The team has resigned several key players, including taking care of their top priority, nose tackle Vince Wilfork.
Wilfork and the Pats agreed to a five-year deal that would make him the highest paid nose tackle in the NFL. New England has rewarded cornerback Leigh Bodden with a new four-year deal, has resigned team sack leader Tully Banta-Cain, Kevin Faulk, Stephen Neal, and tendering restricted free agents Logan Mankins and Stephen Gostkowski.
All these players are important pieces to the puzzle and New England needed to make sure they brought them back, especially Wilfork. However, the ownership needs to remember that this previous season those players only brought the team to the first round of the playoffs before getting blown out by the Baltimore Ravens.
The only roster concern the team had coming into the offseason that has been resolved is Wilfork, and they even managed to create another one. More needs to be done to this team to bring them back to the Super Bowl, and that more needs to come from outside of the organization.
The need for a dramatically improved pass rush has been made worse. Keeping Banta-Cain is good, but it’s asking a lot of him to recreate the season he had in 2009. The team still hasn’t found anyone to replace Richard Seymour and now Jarvis Green has left the team, leaving the team with a thin defensive line without much experience.
With the news that Wes Welker won’t be around for the start of the season and that Randy Moss doesn’t plan on being around after this season, wide receiver help became a must. The team signed David Patten. Though he is a former Patriot, he is not a difference maker. Last year’s surprise, Julian Edelman, did not perform on a consistent basis enough to fully trust him yet.
They also have not made any moves to shore up a weak secondary, mainly at the cornerback position, and improving a disappointing and inconsistent running game that is used with a “by-committee” approach.
The team also managed to create a huge hole at the tight end position by letting Benjamin Watson go and sign with Cleveland and releasing backup Chris Baker. Now in addition to solving the problems the team came into the offseason with, they now have to address another glaring weakness.
There is still a lot of time left until the roster is set and the season starts. There are still a number of talented free agents available in the pool. The draft is still upcoming as well, and with five picks in the first two rounds the Patriots have the resources to collect a lot of talent, either by using the selections themselves or by packaging them for good players from other teams.
The resources are there but the Patriots have to utilize them. It has never been the team’s mantra to throw tons of money at All-Pros from other, less successful teams, and they don’t have to. The team has previously showed that they didn’t need the biggest names to win it all. Still, the aging and average retreads will not push the Patriots back to the next level.
You’ve taken care of your in-house business New England, now go out and make your team better, not just keep it the same.
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CLEVELAND – The Cleveland Browns filled a gaping offensive hole, signing free agent tight end Benjamin Watson to a multi-year contract.
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This has been an interesting winter thus far for the Patriots in the sense that they’ve done a great job keeping their own house in order without making much of an impact on the free-agent market outside of New England.
First, they took care of the biggest need by re-signing Vince Wilfork at the start of the free-agency signing period. Next up, they brought back guard Stephen Neal, who once considered retirement, and also re-upped with running back Kevin Faulk, linebacker Tully Banta-Cain and cornerback Leigh Bodden.
These moves aren’t coincidental. The four players who were quickly re-signed were among the top performers in a season that ended in disappointment and shock with a playoff loss to Baltimore.
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Fred Davis emerged in 2009 as a legitimate threat as a pass-catching tight end. While he is not yet the polished route runner that Chris Cooley is, his upside potential may be greater than Cooley’s.
Having both Davis and Cooley is a luxury for the Redskins, and they could become an excellent duo at the position. But with so many needs to fill, Washington can afford to sacrifice one of them.
Which one? The no-brainer would be Cooley. He’s older at 27, and he is coming off of an ankle injury, but he still has a high trade value. Cooley is still capable of playing at a very high level.
Who would the Redskins trade Cooley to, and for what compensation? A good fit for a trade would be the New England Patriots. After recently losing Ben Watson, the Patriots have a glaring need at the tight end position.
The Patriots also have three second-round picks in the upcoming draft, giving them good currency for a trade. One second- and one fourth-round pick would be a good deal for Cooley, and since the Redskins currently only have five picks, they could put them to good use.
The Redskins’ signing of Sean Ryan to be a blocking tight end is a good indication that a deal may be imminent. An NFL team needs one good pass-catching tight end and one that can block, and in Ryan and Davis, they have both. Cooley may be the odd man out.
With some extra high picks in the draft, the Redskins would be well positioned to rebuild their offensive line with an infusion of youthful talent. While it would sadden many Redskins fans to see one of their favorites traded away, Mike Shanahan needs to make some hard decisions to ensure a brighter future for Washington.
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FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – New England Patriots running back Kevin Faulk didn't want to go out like Nomar Garciaparra.
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New England Patriots running back Kevin Faulk didn't want to go out like Nomar Garciaparra. Watching the former Boston Red Sox All-Star shortstop retire on Wednesday helped convince Faulk that he wanted to spend his entire career with the Patriots. So Faulk re-signed with the Patriots, the team that made him a second-round draft choice in 1999 and the only team he's ever played for.
