Posts tagged Scott pioli at FanHouse

Much has been made of the brain power possessed by Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli, primarily because of their deft personnel maneuverings. For the most part, it's warranted. (Although I think we can all agree that landing Tom Brady had everything to do with luck and absolutely nothing to do with being the smartest dudes on the planet.)

But at the Boston Globe's Mike Reiss writes, there have been mistakes. The decision to trade up in the second round of the 2006 draft to select Chad Jackson is one of the Patriots' few strategery missteps. Jackson could eventually work out, but so far he's been a wash.

Compounding matters, New England traded up from 52nd to 36th to take him; they sent their second- and third-rounder to Green Bay for that right, and the Packers ended up with wide receiver Greg Jennings and guard Jason Spitz.

Jennings started 11 games as a rookie, hauling in 45 receptions for 632 yards and three touchdowns; last season, he started 13 games, had 53 receptions for 920 yards, and 12 TDs. By comparison, Jackson had one start in 06, and missed all of last season with a knee injury. As for Spitz, he's in line for the right guard job after starting 25 games the previous two seasons.

The point: despite all the scouting and statistical analysis and Magic 8-Balls, the NFL draft is still more art than science. Even when you have Killface calling the shots.

It's hard to question the Patriots when it comes to personnel decisions since they've had a lot of success in the draft, particularly in the first round. Plus, they have a gaping need at linebacker. And just because none of the mock draft nerds had Jerod Mayo as a top-10 pick, that really won't mean much when the season starts (in fact, it doesn't mean much now, but whatever).

In any event, the addition of Mayo reduces the average age of Pats' linebackers from 47 to 34, so that's good news. And Bill Belichick and his spiffy pink ensemble just told the NFL Network crew that Mayo has experience at all three linebacker positions and can play special teams.

More impressive, though, is that New England was able to work a trade, accumulate a few picks and save some dough to get the guy they wanted. It's certainly not original to suggest that Belichick and Scott Pioli are masterful draft-day tacticians, but you if you're a Bengals fan, you have to wonder what the Patriots saw in Mayo that they didn't see in Keith Rivers.

Actually, if you're a Bengals fan, you're just glad the season hasn't been canceled yet.

Yesterday, ex-Patriot Matt Walsh and the NFL reached an agreement that will encourage Walsh to fess up everything he knows about Spygate to the league. I generally prefer to write about sports more than things like "contractual indemnification" and "release law" because sports is much more interesting. But if you are interested in hearing what Walsh might say, this contract sheds a lot of light.

Walsh initially refused to talk to the NFL for fear of being sued. Generally speaking, an indemnification and release agreement like this will protect Walsh from liability and lawsuit because the NFL agrees not to sue him and assumes some of his legal risk. Greg Bishop of the New York Times asked me to comment on the terms of the agreement -- you can read his brief overview here.

Contracts like this are often about fear and paranoia. Each party wants to protect itself and not get tooled over by the other guy. To understand a contract and a contract negotiation, you have to understand the fears of each party.

Thanks to some wheelin' and dealin' during last year's draft, the Patriots have the seventh-overall pick this April. The team has any number of needs -- mostly on defense -- but if given a choice, I'm guessing Scott Pioli and Bill Belichick would prefer to trade down, stockpile selections, and rebuild the roster that way.

And although it's easy to say, "they should just trade down," in practice, it's a little more involved than calling Matt Millen and forcing him to succumb to your will/Jedi mind tricks.

But assuming the Patriots have some offers to swap picks, the Boston Globe's Mike Reiss identifies some potential trade partners.

Dallas, with two first-round selections, should get a lot of calls from teams looking to move down. I'd also put teams potentially looking for a quarterback on the radar, such as Carolina (13), Chicago (14), Detroit (15) and maybe even Tampa Bay (20). A lot will depend on how the draft unfolds. Interestingly, Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan could be indirectly tied to what type of market the Patriots potentially see for their No. 7 pick. If there is one position teams will trade up for, it's probably quarterback. If Ryan is available at 7, that would figure to drum up some action for the pick.

As Reiss points out, one of the deterrents to trading up is the financial investment involved in a top-10 pick. If it turns out to be a bust, that's a lot of the salary-cap tied up in a guy who's not on the team.

This sounds about right. The Patriots may look like they're hemorrhaging after Spygate, the Super Bowl debacle, and a free-agency roster purge (we're still waiting on Randy Moss to decide what he'll be doing next year).

Sure, things could be better in Foxboro, but I imagine that Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli will somehow manage. For starters, Tom Brady's still on the team, so there's that. New England, thanks to some fancy draft-day wheeling and dealing, have the seventh-overall pick, and this is after losing a first-rounder for cheating.

The Patriots have the 49ers to thank for their lofty draft position, but it's other Northern California team that probably deserves a fruit basket. Last April, the Raiders were kind enough to send Moss to New England for a fourth-rounder -- this we know -- but the teams also swapped third-round picks too (the Pats' 07 pick, 91st overall, in exchange for the Raiders' '08 pick).

So in addition to having a selection in each round, the Patriots will pick twice in round 3. But it gets better:

The NFL confirmed this morning that the third-round pick will be in the sixth slot of the round. That is the 69th overall selection....

So looking back, the Patriots sacrificed the chance to select a player last year to move up 22 spots in the round in this year's draft.

The takeaway? The Raiders should never answer the phone if "Pioli" shows up on the caller ID. It's just going to end badly.

In October 2006, the Patriots and Asante Samuel had discussions about renegotiating the fourth-year cornerback's contract. At the time, the two side were just $2.5 million apart in guaranteed money; according to the Boston Globe's Mike Reiss, Samuel was seeking around $10 million in bonuses on an extension. The Patriots were offering around $7.5 million.

