Be interesting all these players who talk about wanting a SB. Feels like that ship has sailed for this team to be seen as that in terms of this off season. Still money talks the most. But a dude like Hall likely gets multiple offers from teams for about the same price.
I'm more optimistic. I think the hurdles are pretty high, but the Patriots more or less did this year what we did in 2024 (which was to swap out half the roster) and install a new offense and defense. The main difference is they spent bigger. Almost all of Peters spending outside of trades has been on the cautious, bargain basement side. So, the question for this team is at least fourfold.
1) How do the bargain free agents acquired in 2025 come back from injury?
2) Do we decide to actually use free agency to provide pieces instead of patches?
3) What degree of growing pains do Blough and Jones go through?
4) What degree of growing pains do the players go through in learning the new schemes?
So yeah, going through these questions (and there are others) I do see choppy sees, but I don't think the ship has sailed. Hell, I think that when Quinn took over the defense even though it was depleted and had no reason to fight, it started looking competent. Likewise, when Terry and Burks got up to speed, the offense started to look almost pretty good despite relying on our second and eventually third string QB.
So, I want to believe our cupboard looks incredibly bare because of recency. We forget that for the last half of the season we were starting our fifth and sixth string defensive end. We forget we were starting our 3rd, 4th, and 5th string corners. We forget that we played without Harris who was supposed to be a starting safety. We forget that Robbie Chosen for almost half the season was treated like our number 1 wide receiver. All this provides me hope. We basically played with street level free agents and backups at almost every position for almost the entire year. I don't see that happening again as I don't really remember ever seeing it happen before.
Still, each of those four questions have to be answered in a positive direction. If so, based on what we saw throughout the playoffs, Daniels is a far superior QB than Maye and that alone gives us a gambler's chance. We still have an oline that could be a strength. I actually like our running back group and hope Bill can take a step forward in the offseason. I sort of feel the way about him that I did about Brandon Coleman at the end of 2024. I'd love to see him get a chance to grow into his potential. Remember, as great as Walker was for the Seahawks yesterday, he had more two yard runs than four yard runs. It was feast or famine because of how the Patriots stacked the box. So waybe Bill if we actually have a wide receiving corp and a TE will be ready to show us more. Maybe he can improve in his pass blocking and receiving.
This post probably does nothing to convince anyone that we are Super Bowl bound as it is limited by too many "ifs," but I don't think we're far off from being competitive and this team when competitive can do some stuff. There is, however, a lot of work to do, a little luck required, and smarter choices to be made.