Now THAT'S More Like It, Patriots!

Either Bill Belichick was trolling the web and found a new writer on Bleacher Report’s opinion of their suspect secondary, or the greater Boston area has an NFL head coach and scout team of legendary and epic proportions. I mean, we are not talking just Hall of Fame, people. These guys may just be the ‘new bar’ that future coaches get compared to, much like coaches of our time face the level of Vince Lombardi’s accomplishments.

In the past two weeks, the Patriots went from Defensive Dead-In-The-Waters to Patriot Protecting Powerhouse. The wake up call is complete, with the signing of two KEY, notable defensive players within fourteen days.

The first signing raised my eyebrows and I said, “all right…we are headed in the right direction” when they inked a deal with veteran cornerback Ade Jimoh (pronounced ODD-ee gym-OH), from the Chicago Bears. He played four years with the Redskins in Washington before ending up in Chicago in 2007, where he played 6 games before going on IR.

But I had symptoms like that pill commercial that states “if the effect lasts for more than four hours, contact your physician” when I read the news the other day. John Lynch, a 37 year old veteran safety signed out of Denver, who in the span of his 15 years in the NFL also spent time in Tampa Bay and Denver, was also nominated to the Pro Bowl 9 times in his career, and four in the last four years. John Lynch? More like John Wayne…the Patriot.

OH, MAN is this a good sign. And I mean that in every literal sense of the phrase.

Why is this guy a good fit? He brings leadership to the deep defense, he has that Patriot attitude (at least that’s what I’ve seen so far- I will elaborate on that in a moment), and from what he’s saying right now, he’s excited to be here. Saying the right things helps, but does he MEAN them? That is the question that every team faces when they sign a Pro Bowler from another team.

The Patriot attitude is simply this. If you have a bar graph of a Patriot player’s personality profile it would look something like the following:

Completely committing to the better of the team, self-sacrifice and tremendous work ethic and strong intelligence to understand the complex playbook drives that particular bar up high.

The ego bar, or the individual performance bar, is set really low. Players achieve notoriety and popularity, and all of a sudden they are underpaid. Maybe they are, as in Vinatieri, but a Ty Law or an Asante Samuel might just be too big for their own britches and get swallowed up by their own egos. Oh, well.

The top bar represents your Tedi Bruschis or your Troy Browns and I am even proud to say, your Randy Mosses. I sure hope that John Lynch is a player weighing more heavily in the first example.

These are the type of players that this Dynasty was built around, and I couldn’t be prouder. With signs like Jerod Mayo, our competitive Reign could carry well into the next decade.