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With the 22nd pick in the 2010 NFL (Mock) Draft, the New England Patriots select Jared Odrick, defensive lineman, Penn State.
At pick 22, the New England Patriots are stuck in that awful “orange” zone of picks.
Most of the elite, proven athletes are off the board. So, too, are the workout warriors who blew everyone away in private session and at the NFL Combine. There are a ton of guys with top-tier upside still available, but now the question marks start pouring in.
This guy didn’t have a great combine. That guy didn’t have a great senior year. That guy has an injury history. This player is making a position change.
Odrick, for example, is a do-it-all defensive lineman out of Penn State. He’s a smart kid, who has experience playing everywhere along the defensive line, as well as working with the 3-4 and 4-3—rare for a college player.
His workout numbers don’t leap off the page, but he’s a smart bet in a draft loaded with defensive talent.
He’s obviously got way more experience in the 4-3, as does just about everyone in college, but as a 3-technique defensive tackle, or even wider as a 3-4 defensive end, he could give the Patriots a great deal of flexibility along the defensive line, along with guys like Mike Wright and Myron Pryor.
That’s especially going to be important because the Patriots’ previous jack-of-all-trades Jarvis Green is now going to be his old versatile self in Denver. Though the Patriots solidified the centerpiece of their front seven by re-signing Vince Wilfork, they’ll need a great deal of flexibility up front with Richard Seymour and Green now both playing for other teams.
Odrick’s got a great, stable base, though he’s not terribly explosive. The Patriots don’t need a slam dunk here, they just need a good solid athlete who can contribute at a variety of positions right away, especially with Green now out of New England.
A lot of drafts have them going after a “tweener” who can make the switch from 4-3 defensive end to 3-4 outside rush linebacker. Those are high-profile picks and they’re extraordinarily valuable, but they’re incredibly difficult to project.
I think the Patriots will trade out of this spot, ultimately, even if it’s only to move down to 26 or 27 where they can still land a guy like Odrick and pick up a second-day pick to solidify their roster a bit.
This is a deep draft and with the (incredibly likely) possibility of a rookie wage scale coming and the fact that, according to several reports I’ve read, there’s close to 45 guys who would rate at a first-round level in this draft, I think the second round is the place the Patriots want to be, more so than late in the first.
They could also trade up if they get a good enough offer from a team looking to bail out of the first round and they see somebody they’re willing to pay the premium money for.
Either way, I’d expect to see some movement by the Patriots. That’s certainly been their M.O. in the past.
At pick 23 last year, for example, the Patriots traded their pick to the Ravens who used the chance to draft Michael Oher, the raw physical tackle who was surprisingly still on the board. The Patriots passed on Oher, who ended up being the best performing rookie tackle. Of course, they then picked up Sebastian Vollmer 35 picks later and he ended up being the second-best performing rookie tackle at a fraction of the price.
Was it worth it? Only time will tell, but it just goes to show how difficult picks 20-60 are to project, even in a year when every junior in the country isn’t jumping at the chance of landing the last big rookie contract.
The fact that this is a draft flooded with first-round talent looking to be the last class to cash in on big money before a rookie wage cap hits and that there’s a plethora of top-drawer defensive linemen means the Patriots will be as cagey as ever come draft day.
Would you expect anything else?
With the 23rd pick in the 2010 NFL Featured Columnist Mock Draft, the Green Bay Packers.
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In this slideshow, I will be breaking down the New England Patriots draft picks through round 3 in the upcoming 2010 NFL Draft. The Patriots are one of the smartest drafting teams in the league, and they have a lot of needs on their roster to fill before next season. With four picks through the third round, the Patriots could land multiple starters for down the road. Let’s take a look:
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Recent rumors had it that free agent running back Kevin Faulk hadn't gotten an offer from his former team,…
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The conference was held on March 6, headlined by luminaries like Rockets GM (and ‘00 Sloan School grad) Daryl Morey, author Michael Lewis , Colts GM Bill Polian, Mavs owner Mark Cuban, and ESPN Bah-stahhnophile Bill Simmons.
It attracted over 1,000 fans, job seekers, knowledge enthusiasts, sexless dorks, and rationals. Dan Shanoff offers a capable recap .
I thought this piece of advice from Shanoff was particularly meaningful:
Here’s how I see it: If you really want to be a team front-office executive, you are better off spending your summer internship not fetching coffee for a team or leading stats-oriented Web site. Start your own (blog) and own the hell out of some segment of analysis. Post daily, post brilliantly, gently pass your stuff around to folks in media who would appreciate it. If it’s good—and if you’re not good, you might as well not even try—the teams will notice. There is no barrier (at least no publishing barrier) to becoming your own expert and putting your talent on display. THAT is the fast track.
There is some precedent here. 1970s Sabremetrics pioneer Bill James was hired as a special consultant to at least one major league team on the strength of a hand-stapled newsletter (after years of being ignored and aggressively mocked). In that sense, being a protester to the orthodoxy wasn’t much different from Thomas Paine two hundred years previous or Martin Luther another two hundred before that–you were essentially a pamphleteer of grievance. The internet has changed everything.
