Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2001

ProFootballWeekly.com: Which NFL team has the smallest chance of making the playoffs or going to the Super Bowl in the next five years?

That was the question posed to a handful of NFL insiders, and the overwhelming answer PFW received was the Patriots.

According to scouts, here are the reasons for the lack of confidence in New England:

"This team is in salary-cap hell and does not have a sound nucleus to build around. If you go down the team’s roster, this is what you’ll find: At quarterback, in this day and age of everybody wanting the mobile quarterback who can improvise and make plays with his feet, the Patriots have a fine, mature passer in Drew Bledsoe, who is a statue back in the pocket and does not improvise well. He also is the highest-paid player in the league. At running back, the Patriots have nobody good enough to start for any other team in the league with the exception of J.R. Redmond, who can’t stay healthy. Kevin Faulk is the most unclutch runner in the league. He fumbles in the worst situations, and the team just doesn’t have a fullback. At wide receiver, they have one player who is good enough to start — Terry Glenn. They don’t have another starting-caliber wide receiver or tight end because former top picks like Tony Simmons and Rod Rutledge have not panned out. The only player on the offensive line good enough to start is (C) Damien Woody, and they still are paying off a lot of big contracts on the offensive line given to players who the previous regime believed were going to get better and be very good players but instead turned into non-factors."

"On defense, their best player last year aside from Lawyer Milloy at safety was Bobby Hamilton, a free-agent defensive lineman nobody wanted because of age, speed and size considerations. The only other guy who was good enough last year was (DT) Chad Eaton, and he’s a free agent who wants a big contract now. (DE) Willie McGinest is a guy who teases you with his talent but gets hurt way too much and can never be relied upon."

"At linebacker, Chris Slade is washed up, Andy Katzenmoyer can’t stay healthy and Tedy Bruschi is the ultimate warrior but is just not a very gifted player. In the secondary, (CB) Ty Law had a terrible year and hasn’t played worth a damn since he got his big contract. They have nobody at the other corner. At safety, Milloy is a Grade-A player, but they don’t have anyone to go with him. They also need a punter."

"The thing that makes this situation so totally unmanageable is the fact the Patriots had so many high draft picks in recent years and blew almost all of them. If you look at the first-round picks, they were taking players like Tebucky Jones and Chris Canty, who were busts or semi-busts."

"This team has nobody to build around because Bledsoe’s lack of mobility is going to kill you regardless. They don’t have solid lines. They don’t have a secondary. They have one receiver on the roster, and they don’t have a core of good young players because they’ve drafted so poorly in recent years. Plus, they have a horrible salary-cap situation because the previous regime totally misrated the players they had on their roster and overpaid so many players who are not good enough, putting the team in a situation in which they really can’t cut the players because they will cost almost as much if they are cut than if they are retained. But they still had to cut a lot, which left them with a lot of dead money."

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2000 - 2001 Season