New England Patriots fans aren’t the only people wondering who will fill the team’s leadership role, which has been vacated by the departures of safety Rodney Harrison, linebackers Tedy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel, and defensive lineman Richard Seymour.
In fact, Patriots defensive coordinator Dean Pees is even curious to see who steps up.
“When Tedy Bruschi and all those guys came here at some point in time, they took over the leadership role from somebody else, and that’s what will happen again,” Pees said during a Tuesday afternoon conference call. “Somebody is going to step up and be the leaders, and we’ll find out who those are. No disrespect to anybody who retired, or is gone from the team or anything else, but things change, coaches change, players change. It presents new opportunities for other guys to become leaders. The torch always gets passed on on good teams to somebody else, and now it’s their opportunity. The guys that are in the locker room right now, it’s their opportunity to be those guys, and I’m actually looking forward to finding out who those guys are going to be.”
Defensive tackle Vince Wilfork and outside linebacker Adalius Thomas are obvious choices to intensify their leadership roles on the defensive side of the ball. Safety James Sanders and defensive end Ty Warren are a couple of veterans who are quiet leaders, while middle linebacker Jerod Mayo and safety Brandon Meriweather are a pair of younger players who could grasp a leadership position and keep it for years to come.
Either way, Pees says it’s a process that has to come naturally.
“You don’t make a leader,” Pees said. “Leaders kind of assume the role and the position, and hopefully we’re going to have a lot of leaders on this team. I don’t think it’s something that we necessarily, as coaches, try to say, ‘Well, we’re going to make this guy a leader.’ They become that. It’s our job to coach them, and prepare them and do the things that they need to do schematically on the field and be the best fundamentally they can be. Then, the guys that emerge the leaders will emerge the leaders. Hopefully, we’ve picked enough of those guys, and I believe we have. They’ll take over that responsibility. That’s not something I think you can ever force on any team. You don’t know who your leaders are until they show up.”
Thrown into the fire
Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio just finished his wildest weekend on the job. Caserio, who has had various positions with the team since 2001, is in his first season under the current title, meaning he played a significant role throughout nearly three dozen roster moves last weekend, as well as the trade of Seymour to the Oakland Raiders.
This was a little different from 2008, when Caserio was the Patriots’ wide receivers coach.
“There’s always a lot of change that takes place, especially this time of the year,” Caserio said. “In the end, what each club — and just speaking for ourselves and what we try to do — just tries to identify those players that we feel give us the best opportunity to win come Monday, in this case, against Buffalo. I think there’s always a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of decisions that have to be made, some more difficult than others, but you try to construct a 53-man roster and also keep in mind how that’s going to work as it relates to the 45-man game-day roster. I think it’s exciting for everybody that is involved because each team and each year is different, so where we are right now is certainly different from where we were at the beginning of last year. I’d say it’s exciting. It can be hectic at times, but I think we feel good about where we are heading into the game Monday.”
Changing the base
One of the Patriots’ most noticeable differences during the preseason was their mixture of a 3-4 and 4-3 defensive base. At this point, it’s uncertain which front the Patriots will rely upon more heavily. However, Pees praised his players for their ability to learn different assignments within each package, a daunting chore that doesn’t always receive the most attention.
“We’ve always been a multiple team on defense with multiple fronts, multiple coverages,” Pees said. :We’ve asked a lot out of our players, and they’re going to have to know a lot of different spots.”
Doc makes a house call
The Patriots had a team function Monday, and head coach Bill Belichick reached out to Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers to make a presentation.
Rivers is a gifted public speaker, and the two coaches know each other from various events around Boston. Belichick has also sat courtside at the Garden for a number of Celtics games over the past two seasons.
Belichick was overjoyed with how inspirational Rivers was in front of the Patriots.
“Doc was great,” Belichick said. “He came in [Monday] and was part of the NFL player program and life skills presentation. He was awesome. He talked about a lot of things that he had dealt with or experienced in his career from not making the basketball team in the fifth grade or whatever it was, to be an All-American in high school, to going to college, to being a point guard in the NBA, to having some injuries that he had to deal with, to losing championship games as a player, to winning them as a coach, to not having a good season and then the next year winning it all. He gave a lot of personal insight into his attitude and his approach as a player, as a coach, as a broadcaster, and many of the things that he learned along the way. It was tremendous.
“I think every coach and every player there gained a lot of insight and took things out of it that can help us personally, each one of us. I know a lot of us took notes, either wrote them down or mentally took them and then wrote them down — things that he said that really struck a cord and then hit home. When you look at Doc, there are very few people that have done what he has done and experienced what he has experienced in his life. He is a remarkable man. As I told the team, I think you can probably take any 10 of us in that room and put us together and not have experienced as many things as Doc has in his career. We all learned a lot from him, and it was one of the best presentations that I’ve ever heard. It was awesome.”
