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After an injury-filled, $8 million season in Washington, Jason Taylor was back on the free-agent market this spring. Several teams needing a pass rusher showed interest, including the Patriots, who had previously traded veteran linebacker Mike Vrabel to the Chiefs.

Taylor ended up in Miami, where he started his career and played for 10 seasons. It was one of the few examples of a player turning down a chance to join the Pats; head coach and evil genius Bill Belichick has an incredible knack for convincing free agents -- through Charles Manson-styled brainwashing, no doubt -- to come to Foxboro. Not this time.

Because the NFL season never ends, we present our 2009 Offseason Roadmaps for front offices to navigate through the summer.

Even though they lost franchise quarterback Tom Brady to a knee injury in Week 1, the Patriots managed to finish with a rather impressive 11-5 record in 2008. Impressive because they did so with a quarterback (Matt Cassel) that hadn't started a game since he was a senior in high school.

In most years, an 11-5 record is a lock for the NFL's postseason, but the Patriots became the first team since the 1985 Denver Broncos to miss the playoffs with such a mark. They already started the offseason by placing the franchise tag on Cassel, and it remains to be seen if they intend to trade him off to the highest bidder, or keep him around is a rather expensive insurance policy.

Whatever happens Sunday, the Patriots will undoubtedly be the team to beat come September -- at least according to the predictably sycophantic media who assume that, as long as Bill Belichick is breathing and Tom Brady is walking, New England is winning.

There are still concerns about Brady's reconstructed left knee, but if he's fully operational by training camp, the prognosticating bobbleheads should take great comfort in anointing the Patriots as favorites to win their fourth Super Bowl this decade. It's the same banal "analysis" that fans have been beaten about the head with since New England won its last championship four years ago.

Whatever happens Sunday, the Patriots will undoubtedly be the team to beat come September -- at least according to the predictably sycophantic media who assume that, as long as Bill Belichick is breathing and Tom Brady is walking, New England is winning.

There are still concerns about Brady's reconstructed left knee, but if he's fully operational by training camp, the prognosticating bobbleheads should take great comfort in anointing the Patriots as favorites to win their fourth Super Bowl this decade. It's the same banal "analysis" that fans have been beaten about the head with since New England won its last championship four years ago.

During the opening week of the season, when Kansas City's Bernard Pollard rolled into the knee of Tom Brady, I, like many, just assumed that the Patriots' season was pretty much finished before it even started. I mean, they were going to be turning the keys of their high-powered offense over to Matt Cassel, a seemingly anonymous guy that had to struggle to make the team out of training camp, after spending the first three years of his NFL career -- and his entire college career -- riding the bench.

Yet, 16 weeks later, here we are and the Patriots not only have a chance to finish the season with an 11-5 record, they have a chance to make the playoffs and/or win the AFC East. Granted, they have to win, and they need some help, but it's been a season that even the most vocal Patriots haters have to be surprised by. Especially when you consider the other injuries the team suffered throughout the season. I'm talking about Rodney Harrison, Laurence Maroney and Adalius Thomas, just to name a few.

Frankly, this might be the best coaching job of Bill Belichick's career, assuming, of course, he didn't cheat. Kidding! I think.

The Patriots close out the regular season at 1 PM ET on Sunday in Buffalo, where they will be taking on a struggling Bills team that is currently on a 2-7 slide after starting the season 5-1. For the Bills, it's all about playing spoiler because misery loves company, or something.

New England gets in with:

1) A win and a Jets win (Gives New England the division)
or
2) A Jaguars win (Gives New England the wild card)

Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess. Earlier this week, New England welcomed back an old friend in linebacker Rosevelt Colvin, presumably to help fill the void left by outside linebackers Adalius Thomas and Pierre Woods who have been lost to injury. Thomas, if you'll recall, suffered a broken arm a few weeks ago, while Woods had an early exit from Sunday's game against Pittsburgh.

Still feeling like they're shorthanded at the linebacker position, the Patriots have another old friend (emphasis on old) in Foxborough today, as soon-to-be-40-year old Junior Seau is in the house, possibly to sign a deal to suit back up for New England. Awesome. I guess Jack Lambert or Dick Butkus weren't available?

