Re: Wilfork says he wouldnt mind playing for the Bucs or Dolfoons.
Don't misquote me and then biatch about me misquoting you. I am willing to give Belichick the benefit of the doubt going into the offseason. I don't trash the guy for one bad season until I see what he is going to do to fix the problem.
I didn't misquote you.
I have agreed that short term that trading Seymour was a a bad move. But you are overrating the guy a bit. He is a Hall of Famer, but hasn't played at that level for a while. The Pats were likely to lose him anyway. You cannot judge this trade until we see what the Pats get. They could use that pick this year to trade for someone. I figure that Seymour was gone after the 2009 season anyway. So I am willing to take an one year hit to potentially get the next Tom Brady or Lawrence Taylor. Besides, Seymour was not the missing piece to make this team from what it was to be an elite team.
1.) What you're doing is rationalizing after the fact. It's what people do to protect their friends and family when they screw up. Fans do it with teams and coaches, as you are here.
2.) There was no way on Earth that the Patriots were going to lose Seymour if they didn't want to. It was impossible to happen. They had the franchise tag available. The only way for Seymour not to have returned to New England was for the Patriots to make moves that made that happen.
3.) Seymour on that defense and a healthy Welker on offense, and the Patriots were more than capable of beating any team in the NFL. It's amazing how quickly the people who are defending Belichick over this have forgotten about Seymour's play last season.
Personally, Brady getting up there in age is a good argument to load up and build for the future while still being competitive now. Which is what the Pats did.
So it's a good idea to undermine current seasons, when the team has a QB that can win Super Bowls, in order to potentially improve in future seasons, when that QB is likely to either be gone or be a lesser player? That makes sense only if you don't want to win Super Bowls or if you've won one in the past year or two.
Most people thought Galloway was a great pick up when it happened. Belichick has missed on free agents forever even in Super Bowl years. Remember Donald Hayes, David Terrell, JJ Stokes, etc.
Donald Hayes wasn't cut until almost the very end of the season. Stokes was cut after 2 games, but the team had Branch, Johnson, Patten and Givens. Terrell never played a game for the team, didn't make the final 53, and never had to be replaced mid-season.
The Galloway move led to a player being cut while the team was undertalented at WR without him, and the team never replaced him, even though it happened at the beginning of the season. That's the difference.
I am convinced that Burgess was plan D for the Pats at OLB. That is why the trade happened so late in the preseason. I think the Pats were interested in Peppers, but Peppers didn't want to play the game and sign the franchise tag. I think Belichick was ready to add Jason Taylor, but the Dolphins jumped in at the last moment and stole him away. I think the Pats were also high on McKenzie and had hopes that either he or Crable would step up. After all those things fell apart, Belichick looked to Burgess. If Belichick knew what he knew by the end of training camp, he might not have traded Vrabel.
Plan "A" or plan "Z" is irrelevant. Belichick shipped off 2 draft picks. The argument about Seymour is "wait for the picks!", yet the picks that were pissed away for Burgess just get ignored. It's not bad enough that Burgess sucked for the vast majority of the season. We get to tack on the loss of a 3rd and a 5th along with that lovely display of generally incompetent football. As I've pointed out before
Seymour
3rd in 2010
5th in 2010
for
Burgess
1st in 2011
The Raiders stole from the Patriots. Crazy Al beat the tar out of Bill the genius. What's worse is that the 5th rounder could have been a 4th if the Patriots didn't make moves to re-secure a 5th in the 2010 draft. So, in other words, the Patriots had to make a second trade to avoid making that Burgess trade even worse.
If the Pats made that fourth down, Belichick would have been called a genius. In the past he has made risking calls that worked out. This one didn't.
A stupid call is a stupid call, regardless of whether or not it's successful. It was a stupid call, particularly in light of everything that had preceded it during that series.
As for the series of mistakes, getting rid of Pees goes a long way to fix that. For the last three years, Belichick has had to spread himself thin doing Pees job and working with the defense on the sidelines making adjustments. He never did that with Romeo. When he had McDaniels, it was easy to ignore the offense at those points (BTW, I think the loss of McDaniels hurt this team far, far more than Seymour). It hurt with a rookie signal caller O'Brien.
As I've noted before, we have no idea what was going on as far as the dynamic with Pees/Belichick. People are making assumptions, nothing more. The reality is that the coaching staff was able to make chicken salad out of chicken excrement this season. Whether it was mostly Pees, mostly Belichick, or an even split is irrelevant. The defensive coaching was among the very least of this team's problems.
