new england patriots

The title pretty much sums it up. I doubt there’s a Patriots fan out there that is completely confident that our defense is going to suddenly become stout for a three game playoff run. The best we can hope for is that they maintain how they’ve been playing in the red zone, can force some turnovers and make just a couple key stops to get a win.

The games will have to unfold perfectly for the Pats to make a legitimate Super Bowl run and Tom Brady will have to be lights out like he hasn’t been in the playoffs since the Super Bowl 39 run.

Here’s a full take from Bedard about the little Brady-O’Brien heated exchange yesterday in which it evolves into wondering how much of Brady’s frustration is because of the Pats inability to develop a drafted wide receiver since Deion Branch.

I don’t dispute that, and really if you look at it the Pats have only really developed two wide receivers (Branch and Givens) since the turn of the century. This whole thing harkens back to the 2006 season when Branch held out and was then traded, leaving Brady with Reche Caldwell, an end-of-the-line Troy Brown, rookie Chad Jackson, and emergency band-aid Doug Gabriel at wide receiver for a good chunk of the early season.

Much of the talk around the team early that year was about Brady’s “body language”, how he was upset with the team for not accommodating Branch’s contract demands and surrounding him with such limited weapons in the prime of his career, and he showed it every time the offense sputtered. That was when a simple forceful unbuckling of his chin strap was interpreted as “bad body language”.

Jabar Gaffney was a great addition near the end of the 2006 season and was a big part in helping the Pats knock off the Jets and the 14-2 Chargers in San Diego, but it seems to be pretty much accepted that if the Pats had Branch they would’ve gotten past the Colts in the AFCCG and most likely have beaten the Bears, a team they had already beaten that season, in the Super Bowl.

My only two cents is that Brady has to be considered a part of that failure to develop the wide receivers. Yes, the Pats have spent some high round picks on some guys who are now out of the NFL, but how many guys just haven’t been able to “gain Brady’s trust”. Tate and Price are two of the most frustrating examples because they were released without getting the chance that a lot of young wide outs get.

When most NFL teams draft a wide receiver in the first two days of the draft, chances are likely that they’ll be thrown right into the fire and get an extended chance to develop.  The Patriots just have too many draft picks, too few roster spots, and extremely high expectations to allow extended time for a young wide receiver to develop. This is a failure not only of the coaching staff and Brady, but also of success. Replacing Branch and Welker, the two favorite receivers of the greatest quarterback of all time, is not an easy task and nor should it be.

It’s also worth pointing out that outside of Chad Jackson the Patriots have never drafted a high profile wide receiver. Tate and Price were taken high but both were more under the radar guys. When Thomas Dimitroff was considering mortgaging much of the Falcons draft to trade up and get a high profile guy in Julio Jones, Belichick advised against it.

The Patriots philosophy of drafting wide outs is clear. Wide Receivers are the hardest position to project to the NFL, and it’s made even harder when it’s not just a matter of learning an NFL offense, it’s learning one of the most complex NFL offenses and learning every receiver spot in it.

And that doesn’t even include how incredibly hard is it for young wide receivers to gain Tom Brady’s confidence. And how much of a fair chance can they really expect to get with the Branch-Welker-Hernandez-Gronkowski offense?

Ultimately it really doesn’t matter that the Pats suck at drafting wide receivers. They’ve set numerous receiving records with free agents like Moss and Welker. Nobody that matters is keeping score of how your draft picks pan out and the Patriots passing offense has been constantly at the top of the NFL in every category ever since those days of bad body language in 2006.

But the inability to find your receiving talent has been unfortunate, and definitely an opportunity missed when you look at guys they could’ve had like Greg Jennings.

At the end of the season it’s doubtful that the reason the 2011 Patriots don’t win the Super Bowl will be because they didn’t have a dangerous third wide out, but perhaps Brady has to learn to be a little more lenient with the young wide receivers that come in, while Belichick and the coaching staff need to nurture their development a little better as well.