One player most certainly can bring your pass rush from awful to decent. Seymour on the field would mean that TBC never saw a double team, and if that were the case he'd be getting a whole lot of pressure.
As for "you never know what will happen in the playoffs", you do know what will happen in the playoffs when you can't rush the passer. How many of the Pats' wins have come against teams with good QBs? Because in the playoffs, most teams have good QBs, and we're going to have to beat the likes of Philip Rivers, Carson Palmer, Peyton Manning, and Drew Brees if we want to have a shot at the SB. Do you have faith in our ability to stop any of those guys? Because if you do, with our pass rush, then I don't know what to tell you.
The teams that 'click' down the stretch pretty much always have the same profile: capable of doing pretty much everything well, but inconsistent in execution. That tends to signify correctable mistakes, and when they get corrected the team starts playing at its true level. That's what happened with the Cardinals last year, the Giants in 2007, etc. But the Pats aren't just inconsistent in the pass rush (and pass protection, for that matter); they outright don't have one. There's no amount of 'coaching up' that will fix that problem- it's a personnel issue and it's way, way too late to address it for 2009. That's what happens when you take a barely-decent pass rush in 2008 and trade your best pass rusher. Even TBC can't very well counteract the loss, when he's essentially making up for Mike Vrabel.
