Steve Balestrieri's Archive:

The truly two most important aspects of the Combine? The interviews and the medicals and those are the two parts that all of us aren’t allowed to see.

The Patriots should find a younger, more athletic right tackle and then re-do Vollmer’s contract and move him to swing tackle. That falls in line with the Patriots way of thinking, which is to replace a player perhaps a year too soon rather than a year too late.

What the Patriots would really like is an upgrade at the RCB position and move Ryan into the slot. Bill Belichick loves his veterans on the defense and would like to bring in a veteran presence and allow the others to compete and sort out the rest.

Mayo was taken with the 10th pick of the 2008 NFL Draft and immediately paid dividends. He was the Defensive Rookie of the Year and a 2-time Pro-Bowler but he was much more than that.

Now the team has to decide whether to bring back Chandler who also battled injuries last season for a second go around and cover his cap hit of $3 million-dollars or cut him for a savings of $2.05 million.

The Patriots lost an iconic figure with the retirement of Jerod Mayo this week, and while it wasn’t entirely unsuspected it leaves the Patriots with a depth issue behind starters Hightower and Collins. Those two are arguably the best pair of linebackers in the league and the team’s immediate concern is locking them up long-term.

The team needs some youth, size and speed on the outside. Not necessarily a deep threat, that everyone clamors for, since that isn’t their offense. But someone who can stretch the field horizontally as well as vertically and has the size to go up and grab those contested throws.

Given the injuries to the offensive line and then losing both starters (Dion Lewis, LaGarrette Blount) to IR during the season doomed the Pats running game in 2015. Truth be told, they ran the ball very poorly overall for most of the season and it was a major reason for their failure in the AFC Championship Game.

Kraft did add later, “I happened to see Archie [Manning] there. He has two sons now who have won two Super Bowls, but with all due respect, we’ve got one son who has won four.”

The 6’0, 200-pound Ohio State product is as tough as they come, being a former member of the US National Rugby Team. While a Buckeye, his prowess on kickoffs is stuff of legend as he was compared to “a heat seeking missile.”

A quick look at the final eight teams that rounded out the NFL’s season from the Divisional Round thru the Super Bowl shows that for the most part, teams that ran the ball well were the ones standing in the end.

Siliga is one of those big bodied guys who are invaluable as run stuffers. One of the indelible moments of training camp was his crunching hit of Tyler Gaffney on August 1, shooting across the gap and leveling the runner as he was trying to get to the second level

Fletcher has always excelled at being a special teams’ standout and a good reserve linebacker who can spot start when needed and always did a good job of covering running backs out of the backfield.

Wilson has made his mark as a reserve, playing mostly dime linebacker in the ‘Big Nickle’ sub-packages or on Special Teams.

He was the lead man on the Patriots drafting Bryan Stork and Tre’ Jackson from Florida State, Shaq Mason from Georgia Tech and David Andrews from Georgia.