Coach McDaniels and the Belichick/Parsell philosophy ‘play vets and build through draft’

get the vets necessary to hold it together while you groom your younger players.

The only place I would quibble, I’m not sure we’ll see both Lloyd and Moss leave. I think Lloyd will be given a second year to see if he can raise the level of his play. Not as certain about Moss, but I could see him being given one more year as well.

The dead or dying weight will be removed, as better, younger, and faster players come in to the competition for Roster spots. This is year 2 of the mutation of Josh McDaniel’s vision for this team. I think we were fortunate to have as good a season as we just had, considering there was a 40% change in personnel on the team.

Re: CB. Moves aren’t pre-determined in many cases so even though we can outline the logical desiderata we’ll still have to wait to see how some positions develop. I don’t think we have ‘call’ the CB race at this point because there’s room for both Law and Smith. IMO, we’d like to add one more on draft day, too, but we can’t guarantee that we’ll take one.

Re: age. Fans consistently overestimate the impact that younger players have, there’s a conflict between what they contribute and what fans perceive. And it’s not solely a New England ‘thing,’ since Shanahan did it, too, as do the more successful franchises. We frequently heard that “smart” players are preferred, but another way of saying that is “veteran.” It’s not decrepitude we’re looking for. Football has grown extremely complex and requires a substantial amount of learning and decision making ability that’s normally found in veteran players. Younger players can possess these traits but they still require learning within the system to reach a sufficient level of competence. Additionally, the younger players who have mastered their craft are expensive, so there’s a tilt towards older players, who have lost some of their value and are often somewhat overpriced because of salary minimums and pay history (i.e., their skills are declining but they’re still on higher priced contracts).

Teams that lack this layer of veteran depth are teams that have lost many veteran players to free agency. In essence, they’ve sloughed off veteran talent because they’re not able to pay them all. If they’re developing players successfully then they can afford to lose a surprising amount of talent. Teams such as Pittsburgh, New England, etc., fall into this category. We’re in a slightly different category in that we needed to replace veteran talent that should have been here at some point (if we had developed it). In other words, we’ve gained veteran talent where teams such as the Steelers would be losing that talent in order to keep their critical veterans.

I’ve written on this subject before. A useful tool for analysis is a listing of position by age/experience. It allows you to see at a glance the comparative age of players at each position. Normally, height and weight are listed, but in this case you list age/experience. Obviously, age doesn’t always make you good, but positions that are sub-par can be candidates for FA acquisitions or draftees, depending on the roster math.

Hochstein’s presence can be attributed to this ‘veteran philosophy,’ as can Le Kevin Smith’s. The problem in both these cases is that neither are particularly good players. We don’t have to do anything with them, however, since our roster move will be contingent upon how free agency and the draft plays out. For instance, a high quality DE draftee might result in cutting Smith but we can still use Thomas and Fields to cover the position. Ideally, we’d have a vet at every position but it’s difficult to do because of roster math.