We have finally made it to the top 10 of our 25 best Patriots over the last 25 years. Talk about a trip down memory lane. If you don’t get the warm and fuzzies, your heart is colder and blacker than mine. As I was cobbling this entire list together, I had a pool of about 35 names, then started crossing out this guy, putting a question mark next to that guy, and then - in pen - sketching out numbers next to the no-doubters and where, at first blush, I thought they belonged. There were some modifications - an arrow up or down - and I still regret where Wes Welker ended up - but I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed researching and writing it.
As a refresher, here’s the list up to this point:
25. Joe Thuney
24. Drake Maye
23. James White
22. Matt Light
21. Troy Brown
20. Darrelle Revis
19. Deion Branch
18. Corey Dillon
17. Randy Moss
16. Rodney Harrison
15. Wes Welker
14. Julian Edelman
13. Stephon Gilmore
12. Dont’a Hightower
11. Willie McGinest
On to 6 through 10:
10. Mike Vrabel: I’ve said this elsewhere, maybe even on this website at some point, but to me, Vrabel was the defining player of that first dynasty. Not the best player - though he was damn good - but his versatility, playmaking, and cocksure attitude helped drive that defense to great heights.
Imagine being a quarterback and you’re not sure if this 6’4”, 261-pound defensive end was actually going to be on the edge, hovering over the ‘A’ gap, lined up on the nose, or dropping 25 yards down the field in coverage. That wasn’t just a week-to-week adjustment Bill Belichick and defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel made with Vrabel, but down-to-down. Oh, and he’d be doing this with fellow interchangeable parts like Willie McGinest and Tedy Bruschi. Good luck with that.
"Everybody says how smart the Patriots defenses were when we played, and we were. But there was one guy that was the smartest, and it was always Mike Vrabel," Bruschi told the Titans website after Vrabel was hired as HC in 2018. "If I had a question, I would ask him. If there was an on-field adjustment, I made some, but if I was unsure of something, I was checking with him.
"He was the brains of the unit. And he had guts. He would challenge people, he would challenge players, he would challenge coaches, and he would bring humor. He would lighten it up. He is the perfect person for that job in Tennessee, to be a head coach. Everyone knew he would be a coach."
Vrabel's career took off after the Patriots signed him in the offseason before the 2001 season. He hadn’t started a game during the first four years of his career in Pittsburgh. He pretty much never came off the field in NE over the next eight seasons. His immediate pressure, then hit on Kurt Warner in Super Bowl XXXVI, led to the Ty Law pick-6 that announced to the Rams they were in for a long night, and began a stretch of three championships in four years (cue up Springsteen’s “Glory Days”).
The league didn’t give Vrabel love until the 2007 season. That year, he was a first-team All-Pro and finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting. That was the only time in his 14-year career that he recorded double-digit sacks (12.5), had 17 QB hits and forced five fumbles. Vrabel did all that at the age of 32. At 34, he was part of the trade with Matt Cassel to the Chiefs, and by then, his best days were behind him. But what he gave the Pats organization was some extraordinarily good football for nearly a decade, including his star cameos at tight end.
“Mike had a great personality, great love for the game, passionate, high energy, very strong,” Belichick said. “Mike’s really strong, physically strong player, handled the tackles, obviously could handle tight ends, good power rusher and had enough moves to go with it. His strength was his length and his power and his intelligence. He was a good tackler.”
Vrabel was a handful to cover (that has not changed). He usually didn’t offer reporters much time, and then would spar with us before pulling the plug on the Q&A. But if you got him feeling charitable, you’d come away with a better idea of why the Pats did something or how he felt about an important topic.
9. Devin McCourty: I’ll start with this, part of Bill Belichick’s statement when McCourty announced his retirement. Maybe he ran it through PR maven Stacey James, but if I’m Devin, I’ve got this framed in my man cave.
"It is a rare group of players who win games at a historic rate, exude team culture, lead, win awards, and win championships. And then there is Devin McCourty. Devin did all of those things as a player and more, but what I think of first when I think of Devin is the type of man he is, his character, his values, and how high he raised the bar for spreading goodness and justice in the community.y.
"For 13 years, Devin made everyone in our organization feel better and be better because of who he is – a pillar of professionalism, unselfishness, work ethic, preparation, intelligence and performance," Belichick continued. "I am excited to see him bring those same traits to his next chapter and brighten the lives of even more people."