From Christopher L. Gasper of the Boston Globe:

"I don't think the contract will be an issue," said Demoff. "If Junior is there and nothing is different from what they thought last night, I would suspect they'd do a contract, and he'd be a Patriot tomorrow. I don't think any promises were made to Junior or by Junior to them before he got on the plane."

Earlier in the evening, Mike Reiss reported that Seau was only interested in playing for New England this season to "finish what we didn't finish last year." That's all well and good, but he's going to be 40! If nothing else, the Patriots are at least well on their way to reassembling the oldest linebacker unit ever.

The Patriots today brought back linebacker Rosevelt Colvin to offer some assistance to a depleted linebacker unit, as reported by Mike Reiss of the Boston Globe. Colvin, if you'll recall, was a rather large free agent signing by the Patriots back in 2003, and collected 26.5 sacks in five seasons with New England. He hasn't played a down this season after being cut in training camp by the Houston Texans. He recorded four sacks, three forced fumbles and an interception a season ago with the Patriots.

New England's linebacker corps has taken quite a hit recently, especially on the outside, as Adalius Thomas was lost to a broken arm a month ago, and on Sunday, Pierre Woods was lost when he was on the wrong end of a collision with Steelers tight end Heath Miller.

I'm not sure how much he'll help at this point, but the Patriots are in need of something, anything, terms of a pass rush from the outside. As a team, New England is 20th in the NFL with 23 sacks, and with Thomas out of the lineup, only has four sacks from its current outside linebackers (three for Vrabel, one for Woods-- Thomas has five, but he's out of the lineup for the foreseeable future).

While it would be very easy to talk about Patriots quarterback Matt Cassel getting a healthy dose of reality, I think that would be somewhat unfair to everyone's favorite free-agent-to-be quarterback. Sure, he had a really bad day in the Patriots 33-10 loss to Pittsburgh, but in his defense, the weather conditions were less than ideal, and he received absolutely no help from anybody on his offense.

A week after playing the disrespect card because Miami single-covered him, Randy Moss was a relative non-factor in the game. Forget single coverage, if the Steelers would have left him out there by himself, or, even worse, lined me up across from him, it wouldn't have made a difference.

Moss finished with only four catches, and dropped what would have been two guaranteed touchdowns. The first one came on a deep pass over the middle, and the second one occurred late in the first half when Moss was alone in the back of the end zone. For reasons that escape me, Moss jumped into the air to attempt to catch a pass that would have hit him right in the numbers, only to have it slip through his arms and fall to the ground. Right after that, Stephen Gostkowski shanked a 27-yard field goal, and the Steelers dominated the remainder of the game.

Luckily for football fans, tonight isn't just another Thursday night. It's a Thursday night with a pretty incredible football game between division rivals with the same record and the same question in their respective heads -- are we really any good?

The Patriots play host to the Jets in a game that will decide who is the better team in the AFC East, and probably who is the better career quarterback. Here are five notes before the big game tonight.

1. It's on NFL Network -- Yep, that means a lot of you won't get it. The biggest problem with the NFL Network coverage is if it was nationwide and readily available it would pretty awesome, with some decent guys in the booth and the studio. The problem is, according to the NFL Network, some networks are handcuffing you from your football coverage! Damn the man! The good news is you can watch the game here, which will only be acceptable if you have the awesome FanHouse chat open in another window. Come on, you know you wanna...

The New England Patriots were victorious on the field Sunday afternoon, pulling out a 20-10 victory in a rather large AFC East showdown - a division that will now be a weekly four-way battle for first place. Unfortunately for New England, it was a rather costly victory as outside linebacker Adalius Thomas suffered a broken arm, as reported by ESPN's Michael Smith.

The injury is serious enough that, according to "a source," Thomas could miss the remainder of the season.

Linebacker Adalius Thomas, who has started all nine games for the Patriots and is tied for the team lead with five sacks, suffered a broken left forearm in the first half of the Patriots 20-10 win, according to sources. The sources believe the injury is likely season ending. "It's not good. He's probably done [for the season]," said one source.

The Patriots team that will be taking the field now is vastly different from the one that opened the season in Foxboro. Instead of relying on Tom Brady, Rodney Harrison, Laurence Maroney, and Adalius Thomas, the defending conference champions are now relying on Matt Cassel, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, and Brandon Meriweather, among others. And they're still winning.