Well look at it this way
From 2009-2013 drafts patriots hit home runs on Julian Edelman , Aaron Hernandez, Pat Chung, Duran Harmon, Marcus Cannon, Nate Soldier, Sebastian Vollmer, Devin Mccourty, Rob Gronkowski, Logan Ryan, Jamie Collins, donta Hightower , chandler jones....
Most of those guys were young stars...most of them built the foundation of our super bowl runs of 2014 and 2016.
Now that some of those guys are no longer on the team or are getting up their in age...what young stars do we have to replace them from the draft? I’ll give you Shaq Mason and Trey Flowers..But I see Flowers walking in free agency next year
It's not quite that simple. Look at Seattle, who drafted extremely well early on and struggled later. So did the Packers.
Part of it comes down to opportunities. Many of those guys were day 1 starters, partly because of talent, partly because of nobody ahead of them at the time. Solder, McCourty, Gronkowski, Collins, Hightower and Chandler are all guys who had little or no real competition, and were forced to learn on the job.
Compare that to Brown and Easley and Cyrus Jones, guys who could play a role if all went right, but weren't depended on and not needed. They fought for limited snaps and had to try and develop a role.
And guys like Edelman, Chung, and Cannon took several years to develop. Chung played a lot, but struggled a lot too, and had to leave and come back before fulfilling his potential. Cannon played here and there, but didn't become a fulltime starter until year 5. And Edelman almost left the team before establishing himself as a key contributor.
But those early teams also lacked depth, so you could carry these kids and let them grow up and develop. Now we have one of the deepest teams in the league, and it's harder to let those types of prospects stick around and develop. Grugier-Hill and Derby are two recent examples of guys who might have stuck around on a depleted roster and developed in the background, but we can't afford to carry anymore.
And again, people get carried away looking at the draft and seeing if prospects develop or not. That's not the point of the game. The team is stacked and players have to fight for playing time. That's fine. If a few rookies don't reach their full potential, that's fine too. We're not the Browns, sacrificing wins to try and develop potential. We're competing for Super Bowls.
It's no surprise that teams that are terrible like the Seahawks end up having some great drafts as young kids get opportunities to develop, then you see them struggle to develop as the team gets stronger. That's common in the NFL, and not specific to New England.