My retriever would be an upgrade over Richards. I am looking for someone who can fill the shoes of McCourty, Harmon or Chung. Chung in particular. Nobody on the roster can do what he does. Best bet would be to move Rowe back to S, although I like him at CB better than most. At least there is young talent at CB with Wiltz, Lewis, Jackson, and Crossen. At safety it's duct tape.
I hear ya.
Actually, I think Richards was drafted to be Chung's understudy and eventual successor. Major understatement to say that hasn't worked out.
Chung turns 31 this coming Monday. The McC twins turn 31 a week from today (Saturday). With that in mind, even during last season, I'd become convinced that BB would be looking for safeties in the 2018 draft.
And then, the draft seemed to offer an unusually deep class of good-sized, athletic guys who'd played multiple DB roles in relatively sophisticated coverage schemes. So, I convinced myself that BB would be selecting at least one of them in an early round, to become an understudy/successor candidate for either Chung or DMac. Y'know - get a trainee in the pipeline who'd have a better chance at winning the job than I thought Travis or Jones would have. (So, Jones is gone now, and Travis may actually be worse than Richards.)
However, even though my binkies went way later in the draft than I thought they would, BB still didn't bite. Headscratcher.
THEN, I thought that maybe BB preferred a guy with NFL experience to an untested college prospect, since the latter haven't worked out very well, for the most part. And when Reid, Vaccaro and Boston seemed to be shut out in free agency, and the UFA safeties who got signed weren't getting fabulous money, I began to think that BB might snag one of those guys on an unexpectedly reasonable contract and work toward using a four-man rotation for the three safety spots, with a more even snap-count distribution, to take some of the workload off Chung and DMac (keep them both fresher for the post-season. Those three vets aren't youngsters, but mid-20s is still younger than 31.
ICYMI, other posters think that a 4-man rotation for three safety spots is a ridiculously radical idea, and that the #4 safety only needs to be a special-teamer, reserve-quality player because he won't see many snaps on defense unless there's an injury. Because BB would never think outside the box like that, I suppose.
Anyway, moot point. The UFA signing didn't happen, and seems unlikely to happen at this point.
So, as you so appropriately put it, "DUCT TAPE".
I, too, had thought at one time that Rowe might be a conversion candidate. He has size and put up very good pre-draft testing numbers. However, his play has been inconsistent, perhaps due mostly to the fact that he's been healthy enough to practice for an average of only 8 games in each of the past two seasons. I don't trust him to be available. He's also turning 26 at the beginning of October, and is only signed through this season.
I suppose there's an outside chance that Lewis could be a conversion candidate/trainee. He's just 24 and an ERFA at the end of this season. He's also the same size/weight as DMac, and very athletic, but I'm not sure he has the mental discipline for a safety role in the Pats coverage schemes. Failing in that, I think we fans are stuck with Richards or Pleasant (special-teamer, injury-emergency reserve only) as our "duct tape" at #4 safety until the 2019 draft, unless BB does something radical before the end of Camp.
