Tedy Bruschi

Bruschi retires.

The piece mentions that "Bruschi played on all three Super Bowl-winning Patriots teams." It doesn't mention that Bruschi also played on the Pats '96 squad that made the SB under Bill Parcells. He was a rookie that year.

The Patriots era of dominance rightly begins with Parcells tenure as head coach, 1993-6. There was a 3-yr interregnum under Pete Carroll; but Carroll had a winning record, and from a distance it doesn't look like he screwed up the roster too much. A fair number of the key players on Belichick's SB teams joined the Pats under Parcells.

Belichick's SB teams (the winning ones) were known primarily as dominant defensive squads. Opportunistic & efficient on offense, but almost mystically great on D.

I've been curious about something. How will the Hall of Fame voters treat the players from those defenses? I'm thinking specifically of the guys who took the Pats to the SB in '96, and then came back 5 yrs later to make New England the premier franchise in the sport. The core guys were probably:

Bruschi
Willie McGinest
Ted Johnson
Mike Vrabel
Ty Law

(Vince Wilfork & Richard Seymour came along later.)

Some of those guys should go in, right?