Sorry, SEMI OT:
I think you are right when people think about the Pats as not willing to pay for high profile FA's and the like. There are exceptions of course but even when they brought in Rodney it wasn't like they broke the bank or anything. After reading about this perception for a while now and this has nothing to do with mgcolby's post specifically but just the perception in general, I think that perception is unwarranted. Perhaps the average fan who only knows the big names would tend to think the team is "cheap". But if you went about and asked the "middle class" of this team, I think they would say that the Pats were actually pretty generous.
The Pats have an established core who they pay handsomely like Brady and Seymour. But as has been written about over and over again, they do they have strong middle class because they pay them better than say the Redskins who are willing to pay top dollar for FA stars. It's all about wanting to put your money in the right places. The great analogy to that is this country. It's been so successful in the last few decades because the back bone of its economy is a strong middle class. Even in so called Third World countries, there are people who are just as wealthy as the people in the Forbes list of Billionaires. The difference between the economies of the "developed world" and the "under developed economies" is a strong middle class. Perhaps that's the secret to Patriot success as well.