The Blogger-to-Front-Office hire is coming.
Hardwood Paroxysm tells us that Moneyball analytical methods are already cracking the NBA establishment:
Trade and free agency decisions are increasingly being made with more statistical information, and Oliver broke down how widespread this is all becoming and stated that he knows of eight teams that have actually integrated advanced analytics into their decision-making (Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City, Orlando, and Portland).
Like MLB, the NBA and NFL will see an increased use of unconventional analytics. Anecdotal and experiential data—traditional scouting, the accumulated wisdom of former players and coaches—will be complemented, if not supplanted, by methods more friendly to falsification, verification, and the extraction of value. As methodological sophistication increases, we can all anticipate Goldman Sachs bundling Kevin Durant futures expressed in plus-minus, tying them to the Greek economy, sprinkled with a Laotian kip counterweight hedge.
A sure thing!
The challenge that the NBA and NFL face is that they are games featuring mutually dependent interplay and teammate-contingent results—unlike baseball, which is essentially a team game played in individual parallel and thus lends itself to easy analysis. Breaking down the importance of the RB vs. the OL vs. the scheme isn’t easy to do.
Unless you’ve followed Mike Shanahan’s career, that is.
My own guess is that the New New Thing in basketball will be the ability to marry meaningful plus-minus metrics with advanced performance statistics (say shooting percentage sorted by distance from basket, time on shot clock, good shot/bad shot, defended/undefended) and actual game film such that it becomes a teaching tool and is capable of behavioral impact, not just as an ex post facto evaluation tool.
It’s one thing to tell a player that a 2-point shot from just inside the 3 point line is the worst shot in basketball or that the 3 pointer from the corner is one of the best; it’s quite another to be able to integrate it as a real-time teaching tool.
Imagine game film where the player watches himself run through the offense, a small read-out above his on-screen head calculates the adjusted value of each potential shot depending on his spot on the floor.
Or defensively, seeing the same metrics as the offensive player gets an clear-out iso at the top of the 3 point line with 12 seconds on the shot clock. As a GM, you’re now informing action rather than just reacting to a season’s body of work.
Jeff Ma recounts a part of the conference that I found most interesting as it speaks to what is most difficult to do in decision-making—the ability to pull the trigger on what your convictions and analysis tell you to do when all others are losing their heads:
Particularly interesting and relevant personally was a discussion between Pollian, Kraft, and Simmons regarding Belichick’s infamous 4th and 2 decision. Pollian and Kraft both supported Belichick’s decision while Simmons’ remains staunchly against the decision. Simmons’ main argument centers on the Patriots’ poor use of time outs and play calling preceding the 4th and 2 and less on the decision itself, but he remains adamant that it was the wrong decision.
Simmons’ failure here is the inability to marry analysis with rationality, though he fancies himself a rational. Which is pretty much his calling card as it relates to Boston sports teams.
This is primarily a failure of will, the refusal to see what is right in front of you , the graveyard of Wall Street analysts, Enron execs, utopian politicians, and the captains of wrecked ships. It’s the most insidious sort of peer pressure. If you want to understand why Warren Buffett is a billionaire, you need look no further than this aspect of his character.
During this discussion, Polian made the point that using statistics to make this type of decision is irrelevant since there are so many factors that can’t be taken into account by the statistics. Polian is actually citing something called “reduction bias” where in order to solve a complex problem, one reduces the number of variables to make the situation easier to solve. But what Polian fails to acknowledge is the importance of using numbers to help you make these types of decisions. Of course numbers are not going to definitively tell you what is right to do here, but in this case the numbers supported that there was an option besides punting the ball—an observation that most in football would not accept as feasible.
Right. It’s not that the 4th and 2 call was clearly good or bad. It was a near thing, statistically, and contextually within the game. I’ll even call it a coin flip. Yet the post-game reactionaries viewed a close proposition as something more like 95-5 against. Confirming that most of our beliefs are based on superstition, anecdote, and legend rather than hard numbers.
I’m guilty of it, too.
I watched that Patriots-Colts game live and can recall my own instant bias: How can the Patriots not punt this ball? I began to mouth the familiar orthodoxy: It’s 4th and 2, you must kick it and play defense! Then my rational mind kicked in, I started running the numbers, and realized that this was far from madness—in fact it was defensible. Probably advisable. However, the fourth down wasn’t converted, so that it was the wrong call became ironclad fact. Now it was about media and fan perception and the predictable dumb recitation of football tradition and time-honored platitudes.
Also known as ESPN.
I listed to Bill Simmons post-game podcast and Simmons, one of the proponents of the New Analysis, spent an hour excoriating Belichick’s play call, offering that it proved Belichick was being contrarian to reinforce his own personal brand as a risk taker to the detriment of the team, that he was now likely washed up, that it was an act without any rational explanation. Hmm. That Simmons is then a lead panelist at a conference examining a rational approach to sports is proof that when it comes to applied analysis, human psychology is always the final barrier.
