Tom Brady and the Patriots

All good things come to an end. For Patriots fans, we've have it good for a long time now. The Patriots have been a dominant force in the NFL since I was 10 years old- all I have known as a dedicated football fan is that New England is going to be competitive year in and year out. With the combination of Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and a shrewd front office, the Patriots have posted a decade-plus of success. Three Lombardi Trophies,  five AFC Championships, and the most Division titles in a ten year period- all of which will overshadow the countless records Tom and company racked up in the same period.

History will show how special this team has been. But what the Patriots have created is a fan base that expects to win the Super Bowl every single year. Though we have not seen a Lombardi Trophy in New England since the 2004 regular season team, the Patriots remain a feared franchise and are always a favorite to go far into the playoffs.

But regardless of how well a team performs, fans of any sport always become infatuated with certain players. The Patriots have seen there fair share of fan-favorites come and go: Ty Law, Lawyer Milloy, Willie McGinest, Richard Seymour, et al. But when a team is focused on winning, they fill their roster will players who can execute, not guys that are popular on twitter. Because of that, sometimes our favorites are traded or leave for our rivals. It hurts, it stings, and it becomes easy to feel betrayed.

For New England fans, we have experienced two constants: Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. And it does not appear that they will be going anywhere anytime soon, Brady just signed a very humble contract extension that will keep him in a Flying Elvis helmet until he's 40 years old- that's five more years for those who are counting. Besides these two stalwarts, the Patriots are a team of constant change.

This week, fans experienced a wrath of mixed emotions when we learned that Wes Welker, Brady's more consistent target, chose to leave for the Denver Broncos in free agency. Very quickly the blogosphere and twitter exploded in anger that the Kraft family couldn't muscle up a few more dollars to keep Welker. They are quick to forget the Patriots didn't just let Wes walk, they offered him a deal. Instead of taking the hometown discount like Brady, he simply chose to play for another deal for more money.

I'm not criticizing Welker, I love him and the way he plays. But before we jump to the blame game, we have to identify that is was his choice to leave. He gave New England fans the Johnny Damon treatment- leave your home team where you are loved and go play for a rival for more money. In the NFL today, I cannot blame a guy that gets the snot beat out of him every time he goes over the middle to go for the deal that offers the most coin. Welker only has so many seasons left in the tank, so if playing for Denver is what's best for him, God bless. Thanks for the memories.

A lot of fans were angry when Lawyer Milloy was let go. But a 17-1 run to another Super Bowl title helped us forget about him. But this is Belichick's style. The whole team is greater than the sum of its parts. When one star leaves, he can easily be replaced; welcome to New England Danny Amendola (a receiver, by the way, who has better stats pre-Patriots than Wes did with Miami). We cannot be sure how long this run will last. As long as this "Patriot Way" with Tom and Bill at the helm remain a constant, New England fans can remain hopeful for another Lombardi Trophy year in and year out.

NFL Offseason Provides Opportunity to Add Size to Defensive Backfields

Guest Post by Brian Cossette

Since 2004 when Bill Polian helped to emphasize the enforcement of the illegal contact rule, offenses in the NFL have become much more pass heavy and high powered. Defensive backs used to be given much more liberty in their contact of opposing receivers, but now are only given a 5 yard window to touch the receivers.

With the success of teams like Seattle and San Francisco, perhaps the league has found a blueprint to counter such pass heavy attacks- beat them up within that 5 yard window. One thing the Seahawks and 49ers certainly don’t lack is size in their secondary. Of the eight starting spots between the two teams’ defensive backfields four are over 6’2”. The Seahawks defense alone boasts 3 defensive backs over 6’3”.

One thing these teams like to do is use their cornerbacks at the line of scrimmage to press the opposing team’s receivers. Press coverage allows defenses to comply with the illegal contact rule while still altering receivers’ routes and imposing some physicality on modern receivers- who have benefited from several rule changes involving contact.

