He certainly wasn't young and well, do you think he'll make it through this season without missing time?
He's getting older, not younger. I agree he's not ancient but old is a relative term as far as football players go and I know you're smart enough to know that.
Just saying back in the Super Bowl days there was a good blend of smart savvy vets with young developing HIGH-LEVEL talent like Seymour was and the rest of those guys...like Meriweather and Mayo are now.
I hope the fact I'm not hugely disagreeing with you is coming across here. I think we're almost on the same wavelength here.
What do you mean Seymour wasn't young and well? He got PUPed in 2007 for a fluke injury that he sustained playing fullback. Other than that, he played 16 games in 2006 and 15 in 2008. Warren missed 3 games last year vs. one for Seymour, and was playing with serious injuries all season. I'm pumped to see that he's recovered well, but going into the season he was more of an injury liability than Seymour was (he started on PUP, remember), so that can't be why Seymour got traded.
I definitely agree with the premisethat you need to mix young, cheap talent with experienced vets. That's the point: Seymour is an experienced vet, and in your initial post you said that there wasn't a place for a guy like that because he wasn't young/aggressive. To draw the 2003 defense analogy (the best of the BB era, IMO) you need the Seymour/Warren/Wilfork/Asantes, and you need the Rodney/Vrabel/Tedy/McGinest/Laws. At 29, though, and playing elite, all-pro football, Seymour clearly fits into the second group.
If you want to argue that the trade was good because we lose one year of service and gain a draft pick, then fine, but that's a totally different argument than what you're trying to make. All 3 SB defenses were built around cores of players that were over 30, and Seymour isn't even that yet. The defense needed to get younger from 2008, sure, but it already had- Vrabel, Bruschi and Harrison were already gone.
FWIW, while I think that the trade has cost us 1 game so far, I'm higher on it now than I was when it happened. I get why Belichick did what he did, and I understand the thought process behind it, but I just ideologically don't like it. That said, the trade happened, and if we can consistently bring the blitz like we did against the Ravens, then it could end up being a huge win all around.