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Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!

When a pro team ends its season without a championship, the day-after stories in all media declare "many changes" will take place in the off-season, and they'll be dramatic, franchise-shaking changes, too. This reflects the processes of the sports section or department in question, not the team. No sane reporter will author a story saying "status to remain quo for next year." He's begging the readers (or listeners, or viewers) to tune him out until the first game of next season.

The teams which come up short have a nearly identical vested interest in forecasting major personnel shifts. They're telling the customers, "we're mad, too, and we'll leave no stone unturned in our quest for victory." After losing in the playoffs, it'd take a brave/compulsively honest/just plain foolhardy coach or general manager to say, "well, we didn't get the breaks this time around, but we'll get 'em next year. Changes? We're in pretty good shape and don't anticipate more than a few tweaks here and there."

The fan base wouldn't take such candor well. There's reasons for every loss, and the usual reaction to a season-ending defeat is the desire to make sure those reasons never happen again.

Given those imperatives, two very unsurprising things happened in Boston sports yesterday. All media outlets forecast "major changes" for the Patriots in the 2007 off-season. And as always, faced with the choice of an unconvincing fib or an inconvenient truth, Bill Belichick picked option three-silence.

The dull old truth is, the Patriots DON'T need to make major changes. Tweaking will do just fine thanks. As constituted this very morning, the Pats will enter 2007 as they entered 2006, prohibitive favorites to win their division, the AFC East, and hence one of a half-dozen or so teams with a solid chance of becoming Super Bowl champs. The dull fact of the matter is there's a distinct limit to how far a team quarterbacked by Tom Brady can fall unless it's ravaged by injury, and a 9-7 record would appear to be the Brady-built floor.

Of course there will be changes in Patriotland, and maybe major ones at that. But they'll be moves forced upon the franchise. Belichick and Scott Pioli won't go out looking for them. Do you think they sat around in December thinking "Asante Samuel's having a career contract year. Gosh, that's great! I was worried I'd be bored this winter"?

The problem facing the Pats this winter isn't the need for drastic improvement. The decisions being forced upon them run smack against matters of ingrained team policy. Belichick is as empirical a football mind as there is, but it's hard for any human to break habits, especially if they've been successful habits.

Patriot habit one: The Pats are extraordinarily reluctant to hand out the bonanza contracts created by the NFL's free agent system. Since they've also had tremendous success in acquiring young and relatively underpaid talent, player-franchise stress is inevitable.

Samuel-related stress is bound to dwaft the Deion Branch brouhaha of the last off-season. There isn't another team in the NFL which couldn't use a 26-year old corner who led the league in interceptions. The law of supply and demand is working better for Samuel than it does for Saudi Arabia.

Patriot habit two: No successful coach in history as has been as willing to slam youth into his starting lineup as Belichick-with one significant exception.

When it comes to the offensive line or the defensive backfield, the Pats' coach will happily insert rookies into starting jobs. Results have born out this confident belief in the virtues of youth.

When it comes to linebackers, however, Belichick believes just the opposite. He likes them as or more aged than bottles of fine Bordeaux. The coach's career-defining statement about linebacking was made in the 2006 off-season. When Willie McGinest left for the Browns, speculation was rife the Pats would be looking for linebackers in the draft. They didn't pick a one. Belichick waited until training camp and lured Junior Seau out of a one-day retirement.

Again there's no arguing with the results. But veteran players bring built-in drawbacks to the table along with skills and smarts. Older players are slower healers (see Seau, and Rodney Harrison for that matter). Older players are usually on short-term contracts, and they naturally seek the highest possible offer on their next deal (see McGinest, whom the Pats would up missing far more than Adam Vinatieri). Most of all, veteran players inevitably hit the day when they're TOO veteran. The 'backers at the core of New England's defense may have already hit that mark. They're surely near it.

Those are knotty problems requiring all of Belichick and Pioli's considerable abilities. They do not, however, require breaking-news solutions that'd drive the Red Sox off the top of the sports section for a week or so.

My Patriots' off-season guess? When pushed to the wall, the franchise has given bonanza deals to players it deemed irreplacable (Brady, Richard Seymour). After some backing and filling, they'll likely do the same for Samuel. As for the linebackers, I confidently expect a bevy of old guys brought into camp to become new Patriots, just as in every other off-season.

Those are the dullest possible solutions to New England's problems. That makes them the smartest solutions as well.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:45 AM