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5 Biggest Offseason Needs for the New England Patriots

by Dave Jacober       March 7th, 2012 6:45 PM

Despite yet another Super Bowl loss at the hands of the New York Giants, the New England Patriots found themselves once again amongst the NFL elite in 2011. Still, that isn’t to say the Patriots don’t have a multitude of needs to address this offseason, specifically in their defensive backfield. The Patriots defensive woes were dissected ad nauseum last season, and while the Pats defense yielded the second most yards in the league as well as 21.4 points per game (15th in the NFL), New England finished tied for third amongst all NFL teams in forced turnovers.

New England possessed one of the more explosive offenses in the NFL last season, but at times did struggle when teams were able to put pressure on Tom Brady using base personnel, allowing them to double Wes Welker and Rob Gronkowski in the second level. Elsewhere in the offense, various positions were plagued by inconsistency. Rookie running back Stevan Ridley looked promising at times, and then would seemingly disappear. Deion Branch can still run effective routes, but doesn’t possesses the speed to pop the top off the defense like he once did. Thus, the Patriots had no real deep threat at receiver and were forced to rely to heavily on Aaron Hernandez and Gronkowski as vertical threats in the seams.

While there are probably 31 other teams that would probably be willing to trade their needs for those of the Patriots, this offseason is critically important for the Pats to continue on their recent success in the draft and reload their talent.

New England also has significant assets heading into free agency, including roughly $41 million in cap space and multiple picks in the first two rounds of the upcoming draft. As the franchise tag period is already behind us, here are five key areas the Patriots need to address either in the draft or via free agency.

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