Michael Ventre

The goal of every NFL team is to improve upon the previous season. The club that stands pat goes flat. So it only figures that if the New England Patriots work a little harder in the coming offseason and part with a bit more cash, they can be even better than 18-1.

In other words, Patriots fans, climb off that ledge. Put away the sharp objects. Stop crying into your chowder. At this very moment, Bill Belichick is rolling up his hoodie sleeves and is cooking up a plan to win next year’s Super Bowl.

And the stunning results of Super Bowl XLII against the New York Giants notwithstanding, his plans are usually much more diabolical — and successful — than everyone else’s. That’s why, although the Patriots’ present is dreary and gray, their future requires sunglasses — if they make some changes.

In retrospect, perhaps the burden of going undefeated, which the Patriots had seemed immune from leading into the Super Bowl, was their Kryptonite after all. It’s hard to go after something when you’re in a protect mode.  It’s extremely difficult to generate hunger and aggressiveness among football players when the prevailing condition is to survive while under siege.

This is not to suggest that next year they should lose a few games on purpose. Rather, they should be secure in the knowledge that all the nonsense about being perfect and besting the ’72 Dolphins is realistically over now, and they can focus on the big prize at the end while understanding that losses here or there are part of the growth process that all champions go through.

That said, Belichick needs to do a few things besides grunt.

He needs to reassess his offensive line. The entire foundation of the Patriots’ success on offense is Tom Brady’s ability to set up and throw. The Giants’ quick and powerful defensive linemen overpowered the Patriots’ offensive linemen at the line of scrimmage, and that was essentially the ballgame.

It’s silly to rip a unit that managed to protect Brady through an 18-0 run. After all, three of their guys will appear in the Pro Bowl. But clearly New England’s offensive linemen met their match on Sunday. Their inability to do their jobs was the single biggest reason for the Giants’ victory. A coach should evaluate his team based on its performance against the fiercest of competition, not against stiffs. In this case, pass protection should be Priority One.

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Priority Two should be Randy Moss. There had been some hints from Moss leading up to the Super Bowl that he wants to be paid his market value by the Patriots in his next contract, but it wasn’t the kind of remark that registers on the threat meter. It’s likely the Patriots will understand what they have in Moss and suspend their skinflint tendencies just a tad, while Moss will agree to take a bit less than top dollar. That’s the most obvious scenario.

But after losing the Super Bowl, Moss may feel that there are no sure things in professional football, and therefore might wonder why he should take less from the Patriots when he could go elsewhere and still get his money and have a shot at a ring, too.

The Pats certainly have prospered in recent years by sticking to a prudent fiscal policy. But they flimflammed the Raiders and the rest of the NFL to obtain Moss in the first place. By stubbornly adhering to their usual number crunching and failing to recognize that sometimes important exceptions come along that demand a deeper dip into the wallet, they would be taking a step backward in their passing game.

The Patriots’ defense also could use some extensive tweaking. Overall the defense just didn’t have the same mojo as Belichick defenses of the past. Perhaps it’s because some of their guys are on the verge of AARP membership. But they didn’t generate the kind of pressure on Eli Manning that New England units had displayed in the past. That final drive was an astounding display of prowess and grit by the Giants, but it was also a disgraceful collapse by a once-proud defense.

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Belichick and vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli are among the league’s elite in acquiring talent. The Pats lost their own first-round pick as the result of Spygate, but they have San Francisco’s, which they obtained in a trade. That will be the No. 7 overall pick, with which the Patriots will likely bag a gem who will play for the next 10 years. When training camp begins this summer, there will be new hope because of exciting new additions.

A more troubling and perhaps more challenging problem is image. The Patriots probably don’t give a rat’s backside what people think of them, but they probably care about how Congress and the league office looks upon them. There have been more revelations lately about Spygate, including the fact that a member of the Patriots’ video department may have taped the Rams’ final walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI. If so, Belichick is sounding more and more like Jack Abramoff in terms of being a central figure in a growing scandal.

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It didn’t help also that Belichick ran off the field before Sunday’s game was over. He can get away with being smug when he’s winning. But now that he lost, his lack of regard for sportsmanship and protocol seem magnified.

Does any of that matter from a football standpoint? Maybe. If bulletin board material serves as motivation for some players, then the promise of sticking it to Belichick creates the same kind of incentive. If I were him, I’d attempt to be more like Giants coach Tom Coughlin:

Change.

Change his bargaining tactics. Change his personnel. Change his attitude.

It just might help change the outcome of his next season.

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