If this indeed is to be the next stop on the NFL’s train of evolution, this offseason certainly provides ample opportunity for teams to re-stock on defensive backs.

Three of the top free agent cornerbacks on the market are over 6’1”. Aqib Talib, Sean Smith, and Dominique Rogers-Cromartie have all have been cited for their ability to press at the line of scrimmage and excel in man coverage. While they have their fair share of concerns, there is little doubt that those three players can make a major impact on the back end for any team needing cornerback help.

Help can be had on the safety market as well, where hard hitters such as Dashon Goldson, Laron Landry, and the versatile Glover Quin will also be out to command hefty contracts.

In the draft, there is a surplus of cornerbacks and safeties with excellent size. In addition to being over 6’ tall, cornerbacks Dee Millner, Xavier Rhodes, Jonathon Banks, Desmond Trufant, and Blidi Wreh-Wilson have all been projected to be selected as high as the first round by draft pundits. The safety class is considered to be the deepest it has been in years, with John Cyprien, Kenny Vaccaro, and Eric Reid all projected to be drafted in the first round as well.

Teams looking to upgrade their defensive backfield may have many choices given the current market, but that does not mean these players will come cheap. Teams will have to invest either with long term contracts or first round picks, but you can count on it happening one way or the other.

Tom Brady Signs a Contract Extension That Will Make Him a Patriots for Life

On Monday Tom Brady signed a contract extension that will make him a Patriot for life. He signed a three-year $27 million contract extension that will make him 40-years-old at the deals end.

The deal creates a serious amount of cap space for the Patriots over the next two seasons. It amounts to about $7 million per season. In an off-season where there are a lot of teams close to the cap, this may be an off-season unprecedented to Patriots fans.

Besides helping the Patriots, the 36-year-old Brady gave himself some security. Before signing the deal, Brady had two years and about $30 million left. Now he has $57 million that's fully guaranteed in case of injury.

Brady's salary got lowered from $9.7 million to $1 million and $2 million in 2013 and 2014 respectively. If Brady is on the roster after the last game of 2014 the money left on the deal is fully guaranteed.

Its a win--win for both sides, the Patriots get the cap space that they wanted, and Brady got some long term security. When you're getting into the latter point in your career, you never know what may happen, even though he is married to the multi millionaire supermodel Gisele Bundchen.

He did give the Patriots a little bit of a discount. As his salary is not even close to other top quarterbacks like Drew Brees and Peyton Manning for example, who all make close to $20 million annually.

Brady realizes his window is closing, so he wants to add to his already illustrious career. Clearing another $7 million in cap lets the patriots add a top tier free agent like Greg Jennings or Dwayne Bowe. Or they could keep their in house talent, which includes Brady's safety blanket, Wes Welker.

He already has enough money than he would ever ask for, so why not try and become the best quarterback to ever step foot on an NFL field?

The Patriots were so close last year to going to their third Super Bowl in six years. Their offense was one of the best in NFL history. I think they need to stay status quo on offense and use that $7 million on defense.

There is a lot of talent on the market this year like cornerback Brent Grimes, and there's not a lot of teams that can pay them big money. You might be able to get two aging, but productive stars at that. Add to this defense; give the already productive-but-young talent some veterans that you can depend on when its third down or in the playoffs.

Enjoy this while you can because you may never see this again: a top two player at his position taking a home town discount. As TB 12 said on his Facebook page yesterday, all that he wants to do is "Just Win."

What do NASCAR and the Boston Bruins Have in Common?

The Bruins are on the road to take on the Florida Panthers today while NASCAR Sprint Cup starts its season with the Daytona 500, but that's not all they have in common. As a sport, both markets have a long history in America. They are sports of grit and mental toughness and both enjoy a large and loyal fan base. So before I anger both hockey and NASCAR fans, I promise I have a point so stay with me.

