the decisions at Patriots HQ. Then, to top it off, some call BB "arrogant" because he sticks to his guns on his thinking and decisions.
I appreciate this poll, but in some way it perpetuates the myth that anyone, standing on the outside looking in, would have anywhere near enough knowledge to make a legitimate criticism of a decision made inside. For every one "fact" we have about a player, prospect, strategy, or tactical situation, there are 99 facts of which we are ignorant. This has nothing to do with our talent or intelligence or effort; it is just the way the thing is structured.