New season. New team.
No NFL team is the same one year to the next. Players depart in free agency, retire, are released, move on. New blood is added to the mixture. Even if some key pieces remain, NFL teams are shapeshifters, always changing one year to the next.
For no franchise is this more evident than the New England Patriots. The Dynasty of Dynasties, Bill Belichick's team has been through overhauls in the past and continues to dominate the AFC East and the NFL.
The 2019 version of the Pats must overcome some big losses. The list of departures of both players and coaches is long:
Notable Patriots Losses 2019 Offseason:
TE Rob Gronkowski
WR Chris Hogan
WR Cordarrelle Patterson
TE Dwayne Allen
T Trent Brown
T LaAdrian Waddle
T Jared Veldheer
DE Trey Flowers
DT Malcolm Brown
DE Adrian Clayborn
CB Eric Rowe
Defensive coordinator Brian Flores
Defensive line coach Brendan Daly
Cornerbacks coach Josh Boyer
Joining NFL Network's *Total Access* this week, Patriots linebacker Kyle Van Noy told former New England star Willie McGinnest that the key to replacing all the losses has been the culture Belichick has instilled in the veterans still with the program.
"Bill does a really good job of the culture being set with the players that have been there for their tenures," Van Noy said. "Like Patrick Chung, Dont'a Hightower, Devin McCourty, Tom (Brady), they've been there for a while, Matthew Slater. Those guys have already been passed on from your generation, the standard. And we're just trying to keep that legacy going.
"When that culture is set, it doesn't matter, we all have the same goal in mind and that's just to win."
The Pats have overcome on-field attrition in the past. Losing Gronk is massive, but the assumption is as long as Brady is throwing passes, the Patriots will be fine. The bigger question comes with coaching attrition that we've seen from New England the last few seasons, especially on the defensive side of the ball.
Without a defensive coordinator, Belichick is expected to take a heavier role than normal in the every-day activity and play-calling this season. Van Noy welcomes the chance to be pushed by the best coach in NFL history.
"I think for me, anytime you get to learn from one of the best ever to do it -- to me, he's the best -- to learn from him each and every day, to have that mindset in your meetings all the time, getting you information and things that you normally don't see, you get in his mind a little bit, it's the best," Van Noy said.
Perhaps the dynasty will end one day. No one expects it to crash in 2019, even with this year's attrition.
