New England Patriots Should Follow Indianapolis Colts' Blueprint

The Death Star was Darth Vader's creation, a mothership that was supposedly indestructible. Its structure was ahead of its time, and all marveled in its excellence.

The dynasty days of New England are comparable to the Death Star. The Patriots reigned supreme with ruthless resolve, and ironically enough have been led the entire time by a man who resembles Emperor Palpatine.

Like the Death Star, immense focus and attention to detail goes into drawing up a blueprint for a dynasty.

But it only took one small chink in the armor for Luke Skywalker to blow all that work into millions of pieces floating haplessly through the galaxy. (Authors note: Analogies of Peyton or Eli Manning to Luke Skywalker are irrelevant and shall be ignored.)

Throughout the first half of the decade, many felt that the Patriots were the standard for excellence in the league. The loss of key players and personnel never seemed to effect the Patriots. They transitioned smoothly from one player or coordinator to the next.

Since their last Super Bowl, the Patriots have continued to stand by their formula for success. They haven't typically paid their star players big contracts, but instead rely on talent evaluation to find inexpensive replacement players in the draft or free agency.

That method, however, seems to have developed one or two chinks in the armor from minor to high alert mode.

Look to the Indianapolis Colts, with a streamline ship whose enterprise has been both retention and development. They sign massive contracts to their vital players, letting others fall to the wayside as they draft and develop new talent.

Shouldn't this be what the Patriots are doing?

You don't see the Colts signing every once-talented player in the free agent pool. Likewise, you don't see them releasing their star athletes, or the key components of their roster.

Should New England take a page from Indy's book? Perhaps the page containing the blueprint?

It seems, though, that's exactly what the Patriots plan on doing. They lost a lot of veteran leaders, but by signing almost every player who was set to become a free agent this season, the Patriots keep their key cogs in place.

Over the past few years, the Patriots have gone garbage picking, looking for talent whose better years are behind them, but whom the Patriots hope to make use of. One man's trash is another man's treasure after all. But how much trash-picking do you think went into building the Death Star? I challenge anyone to find me the treasure in the unhealthy heap of used-up trash the Patriots have collected on their roster.

Joey Galloway stretching the field? That one was a stretch. Fred Taylor? More like fragile Fred. Deltha O'Neal? Stop the pain, please. And these were players who were supposed to be replacing the likes of Corey Dillon and Asante Samuel.

You never see the Colts make a free agent signing on an aging player with question marks like that. The Patriots have noticeably avoided such acquisitions this season. They don't seem in any huge rush to fill their remaining roster holes, so it would stand to reason that they'll wait things out until the draft.

More to the point, I doubt many (if any) of them truly embraced the Patriots way in the same sense as guys like Rodney Harrison and Antoine Smith.

Sure, the second version of the Death Star was easily destroyed before its inception, after the Empire used pieces from the old model to rebuild its masterpiece. Therein, for New England, lies the rub.

I'm not saying New England needs to totally re-tool what it does in the offseason. It may help to simply take a page from the blueprint and not the entire structural layout.

Whether to follow or ignore the blueprint set forth by Indianapolis, the choice is theirs, but they'll need to work out all the kinks in the ship if they're ever to reign dominant over the NFL galaxy again.