Which current Patriots will still be here when the team is legitimately competitive again?

Christian Gonzalez was a lockdown corner for the Patriots from the get-go last year as a rookie, but he didn’t make it through four games.The Patriots achieved so much during their two-decade, never-to-be-duplicated dynasty that it has required a couple of years to fully comprehend certain aspects of it.

Example: From 2011-18, they made eight straight AFC Championship games.

We were always aware of the impressiveness of this, of course, and appreciative enough. Yet because the laser-focused mission in those days was to win Super Bowls, and there were some profound disappointments sprinkled in among those six confetti-rain victories, those eight straight trips to the NFL’s final four was…