NASCAR started with a foundation of a poor man's sport. Mechanics and factory workers would save up for weeks to able to afford tickets to their favorite track. Many of the drivers were greece monkeys themselves, working through the week to able to afford tires for the weekend race. Unlike many of the current athletes, fans found drivers they could relate too. The drivers understood what it meant to live pay check to pay check. Today, it is much more of a sophisticated sport. The engineering is better, the cars are faster, and the fan base is wider.

For the Bruins and the rest of the NHL, the history of the sport and team dedication has been passed down through generations. From the original six to the full 30 team league they have today, hockey has never been more popular. Though not America's most popular sport, our nation rallied around our 1980 Olympic team to beat the Soviets and go on to win the Gold Medal. It was a rare moment when sports brought an entire country together; it became something more than a hockey game, it was about beating our Cold War rival.

But what makes each sport special are its fans. Both are unique in their own right. It's not uncommon to have entire rooms in a fan's house dedicated to the team or driver they love. You get that with every sport, sure. But there are some events that show how dedicated these fans are.

In 2002, a 13 year old hockey fan was struck in the head by a hockey puck during a Blue Jackets-Calgary Flames game. She was taken to a nearby hospital where the young girl later died. For the players, league and fans nation wide, it was shocking how susceptible the stands can be.

Just yesterday, at the Nationwide Daytona 250, on the last lap of the race cars piled up racing for the win. As a result Kyle Larson's car ended up in the air and in the fence; his engine and tires landed in the stands. 28 fans were injured, 14 of which had to be taken to the hospital. At this point, it looks like everyone will fortunately survive.

It is remarkable that so much attention has been focused on keeping hockey players safe from concussions and drivers safe in the race car. When athletes get hurt, everyone chalks it up to "that's the risk you take." And that's okay. But when fans get hurt, it strikes everyone differently. After Tony Stewart won yesterday's race he climbed out of the car without any jubilant celebrations in Victory Lane, instead he was worried about the fans.

The amazing sensation about these fans? Even after a young girl dies or car parts fly into the stands, they still come back for more because they love their sport. That's dedication and that's what these two sports have in common. So much of sports today is focused on who has the biggest contract, or who earned the most fantasy points today. The media sometimes forgets about the fans, but without the fans the sports wouldn't exist.

I will be watching the Bruins in action at the BB&T Center today, as I will simulatneously watch the Daytona 500 on the TVs in the Duffy's Sky Box. Just another fan, watching some of his favorite sports.

Celtics Add Jordan Crawford to Thin Backcourt

Thursday the Celtics acquired sharpshooter Jordan Crawford from the Washington Wizards for injured Leandro Barbosa and Jason Collins.

Crawford has never seen a shot he didn't like as he adds an element of scoring that the C's didn't have heading into Thursday. He's an athletic two guard that can slash and shoot from well beyond the three point line. After losing starting point guard Rajon Rondo and Barbosa to injury, the backcourt was quite thin, so adding Crawford is just what the doctor ordered.

Averaging 13.1 points per game he can come off the bench for 26-30 minutes a game, and give the second unit a great one-two punch along with Jason Terry.

Most thought that Kevin Garnett and/or Paul Pierce could get dealt for draft picks or young assets, but general manager Danny Ainge couldn't find a deal he thought was suitable. Plus, Garnett went on the record, saying he would not waive his no-trade clause that was incorporated into a three-year $36 million deal he signed this summer.Which could end up hurting the Celtics in the long run, as Garnett may decide to retire at the end of the year and not receive any compensation for him.

Rumors were the Clippers offered DeAndre Jordan and Eric Bledsoe for Garnett. Which would have been an excellent deal in the long-term for the C's, but giving Garnett the no-trade clause hindered what Ainge could do.

Deciding to be buyers not sellers at the deadline means the Celtics are going for it all. Even though their record doesn't show it, they're the second best team in the east, only the Heat are head and shoulders above them.

With the emergence of Jeff Green, they have the chance to give Miami a competitive seven game series, if he can slow down LeBron James.

