Let me state up front that I believe the Pats can stand to improve their run defense. That being said, in what way were the Pats run on with "decent success" by anybody? Against the Ravens? In the reg season and playoffs, the Ravens had one big play in each but were hardly dominating otherwise (4.1 ypc on only 16 carries in the reg season and under 3 ypc in the playoffs). You want to remake their run defense based on two blown plays?
But you can't eliminate those two big plays when tallying up their YPC against - just as you can't eliminate the plays in which they stuffed the Ravens. When it comes to the playoff games, stats or no stats, I saw what happened that game - and that's the Ravens run the ball effectively enough to get first downs without passing the ball. There was a small window in which the team could have mounted a comeback, but it was ultimately futile in large part thanks to the Ravens ability to move the chains without Flacco having to throw.
To your larger point (ie "who are you trying to stop?") - I agree with you, its a pass first league, and the elite teams are passing based offenses. Which is another reason why I think Wilfork is mildly overvalued and Seymour was moderately undervalued. Take the Colts game for example, one of the rare times this year Wilfork was asked to play outside of the base D on a regular basis (if I recall we were in a nickel almost all game) - he was gassed by the end of the game, as was the rest of the D, and the results speak for themselves. I'm not saying Seymour would have won us that game, but I do believe he could've made a difference.
As for Perillo's point about Seymour, sure, he could be full of it - but he's not the first one to allude to it. A couple mediots said the Patriots tried to ship them Wilfork first (Felger was one, so take it for what it's worth), but that the Raiders weren't interested. I'd usually dismiss that, but that was seemingly confirmed by Al Davis ramblings when the trade went down (though this is confusing, if I could find it, I would post it, but I can't - but in true senile form, he rambled about how the Patriots offered them one player, and he said he was interested in '92', of course, he gave the wrong number).
Whether you buy any of the two above things, I would say this - Seymour was a better player than Wilfork, and a more valuable player to this team, who could be on the field for more snaps, in more packages, and in higher leverage situations, against more elite teams. Ultimately, the reason Seymour isn't here and Wilfork will remain probably has more to do with the fact that DE is so overvalued ($ wise) and NT is undervalued. So in terms of value, it makes sense to go with Wilfork and try and replace Seymour.
But did the plan work? So far, I think not - we were forced to use Wilfork at DE against elite LTs last year and were forced to play Wright at NT at times. Meaning, the Patriots thought the increase in Wilfork's ability over Green at DE was greater than the drop-off from Wilfork to Wright at NT.
Again, I'm not trying to rip Wilfork here. I just think the absence of Richard Seymour at DE is downplayed way too much on this board.