The Patriots did a lot of winning when McCourty was here - try 3 Super Bowls on for size - and I believe strongly maybe one or perhaps two of those titles don’t happen without him. That’s how critical he was, both on and off the field. Not bad for a kid from Rutgers (yes, that was a shot at Bedard’s “University”).
McCourty’s rookie season (2010) was one of the best by any draft pick in the Belichick era. Maybe the best. The late first-rounder was a second-team All-Pro and finished second in the Defensive Rookie of the Year voting by playing great ball at cornerback (did you forget he started there?). McCourty had 7 interceptions, 17 passes defensed, forced two fumbles, and recorded 82 tackles.
But year two was more of a struggle. McCourty had issues, especially on vertical routes. By 2012, he was teetering, and once the team acquired Aqib Talib, his days at corner were over. But the switch to safety - while initially concerning for the player - proved to be an absolute home run. McCourty became an All-Pro at that spot a year later, and manned the position for over a decade.
The running joke on the radio was that McCourty played so deep, you didn’t always see him on the TV screen pre-snap. But his influence was massive - I can’t tell you how many mistakes he erased - and he wore the green dot, not exactly common for a safety.
“He does everything right,” said Belichick. ”He’s done everything right since he’s been here.”
McCourty was still playing at a high level when he called it quits after the ‘22-23 season (4 INTs, 71 tackles), but 13 years in the league was enough, especially knowing the Pats were headed to the basement for a couple of years. He immediately landed a high-profile TV job, no doubt having studied tape of yours truly to prepare.
This is as good a guy as I have ever covered - in any sport.
8. Adam Vinatieri: My feeling about 99.9% of kickers/punters is well-documented. Vinatieri is the exception to the rule. Who knows if that first dynastic run even happens if Vinatieri doesn’t make the most incredible kick in NFL history (I’m referencing the Snow Ball boot)?
“You think, 'Oh, my gosh, we've got a chance to tie this thing,'” Vinatieri said years later. “But it's a 45-yarder and there's three, four inches of snow on the field -- with the game on the line. You had pretty much everything working against you, degree-of-difficulty-wise. For me, it was not thinking of all the external things. It was, 'You've got to kick a ball better than you've ever kicked it. It's got to be above the line of scrimmage, and it's got to be straight.'"
"When his foot hit that ball, I saw a snow explosion like off of the ground, like just a 'poof!' of snow,” Bruschi added. “The wind, the snow, so many things that made that probably the most difficult clutch kick in the history of the NFL."
A few weeks later, he splits the uprights in Super Bowl XXXVI (I still don’t know why we don’t just do these with the numbers we use, but I digress). Vinatieri did the same in SB XXXVIII, drilling the game-winner to beat Carolina.
Two of the three times Vinatieri had the most accurate season of any placekicker came in a Pats uniform: 2002 and 2004. In both those campaigns, he was first-team All-Pro (he would do so again in 2014 with the Colts, at age 38). He also hit 20-of-25 field goal attempts in the postseason from ‘01 to ‘05.
Vinatieri left NE after being repeatedly low-balled by Belichick, and then got booed upon his return to Foxborough. Were I King for a day, every single one of you who did that, whether it was his first time back or in repeated visits, should be forced to publicly apologize. Were it up to Vinatieri, he’d never have left. But take less? Please. He was already on the list for best kicker of all-time when he fled for Indy, and by the time Vinatieri finished, there is no question. Plus, the man chased down Herschel Walker on a kickoff. Respect.
I’ll spare you Belichick’s quote upon Vinatieri’s retirement because he screwed the whole transaction up. Ditto for his campaigning for the kicker to get into the Hall of Fame (which he did, even though he’s not yet in the Pats’ Hall of Fame). But I will leave you with this from his holder in 2004 and 2005, punter Josh Miller:
“…every kick Adam took, he took personally. Even warming up, even one-stepping. Every kick had to be good. He was 100-percent laser-focused. Preseason, practice, games. Adam would watch every ball until it landed. He's the guy who remembers his misses more than his makes.”
Safe to say, that served him well.
7. Tedy Bruschi: Spent the entirety of his 13-year career in New England, but didn’t start consistently until the 4th year of his tenure and didn’t become a great player until the second Super Bowl-winning season. That’s a testament to his growth as a player and, I’m sure, some maturing off the field.
Bruschi was a second-team All-Pro in both 2003 and 2004, doing so at the ages of 30 and 31. Hard not to think of him in the middle of that stacked defense, body parts twitching, pointing out motions and shifts and, I swear, eventually telling everyone what play was coming. For someone who had been a pass rusher in college - he played defensive tackle at Arizona, for goodness sake - Bruschi’s transition to being the QB of the defense was one of the more impressive career adjustments I’ve ever seen.
