Flight Connections 08-30-11

The Patriots are not a team, they are a system. They are a specific way of working that they just put new pieces into all the time. It’s like a machine with interchangeable parts. This is a way of trying to protect themselves against injury risks, and against decline in the quality of individual players (paging Mr. Moss…).
Secondly, I think that anyone will have more insight into his division rival’s players rather than any random team, just because he sees them twice a year. Nothing wrong with seeing something you like in your opponent’s players. There may be a spy factor at work as well, wanting to learn more about a division rival’s system from the players he used.
Third, maybe he wants to somehow prove himself as a better coach, succeeding where others failed, sort of “look, you couldn’t figure out how to use this guy and I did!”
Fourth, sometimes the Patriots go after big names (Haynesworth), but more often they try to bring in multiple potential cogs (note their tendency to try to increase their draft picks by trading down) in the hope that some of them will fit into their system. That explains why they drafted both Hernández and Gronkowski the same year, why they converted Edelman to WR and then brought in Tate and now Branch and Ochocinco.