PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

Football Outsiders: White & Slater lead Patriots Special Teams

by

Football Outsiders: White & Slater lead Patriots Special Teams

It’s no secret that I was openly rooting for Matthew Slater to get cut last year. Everyone says he’s a great guy, but I think my problem with him were his horrendous kick returns. He was a master of running full speed, straight on into tacklers. Usually he got himself drilled and pumped up the other team in the process. Well in 2010 Slater didn’t return a single kick and now he’s starting to grow on me. Clearly he’s fast and is an above average special teams player (when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands), so this summer I probably won’t be rooting for him to be cut.

White is the kind of player that no one ever sees coming. There’s always a lot of roster movement around final cutdowns over Labor Day weekend and White was one guy who randomly became a Patriot that weekend. He doesn’t have the build to really play defense for the Pats but clearly they identified him as a player who could help on Special Teams and he did just that. 

RapSheet: Patriots have 12 quality starters… total.

by

Today on WEEI Ian Rapoport of the Boston Herald reported that in his conversations with NFL personnel people he learned that the Patriots only have about 12 players considered to be quality starters. He later tweeted that he was surprised by this number and later confirmed it with some others down at the Senior Bowl.

So who are the Pats 12 quality starters? Our best guess:

  1. Brady
  2. Wilfork
  3. Mayo
  4. Koppen
  5. Vollmer
  6. McCourty
  7. Chung
  8. Welker
  9. Gronkowski
  10. Branch
  11. Hernandez
  12. Meriweather

This of course doesn’t include players who are free agents this year (Mankins, Light) nor players who were injured last year (Bodden, Ty Warren). So assuming returns from injury/re-signings the number could be as high as 16 before looking outside the organization. 

I also consider players like Brandon Spikes and Jermaine Cunningham as guys who could make the leap in their second year. Green-Ellis also has to be on the bubble after a 1000-yard season, he might even be in that top 12 at the expense of our two time pro bowler Brandon Meriweather. But for other guys like TBC, Ninkovich, and Sanders they’re probably never getting any better than they are right now, so they have to be looked at as replaceable.

It’s hard not to say that a big part of this is all the trading down the Patriots have done over the years, maximizing quantity but losing out on quality. This is why there are rumblings that the Pats will acquire a lot of talent this offseason, whether it’s by trading UP for once or signing/re-signing quality free agents.