"It's been the toughest thing I've ever had to do, making the transition from putting my hand down in the dirt in college and then coming here in '96 and learning linebacker,” Bruschi told the late, great Alan Greenberg in 2002. “But I was a realist. I come here and see the Willie McGinests (6-foot-5, 275 pounds) and the Chris Slades (6-4, 250) ... and I see the body type you need to be an edge rusher in this league."
"I look at myself and I look more like a Todd Collins, a Ted Johnson-type," Bruschi added. "So I knew I had to change myself as a player."
"When you take a player who is a down lineman, and you put him on his feet as a linebacker, particularly inside linebacker, it's tough,” Belichick said. “To be able to read and react as quickly as he does is a little bit unusual. You don't see many guys who can make that conversion.
"The thing about Tedy that has enabled him to be so successful is that he is just a smart football player. Doesn't matter whether it's a punt return, punt protection, middle linebacker, goal line. Whatever the situation is, he instinctively picks things up quickly."
Bruschi became what he was in college, a gifted playmaker. He had 133 tackles in ‘03, with three interceptions, two of which he took back for touchdowns (he did the same in ‘02). He had 14 passes defensed. That’s not a typo. 14, as a linebacker.
A year later, another 124 tackles, three INTs, six PBUs and 3.5 sacks. Pretty sure there was a Partridge in a Pear Tree involved as well. In those playoffs, Bruschi added another interception and four fumble recoveries. Guys can play a decade in the league and not have that many combined. A then 31-year-old Bruschi did it in three postseason games.
Shortly after winning that third Super Bowl - 10 days later, to be exact - Bruschi had a stroke. There was a ton of speculation that his career was over, and he had to have surgery to repair a hole in his heart. But he didn’t get the memo. His return - it came on a Sunday night at Gillette in week 7 - was simply amazing, even to him.
"I was retired," Bruschi said. "I didn't think it was possible."
When the linebacker’s body finally told him enough was enough and he officially announced his retirement, Belichick went to the podium and spoke for 8-and-a-half minutes about what Bruschi meant to him and the organization. He was emotional and, at one point, called Tedy “the perfect player.”
I’m sure he’s not the only one who felt that way.
6. Logan Mankins: If you tell me this is too high for Mankins, we can’t be friends. This is one of the great players in franchise history, an absolute dominating force who walked the line between physicality and dirtiness. Maybe he went over the line once or twice (ok, maybe three times), but opponents knew very well not to mess with Mankins or any of his teammates. Hell, the Pats learned that too when he held out for half a season before getting a massive deal (at the time).
Mankins was a 6-time All-Pro (first- or second-team). Tom Brady only did that five times in his Patriots career. Rob Gronkowski had four. Let that settle for a minute, will ya? Most underappreciated elite player of the entire 25 years.
In his rookie year, Mankins was the AP’s 2nd-place finisher for Offensive Rookie of the Year. As a guard. That doesn’t happen, especially for someone who was considered a reach when he went 32nd overall, the last pick in round one.
In 2007, he allowed one sack but played all 16 games. Brady attempted 578 passes that season. That is bananas.
In 2011, Mankins played the entire year with a torn ACL. He was a second-team All-Pro that year. In other words, it didn’t slow him down too much.
The Pats traded him in 2014, prompting Brady to, essentially, go into mourning and grow a beard in Mankins’ honor. The team then ended a 10-year title drought. Talk about unfortunate. That may be the thing that keeps him out of Pro Football’s Hall of Fame, though it shouldn’t.
"Logan Mankins is everything we would ever want in a football player,” Belichick wrote in a statement at the time of the deal. “It is hard to imagine a better player at his position, a tougher competitor or a person to represent our program. He is one of the all-time great Patriots and the best guard I ever coached. Logan brought a quiet but unmistakable presence and leadership that will be impossible to duplicate…”
Brady added, “I love Logan. Logan was a great friend of mine. Nobody stood for Patriots football more than him…” When talking about Mankins a year earlier, Brady said the guard’s toughness was “second to none,” and Belichick agreed: “I've coached a lot of tough guys, none that I would put ahead of him.”
During his latter years with the team, Mankins became more comfortable talking with us. Remember, this is a guy who bought his first suit for his introductory press conference with the Pats, and someone who was (and is) far more comfortable working on his ranch (and playing football) than anything else. He was a truth-teller. No excess words. Nothing self-serving. You asked, and he answered. Or he told you that was a question for Bill. #Respect