All I know is, at one point in my life I was excited about the Pats drafting Hart Lee Dykes to play WR. I'll take the hate.
Brady isn't going anywhere. Doesn't he have like 3 years left on his contract? And they'd franchise him the second he indicated he wasn't signing with them. That's naive. If you really think it's feasible to keep a disgruntled star player on your team against his will by using the franchise tag on him in perpetuity, let me direct you to the cases of Adam Vinatieri and Asante Samuel. Sammy Morris? Really? You're using him as an example of why they weren't healthy? OK, here's one I forgot. Their highest-paid (and per Belichick, their best) defensive player, Richard Seymour, missed the first half of the season with some kind of staph infection. He was on the PUP list and only really came back into form at the end of the regular season. That sure sounds like a significant injury to me, yet they didn't lose a game without him. Sorry, but it's apparent that you don't know very much about the Patriots. And without catching those breaks they wouldn't be AS WINNING, which was kind of my point. Well, what you actually said was that they were unlikely to be as lucky, which was one of their two "biggest problems" going forward. Setting aside the proposition of whether or not the Patriots actually were exceptionally lucky in 2007 and just taking that assertion as a given, I still think the point is erroneous and irrelevant. Quite frankly, the Patriots' goal for 2009 is not to be "as winning," ie. try to go undefeated, but simply to win the Super Bowl. And I don't think their good luck had anything to do with the fact that they were in contention to do so in 2007. Sure, it had a lot to do with why they went 18-0, but who cares? As we just saw, going 18-0 does not make a team a lock to win the Super Bowl. So I don't really see why this team's biggest problem, other than its ancient linebackers, is the chance that it might lose a game or two in the regular season next year. Frankly, that isn't a problem at all.
(Let me just clarify -- I'm not predicting a 14-2 or 15-1 season; just pointing out that if they drop a couple of games that good fortune might have won them - like the 2007 Baltimore game - that's no big deal.)
That's naive. If you really think it's feasible to keep a disgruntled star player on your team against his will by using the franchise tag on him in perpetuity Especially if it is your star quarterback. There is no single player more important than the quarterback, so it is very important to keep them at least some what pleased.