Overall it was a quiet deadline around the NBA, but the C's got Crawford for basically nothing. Let's hope that the older C's can get some lift knowing this may be there last opportunity to go win it all.

Owning the Boston Red Sox

Imagine buying a business with a client base that has been dissatisfied for 86 years. How do you turn things around? For the ownership of the Boston Red Sox, they only had one option- winning the World Series. So after taking over the franchise in 2002 they did just that...twice in four years. 2004 meant good-bye "wait til' next year," no more "whose your daddy?" chants in the Bronx, and so-long Curse. Boston was the winning city again. John Henry, Larry Lucchino, and Tom Warner had created a baseball team to consistently compete at a high level.

Year in and year out, Sox fans have expected a team that has the talent to make it to October. We want to make the playoffs and compete for another title. Because of this, fans are expecting much more out of the 2013 Sox than we got from rosters of the past. And we have good reason to expect nothing short of the best.

That's generally a good thing, until that teams starts to slip. The last two years have been utter disappointments for Red Sox fans. After the September collapse that Yankee fans just love to remind us about in 2011, the Fenway Faithful didn't see much of an improvement throughout 2012. As a result, many fans now question the intent of the Sox' ownership. Do they really care about winning anymore? Who's more important to John Henry, Boston or Liverpool?

Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, wrote an Op-Ed featured on LinkedIn named "The Mavs are a Business Unlike Any Other." He explained the challenges and joys of owning a major sports franchise. What is evident about Cuban is he is his team's biggest fan. He wants to win just as much as his players because after all he was a fan a long time before he ever bought the team. Much like Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots, Cuban was a long time season ticket holder so he still has the fire in his belly to want to see the Mavs compete for a title.

The owners of the Red Sox have a different tale. The majority owners (Henry, Lucchino, and Warner) all have executive experience at baseball teams other than the Sox. They did not grow up in Boston so they didn't experience the 86 year drought like most fans did. They don't have members of their family who never got their dying wish- to see the Red Sox win a World Series. All other things equal, the current Sox ownership were never die-hard fans, rather they remain businessmen. But that doesn't ipso-facto make them less of an owner than Kraft or Cuban.

The longest tenured owner of the Red Sox was the Yawkey family. Coveted by Boston so much that we named a street after Tom Yawkey, but many forget or are ignorant to the fact that in the midst of our 86 year drought, Yawkey traded Willie Mays out of our farm system because he didn't want a black player on his major league roster. For those of you who didn't know that, let that settle in for a second. Yes, the Red Sox once had of the most prolific players of all time sitting in their farm system, waiting for the boss to give him a chance, but we traded him away based on the color of his skin.

So before we consider the ability of the current ownership to build competitive baseball teams and their desire to do just that, we should take these matters into perspective. It is very apparent that when current management took over, they wanted to win. They had desire that matches the Cubans and Krafts of the billionaire sports fans' club. You don't win two World Series by mistake. The existential question Sox fans address now is: do they have that same desire, and are the Sox their number one priority?

It is very easy for fans to answer that question by simply saying 'no,' when you look for all the warning signs. Fenway Sports Management has branched out in recent years purchasing the soccer franchise Liverpool while also buying half of the NASCAR team known today as Rousch Fenway Racing. It is not uncommon for owners to have teams from different sports, Kraft owns the New England Revolution in addition to the Patriots for example. But Henry and company made an unprecedented move with the blockbuster purchase of a historic soccer franchise and a NASCAR team.

What concerns many Boston fans is that these new teams take away the focus from the Red Sox. It doesn't help that former Manager Terry Francona's new book eviscerates the ownership as a group who cared more about the ratings on NESN than the team's win-loss column. Maybe Francona is just disgruntled that he was given the boot after having arguably the best tenure as manager in team history. Or, maybe this was his Canseco moment where years later we find out he was right all along. And what about rumors of Henry looking to sell? He answered these claims that they simply were looking for more investors, and that's commonplace in business.

