Golfing with Tom Curran

A few weeks ago I invited Tom Curran to play golf. You may know Tom from his days as the Patriots beat writer from The ProJo, or his numerous appearances on FSN New England and WEEI. These days Tom writes for NBCsports.com. Anyway, he happily took me up on my offer to play some golf and yesterday we went out and hit the links.

Tom is a great guy, down to earth, family man, funny and informative. I got to pick his brain quite a bit about the Pats and other teams around the NFL and I'll share with you some of Tom's thoughts. By the way, we got our assess handed to us in the golf match by a couple of old geezers even though I had the best round of my life to date.

I had to start with the Asante Samuel situation. (Those of you that see me on a regular basis can ask me about Asante, because I don't want to "publish" any of it on my BLOG). Tom essentially agrees with what most of us think, that Asante had one good year (bolstered by three picks from Rex Grossman) and Asante's crazy to think that he should get big time cash. Curran thinks that he'll probably sign his franchise tag at some point during training camp. (a sentiment also echoed by Reiss' pieces yesterday). Tom thinks the Pats probably have enough depth at CB to get by without Asante. He likes Scott, Gay and James, but he really thinks that Merriweather will be used more as a Corner than a safety and will have an impact on this team as at least the nickel corner.

I asked Tom if he got to go to the mini camps and passing camps. As for the WR's, he was most impressed with Stallworth because he was working his butt off. He also agreed with Mike Felger about Randy Moss looking like he was 'dogging' it during the workouts, but didn't seem too concerned about Randy's production this year. His sentiment overall is that the Pats won't cut any receiver, rather whoever isn't going to make the team will be trade bait.

The player that stood out the most in Tom's eyes was 6th round draft pick RB Justice Hairston. For those that don't know him, he started his college career at Rutger's and was a productive back there. However, Rutger's recruited the #1 back in the state of NJ and Hairston transferred to Central Connecticut rather than split carries at Rutgers. His #'s last year were impressive,
277 carries 1847 yds 6.7avg 20TD's. That being said, don't expect Hairston to get many carries THIS season, he's too raw, especially given the complex nature of this offense. So one area that does concern Tom is the depth ar RB. IF Maroney goes down for only 2-3 games then the offense can get by with 4 and 5 WR sets throwing the ball all over the field and still win. But if Maroney goes down for an extended period of time (perhaps for the playoffs) then this team will be in trouble because the guys they have can lug it 20 -25 times a game. So watch for the Pats to pick up a veteran RB prior to the start of the season.

As for the restof the NFL, Tom and I agree that realistically there are 3 teams head and shoulders above the rest: the Pats, Colts and Bolts, with the Pats as the best team. He feels that way becasue the Colts D is way too porous this year given their offseason losses. He is also convinced that the Bolts will have a hard go of it based on the coaching turnover and learning a new offense and new defense. One team he thinks will improve (and I disagree) is the Jets. This is because he likes the additions of Revis at CB and Thomas Jones at RB. The rest of the team is pretty much the same guys as last season so he anticipates the Jets contending for the playoffs. I think they played over their ability last season and will come back down to earth this year.

That pretty much sums it up for now. I'm still working on the individual assessments of the Pats new face and will postit when it's complete.