The Patriots opted to extend center Dan Koppen and put Samuel's contract on the back burner. Samuel never got his extension, briefly held out, was slapped with the franchise tag last off-season and now, he's a few days away from becoming a free agent.

Samuel now figures to command more than double the $10 million in bonuses he was seeking in 2006. Samuel's gamble to play out his contract - and, more importantly, assume the risk to stay healthy and be productive - is paying off.

On the flip side, Patriots vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli has noted that deciding when to be proactive or reactive is one of the more challenging aspects of putting a team together.

As Reiss notes, if the Pats had been proactive with Samuel during the '06 season, they wouldn't be in the position of losing him now. Of course, New England always finds somebody -- anybody -- to step up. Whether it's Randall Gay, a draft pick, or even Ty Law, the Pats will somehow manage. Plus, now they've got this guy to shore up the secondary.

The fine folks at PTI weigh in on the latest episode in the Spygate saga: the response from Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli about Matt Walsh's claim that he has video evidence of the Patriots cheating.

Like FanHouse's Michael David Smith wrote yesterday, Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon are of the opinion that by speaking out now, it looks like the Patriots are trying to discredit Walsh. So even if he does eventually produce video of, say, New England taping the St. Louis Rams walkthrough in the day before the Super Bowl, Belichick and Pioli can claim Walsh was working alone.

The PTI guys also find laughable Belichick's assertion that that the filming of opposing teams' defensive signals ranked about a "one" on a scale of one to 100 in terms of information gained. Which raises the obvious question: why do it. The Boston Globe's Mike Reiss asked just that and got this response: "Why do anything? Why study tendencies? Why study stances?" Um, okay.

In any event, on the latest charges leveled by Walsh, the Patriots are innocent until proven otherwise. Even though public opinion has already been shaped by previous events, perceived and real.

Strategic defense has long been the hallmark of New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, but it was a different kind of defense that Belichick offered up in the extensive interview he and right-hand man Scott Pioli gave the Boston Globe over the weekend.

In publicly discussing former Patriots employee Matt Walsh for the first time, Belichick and Pioli didn't state categorically that there's no way Walsh has video evidence of New England taping its opponents' practices, but they did provide the outline for the way they'll defend themselves in case Walsh produces such evidence, including, possibly, a tape of the St. Louis Rams' final walkthrough practice before they lost to the Patriots in the 2002 Super Bowl.

Specifically, the Belichick defense strategy is this:

1. Walsh has a history of taping things against the Patriots' wishes, so if he has damaging tapes, he did them on his own.
2. Walkthrough practices are basically meaningless exercises that wouldn't give opposing teams any type of advantage even if they were filmed.
3. Belichick doesn't know Matt Walsh from Adam, so anything Walsh did for the Patriots had nothing to do with Belichick's success as a coach.

Unfortunately for the Patriots, none of those three arguments holds up to much scrutiny.

Patriots general manager Scott Pioli said prior to the Super Bowl that win or lose, he and head coach Bill Belichick will turn their attention to the 2008 off-season on the plane ride back to New England. Specifically, what do do about the six soon-to-be unrestricted free agents, none more important than wideout Randy Moss.

The Patriots have three choices: re-sign Moss (but that would probably require making him the NFL's highest-paid receiver; let him walk; or franchise him.

The Boston Globe's Mike Reiss thinks the third option would be most appealing to New England.

If the Patriots place the non-exclusive franchise tag on Moss, it would strongly increase the likelihood of his return to New England in 2008. Other teams could still sign Moss to an offer sheet, but would have to forfeit two first-round draft choices if the offer isn't matched by the Patriots. Because of that steep price, it is unlikely another team would submit an offer sheet to any franchise player.

Not only would a franchise tag virtually insure Moss' return, but it wouldn't require New England to make a long-term investment. That may seem like less of an issue following Moss' 2007 season, but there's no guarantee he won't revert to the "I try when I want to" mentality that got him traded from the Vikings and the Raiders.

Moss might not be all that jazzed about being franchised, but there's not much he'd be able to do about it. He could choose to sit out, but that would affect him more than the Patriots, I think. I mean, they made it to the AFC Championship game in 2006 with Jabar Gaffney and Reche Caldwell as Tom Brady's primary options.

FanHouse's Michael David Smith mentioned last week that the Patriots defense was a little long in the tooth, and the Super Bowl could be the last game for Tedy Bruschi, Junior Seau and Rodney Harrison, three inspirational leaders on the downside of great careers.

Historically, head coach Bill Belichick and general manager Scott Pioli have shown no hesitation when it came to making unpopular decisions about very popular players; just ask Lawyer Milloy and Drew Bledsoe. So while releasing a 30-something safety and not re-signing a pair of past-their-prime linebackers is pretty straightforward, the Patriots will have more difficult choices to make as free agency approaches.

The NFL Network's Derrin Horton reports that the team has three weeks to decide whether to pay wideout Dante' Stallworth a $6 million bonus, and then there are the five other soon-to-be unrestricted free agents: Randy Moss, Asante Samuel, Randall Gay, Bruschi and Seau.

Currently, the thinking is that Samuel will test the free-agent market. Moss has expressed his interest to retire in New England, but I'm guessing that's contingent on getting paid like the best wideout in the NFL, something I'm not sure the Patriots are willing to do.

The NFL Network's Scott Hanson pointed out what we all know: that the Patriots have the seventh-overall pick in the draft (thanks, San Francisco!), but added this: "I spoke with Pioli [last week] ... he told me that as soon as [the Patriots] hit the team plane -- win or lose -- he was going to sit next to ... Belichick and they were going to start deciding what sort of off-season moves they were going to make."

That must've been a fun conversation.