you're correct, and honestly i was feeling too with what appeared to be all the offseason moves that we were tanking. Im not getting my hopes up, but the team could potentially be equal to or better than what we had last year record wise. we didnt really get worse, we just lost names..
i loved RT17, one of his biggest (non-psychotic supporters) Fitz would be equal to him, Rosen POTENTIALLY better,
Lost leading rusher in are old man Gore, but really all he did was hold back potential development of Drake and Ballage
lost leading WR in Amendola, he was gutsy and scrappy, but when DA is your leading wr for a season...well yeah, this position is better if grant and wilson get and stay healthy. i know we are not the patriots but i dont remember them being gimmicky so hope grant can find a role.
Losing James will hurt the offense most but he wasnt worth the money, but if weiter starts and is good then at least the left side of the line is shored up and they can work around that, hopefully not getting hit in every damn gap like last year.
on D, always loved wake and his energy, the non hold calls have kept him from having HOF numbers, but seems like his games would come in spurts and disappear in spurts, Quinn was just a name, Branch was just a waste, and thats all we lost from teh D, a new scheme and heck D is automatically better.
so im not getting hopes up and screaming playoffs, but honestly this really isnt a tank 3-5 win team IMHO. i think we are 7-9, 8-8 with a ****ton of bullets to fire for division in 2020 if Rosen and the coaching staff pan out
It was never really a "tank" team. We were 7-9 last year with a boatload of injuries, horrendous coaching and subpar QB play for more than half the season. Before this offseason nobody would have ever said that Ryan Fitzpatrick would be a better choice at QB than Tannehill but with a 20/20-after-the-fact vision Fitzpatrick was an upgrade over both QBs from last season. And now we added Rosen.
All the cuts we made were mostly players we all said of "this guy got to go". None of the cuts were by surprise. Outside of Wake they were all submediocre players with bloated contracts. None of them were any good or players you want to count on in the future.
And then you have coaching. I have never seen a worse coaching job then we did last year - on offense and defense. What were we last year on offense? a running team? a passing team? a 50/50? When you would expect a run on 3rd and 1 we'd go 50 yards down field and punt the ball back. If we were at 3rd and long and you expected a pass for the sticks we either ran or passed short. It was like we had no system, no playbook and Gase cooked up plays on the sideline by rolling the dice.
Our new system will be very much like the Patriots system but as one analyst said "an improved Patriots system" just based on having bigger and better backs than the Pats had. Wilson, Grant and Stills are perfect for that system. You've got two smallish and extremely fast WR who can take any short or medium pass the distance (or have we forgotten the high-fiving between Grant and Wilson while outrunning a Bears defense) and in Stills we have a player who is a potent deep threat. And if Parker gets his **** together....we got two of them. The question remains on OL. But who have we "lost" this offseason? Have we gotten worse or better just by subtraction? For most of us we don't see the "talent" we got on the OL. We've got a bunch of UDFAs. Just wait until we get other team's garbage on the team.
We simply can't see that we might be better on the OL. I can't. But for that to see or to envision we have to change our evaluation process.
How often in the beginning of a season have we said "NE got nobody on OL and Brady will get sacked"? How often have we watch them losing players on OL just to plug another no-name in and not lose a step? How often have we sat here and wondered "where do they get these guys from?"
Simple: coaching.
Ben Volin once asked a former Patriots player "how is Belichick getting all these players and they all make an impact while completely being disregarded or tossed aside by the rest of the league". The guy said that Belichick does not draft nor does he pick up players based on their strengths. He picks them for the system and every player is asked: "we know your strength and your weaknesses. We don't care as much about your strength as we care about your weaknesses. We will coach you on your weakness and expose every weakness you have. Are you able to improve on your weaknesses and are you up to the challenge that we put you wherever we want to?"
There will be bumps on the road for our offense but I expect it to run like a well-oiled machine by the end of the season.
The bigger challenge will be on defensive. I still don't know if we had a bunch of garbage on D or if playcalling (or lack thereof) put most of our players in a position to fail rather than to succeed. For the most part it looked like every unit played their own system and none of them were complimentary to each other. We still need to upgrade several position next offseason but with a more structured system we won't look as hapless as we did last year.
And when you put everything together the biggest difference maker this year will be coaching. A lot of people say that nobody coming from the Patriots could ever reproduce that success they had while with Belichick. But if we are honest how many were really trying to branch from that tree? Flores and Grier are the first GM/Coach combo who had a carbon copy NE Patriots offseason - outside the Patriots. Every move they made or did not make had Patriots written all over.
Even the Howard contract is a Patriots move. They tend to give one big contract (especially at corner). And that's it. That contract will look like a bargain next year. 3 years down the road they will give him a choice: we give you some extra money to stay here but not make you the highest paid corner. You can go somewhere else and make money you will never be able to spend in your lifetime or you can stay here and crown your playing career with a Super Bowl. If Howard goes for the money we will trade him and get some good picks (thus the front loaded contract). If he realizes that he is just a wheel in a well-oiled machine and that every wheel can be replaced he'll stay.
Right now - without preseason games, cuts and additional acquisitions - we are a 7 win team. It is really just a question if coaching will equal the offseason and if the transition goes smoothly. If it does on both accounts we have a lot of air upwards. Right now I expect us to be 8-8/9-7 with a bright future ahead of us. But no wildcard.