So what is to be said about the state of the Red Sox and the team's ownership? I'm not sure. It's easy to speculate what their true intentions are and many fans love to play Monday morning quarterback after October. But any serious fan can't look at the acquisitions the last few years and think they're not trying to win. Sure, getting Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford never brought another ring, but is that management's fault? I argue no, it's not.

I'm not saying that Sox ownership should be more like Cuban, everyone has their own style. Not winning a World Serious in 5 years is not good, but it's also not proof that Sox brass has given up on the team. Nick laid out his thoughts on the 2013 team. Let's hope we get back to the days of the Idiots and Cowboy Up rather than beer and chicken wings in the clubhouse and a disabled listed with a bigger salary than the starting roster. In order to get there, the goal of winning has to come from the top.

Why the Patriots Should Franchise Aqib Talib

Guest post by: Brian Cossette

With the deadline to use the franchise and transition tags on players almost a week away, the Patriots still face the dilemma on who (or if) to tag. Assuming they plan to use the franchise tag over the rarely seen transition tag, they have three probable options. They can tag receiver Wes Welker for the second year in a row, this time at $11.4 million; right tackle Sebastian Vollmer at $10.67 million; or cornerback Aqib Talib at $9.66 million. Unfortunately for the Patriots, the decision may have just gotten easier.

Courtesy of Alfonzo Dennard’s actions the day before this past year’s NFL Draft, the Patriots may be short one of their starting cornerbacks for at least part of this upcoming season. Dennard was found guilty of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest this past week, and may be facing prison time. Even if Dennard is able to avoid incarceration, he will certainly be suspended by Commissioner Roger Goodell. Combine Dennard’s situation with nickelback Kyle Arrington’s free agency and the Patriots are certainly in the market for a corner.

Luckily for them, arguably the best cornerback available in free agency is already on their roster,Talib-  who knows a thing or two about the judicial system as well. Should the Patriots take a risk and allow Talib to enter free agency, they may be looking at their worst secondary group in years if he signs elsewhere. Apparently it is possible for the Pats’ secondary to get worse.

The Patriots lack of cornerback depth provides a necessity to franchise Talib, but it turns out that it may be the most logical move as well. Talib’s play on the field certainly justifies a long term contract, but his propensity to get in trouble off the field has the team hesitating to make a commitment. Tagging Talib provides the Patriots another year to interview the troubled cornerback. Should he confirm their doubts and get into trouble, they would not be liable for a long term commitment and could part ways after next season.

The Patriots must also consider the replacements for Welker, Vollmer, and Talib. Welker is a part of a massive wide receiver free agent market that includes Pro Bowlers Greg Jennings, Mike Wallace, and Dwayne Bowe.

Vollmer would likely be replaced in house as offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia is one of the best in the league at developing offensive line talent; or via the draft where the o-line is a major strength this year.

Meanwhile, Talib is most likely the best player available to the Patriots at the cornerback position as the free agency crop has flaws (Brent Grimes is likely the best competition, and he is coming off a torn ACL). The draft is not only weak but often doesn't provide immediate returns.

The price tag for Talib is also the most fair compared to that of Welker and Vollmer. It can be argued that all three players deserve an average annual salary in the $6-8 million range. Welker is a slot receiver who is in his mid 30's and limited in his capabilities; Vollmer is a right tackle where even the highest paid players do not make more than $7 million; Talib is the best cornerback the Patriots have had since Asante Samuel. Not only is Talib valued similarly to Welker and Vollmer, but his franchise tag figure is also the lowest of the three.

While nothing is a certainty with the Patriots, it seems clear that they are in a bit of a bind when it comes to their options at cornerback. Losing Talib would be very costly and extend their recent history of poor secondary play.

It may hurt some fans’ feelings to choose a troubled newcomer over the reliable and beloved Wes Welker, but the Patriots are about smart business- not hurt feelings.