New England Patriots: 3 strategies to become competitive in 2021
The 2020 season is over, so now it’s time for the New England Patriots go to try to rebuild a post-Tom Brady Super Bowl-competitive team.
All of the 2020 festivities, including the drab Tampa Bay parade with boats (maybe they had some real ducks riding along) but sans real Duck Boats, are over. Thank goodness.
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Now, it’s time for the hometown team to ramp up, get focused, and get ready to actually create a competitive squad for 2021. The major overarching question is this: are Bill Belichick and his personnel operation capable of recreating a playoff and Super Bowl competitive team in 2021?
The New England Patriots’ team that finished the 2020 season was a beaten team. As much as Cam Newton tried, the talent to win just didn’t exist or was injured (as usual for some).
The blame went to Newton, wrongly so, the responsibility belonged to the personnel operation. Team-building is an offseason job. It’s making decisions on current players, stay or go. It’s making good draft decisions, not like those the club made for the most part in 2020.
And it’s trading for or signing pieces that will strengthen the team in areas that have unfortunately been neglected in the past by the personnel operation. Bringing in waiver wire types every week for a day, a week, a month just isn’t getting the job done and it’s not going to get it done in the future. It’s a waste of time and effort that should be expended elsewhere.
Let’s take a look at 3 strategies for this rebuild, re-composition, reconstruction, whatever you’d like to term it. Whatever that might be, it needs to be major. It ain’t tinkering.
This team needs a major overhaul and we’ll see if this management team is capable of carrying that out. They are at the most critical time of the football year, the offseason team-building. That’s where Super Bowl teams are created.
Good coaching helps, but without the players, you’re out. So here we go, let’s take a look at three major factors that will determine if the New England Patriots can regain the super form they possessed for 20 years without the former main cog in the machine.
New England Patriots: 3 strategies to become competitive in 2021 – No.1: Go all-in on the best quarterback available.
Tom Brady ain’t walkin’ through that door, and Jarret Stidham is not the next great quarterback of the New England Patriots. The answer lies outside. They need to get a quarterback in fast by trade or in the draft. None of the free agents will do.
The top guy to go and get is Houston’s Deshaun Watson. While an article previously explained it would be a longshot, why not package three first-round picks or more and just go for it. That article also suggested the Patriots could also package Stephon Gilmore and Stidham with multiple picks. Absolutely.
With the poor Patriots drafting record overall, what’s to lose? Not much. Gilmore’s leaving would open up a raft of cap space to boot. Watson’s worth whatever they have to put on the table. Period. He’s terrific and only 25 years old. That’s a foundation piece plain and simple.
With Watson in the fold, the biggest question on the team’s most important player is solved. Done and dusted. Watson is the guy and it’s being suggested that the Patriots may be players in that market. This is a no-brainer for a bunch of reasons.
Although, with former New England personnel guy Nick Caserio running Houston’s personnel operation and Watson reportedly unhappy, the stars may be aligning for just such a move, if New England is wise enough, aggressive enough to just make it happen.
A haul of three No. 1 picks and more would be a nice place for Caserio to start reshaping the Texans in a big way. For New England, it would be amazing but with this personnel operation, it’s unlikely.
A previous article also outlined another possible top-shelf solution to the Patriots’ quarterback dilemma, trading for Russell Wilson.
Take your pick, Watson or Wilson. For whatever it takes. What Patriots fan could look at acquiring either as anything but a massive move, unlike any perhaps in the history of the franchise? That’s why either is unlikely.
Although Belichick coached a loser in 2020, does he actually have the grit to roll the dice and trade away a boatload of picks to get a real leader and winner? Again, it seems doubtful.
The franchise suffered a supreme put-down and embarrassment when the quarterback they rejected just won another Super Bowl. Yet, it just doesn’t seem that this team, in compete need of a total overhaul would have the moxie to be extremely aggressive as suggested by the great Tom Curran, tremendously ambitious, and just plain gutsy enough to make this type of move.
The old saying goes, “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. This team has every incentive to venture into unknown waters to pay the freight for a top quarterback, without whom they will be toast again in 2021.
Everything to gain, and nothing to lose. Draft picks should be considered as just fodder for waste by Patriots’ fans. Their track record is abysmal, especially in the first three rounds. Trading three firsts would have few negative ramifications.
Absent one of these two deals, the only hope is to trade a bundle of picks to move up in the draft or otherwise select a quarterback high. Those are the only viable options. But Watson is the one.