By Bruce Allen, Patriots Daily Staff
A few items/thoughts involving the Patriots from recent days:
The news came on Monday that we’ve been expecting – The Patriots designated Vince Wilfork as their franchise player. Obviously the hope is to work out a long term agreement with him. At the very least, doing this keeps his right in their control, and gives the Patriots more time to try and work out a contract with him that works for both sides, or try and trade him to get something for him, or make the decision just get one more year out of him and see what happens. While there is some optimism out there that a deal might be able to be consummated, it really needs to be team friendly for me to be full on board with a long term investment.
Randy Moss made some comments over the weekend that had the Patriots media buzzing. He expressed his opinion that 2010 would be his last in a Patriots uniform. Moss was not inflammatory in his remarks, but candid and honest – as he usually is on the occasions that he speaks to the media. This shouldn’t really be a surprise – Moss will be 34 next season, and some team out there is going to give him big money because of who he is – more than what the Patriots are likely to give him. I would imagine that the Patriots and Tom Brady would like to keep Moss here, but at what price?
The Patriots announced on Monday that they are resurfacing the playing field at Gillette stadium, going to the new FieldTurf Duraspine PRO surface.
Is it just me, or has the aim of nearly every Patriots reporter/columnist/analyst this offseason been to make fans feel as poorly as possible about the state of the franchise? Every little thing seems to written with a negative slant, or with the tone of lecturing the fans in a condescending manner ( a pair of recent posts from Patriots writers telling fans that Julius Peppers won’t solve all their problems spring to mind), or suggesting that Bill Belichick is devolving back to who he was in Cleveland. In some ways, it’s just par for the course. Ron Borges has been insisting that the whole franchise was a house of cards since 2001, but this year, there seems to be a whole lot less benefit of the doubt being handed out. But hey, it’s understandable – they haven’t won a Super Bowl in five full seasons now!
The no-coordinators thing doesn’t bother me as much as it does some. I wrote a column on the topic for the Boston Metro – explaining why I think the media behaved exactly as expected in this matter.
A couple of features here on PD that you might find useful and that will be updated throughout the offseason:
Keep checking those posts for the latest moves and deadlines going forward.
Patriots Daily 
To answer your question Bruce: no, it’s not your imagination.
The media have been going out of their way (with the usual suspects leading the charge, of course) to tell us all just how bad this team is, and how bad it’s going to be, and how Belichick’s “arrogance” and the team’s overall “cheapness” is FINALLY catching up to them. Borges was on Felger’s show Sunday night (nice combo there, right?) and he said, in response to the accusations that the Pats don’t pay: “Well, they haven’t won in going on six years now, so how’s that (philosophy) working out for them?”
Yes, this is the same Ron Borges who was insisting, back in (circa) 2004 that Tony Dungy was as good if not better than Bill Belichick as a head coach because of his great regular season records, and that winning a Super Bowl wasn’t “the best measuring stick” of a coach’s ability or greatness.
Yup…same guy.
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Are they selling or auctioning off the old turf? I would take a piece.
Yes, 2007 seems like last century for the local scribes. “How empty is the cup? [this] empty Kool Aid fans”.
I am so tired ot the “arrogance” insult these days. It’s a great catch-all insult for someone who is smarter than you; and for Belichick, this pretty much includes everyone in the media.
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I agree, Bruce, you’re not imagining things. They all just seem interested in attempting to create emotional churn. I had such high hopes for Albert Breer when he came to the Globe, but he’s gone downhill since he first started. Is there something in the water cooler at these papers? Mike Reiss is the only one I’ll read regularly.
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