Sunday, December 29, 2002
Borges is back: Ron Borges, who hurt his credibility by harping too much on the Drew Bledsoe trade, is back and provides an excellent, excellent argument about the Pats’ offseason talent-acquiring strategy. Think: Cheap. The talent holes in this team are obvious. No matter what happens today against Miami (and no matter how the Jets fare against Green Bay), one can’t help but agree with Borges that the Pats’ “bottom feeding” free-agent strategy is way overrated.
Reader No. 1 responds: "Borges' column today was much better than previous ones, insofar as the (a) the free agent roundup demonstrated his grasp of the NFL and (b) his diagnosis of the Pats lesser talents is pretty sound. It sure would have been nice if we'd signed Keenan McCardell as our big body receiver instead of Donald Graham -- it would have been worth 8x the salary! Borges' sudden turnaround to praising the not-quite-good-enough team he's been casting aspersions on most of the year should give one pause. And we should also remember that he criticized the present administration for drafting Richard Seymour in 2001 instead of a big body receiver (David Terrell or Koren Robinson if memory serves), and that pick worked out pretty well so far. Let's however not expect the Patriot management to change their practices as we have not seen much proof of admitting to mistakes in the Kraft era (the departure of Parcells... the departure of Carroll... etc). That's not to say that there won't be a lot of roster changes in this offseason, but at least the Pats gave us a nice farewell this afternoon."
Reader No. 1 responds: "Borges' column today was much better than previous ones, insofar as the (a) the free agent roundup demonstrated his grasp of the NFL and (b) his diagnosis of the Pats lesser talents is pretty sound. It sure would have been nice if we'd signed Keenan McCardell as our big body receiver instead of Donald Graham -- it would have been worth 8x the salary! Borges' sudden turnaround to praising the not-quite-good-enough team he's been casting aspersions on most of the year should give one pause. And we should also remember that he criticized the present administration for drafting Richard Seymour in 2001 instead of a big body receiver (David Terrell or Koren Robinson if memory serves), and that pick worked out pretty well so far. Let's however not expect the Patriot management to change their practices as we have not seen much proof of admitting to mistakes in the Kraft era (the departure of Parcells... the departure of Carroll... etc). That's not to say that there won't be a lot of roster changes in this offseason, but at least the Pats gave us a nice farewell this afternoon."
