Tenorio: If Patriots can’t get Seymour back, can they at least get Pioli back?

As recent events indicate, the New England Patriots without Scott Pioli are like Saturday Night Live right after Dana Carvey left: An organization a little less sure of itself now that one of its top producers is gone.In the months since Pioli abandoned the Pats to assume personnel duties for the Kansas City Chiefs, the Bill Belichick-led brain trust has made some trades that left fans puzzled. OK, dealing Matt Cassel and Mike Vrabel for draft picks made sense economically ? but the faithful still asked why get so little in return (a 34th-round pick in the draft this year) for a quarterback who dazzled last season and the guy who could play defense and still run for a touchdown in the Super Bowl. And then came Sunday’s shocker ? sending Richard Seymour, the guy who’s only steamrolled every offensive player to come his way the past eight years, to the Jokeland Raiders for a first-rounder in 2011.Now I’m sure Patrick Chung, the Oregon safety the Pats got with that 34th-rounder in April, is going to turn out to be a fine player. (Ninety-two tackles last season ain’t that bad.) And I’m sure that whenever Seymour shows up to Raiders training camp, the team he joins will still be bad enough to make that pick they sent the Pats a top-10 selection. Absolutely, positively sure. But I still want to grab Coach Bill by that gray hoodie he wears and ask him, “Why are you making these crazy trades???????” (Phew. Glad I got that one out of my system.) And I wonder if the answer has something to do with Pioli no longer at Belichick’s side.When Belichick and Pioli worked together on the Pats, the results tended to be either big-splash moves you knew would succeed (like acquiring Randy Moss before the 2007 season) or low-risk, high-upside transactions (getting Wes Welker before the 2007 campaign, drafting a certain Michigan quarterback at No. 199 in the sixth round in 2000). It was what the science majors out there would call a symbiotic relationship, with each partner benefiting from the other. Belichick won three Super Bowl titles in four years and nearly pulled off perfection in 2007, Pioli earned back-to-back George Young Executive of the Year Awards in 2003-04 and, for good measure, was named Personnel Man of the Decade by ESPN.Now that relationship is history, and while Pioli has started off strong in KC thanks to the Cassel-Vrabel trade, Pats fans must wonder whether Belichick can say the same. These early post-Pioli trades – shipping out Cassel, Vrabel and Seymour for draft picks – represent gambles. If these draft picks work out, the gambles succeed. But in 2011, if Belichick drafts the second coming of Sedrick Shaw or Damon Denson, he and his organization will look ridiculous. I’m not sure Belichick wants to base his personnel philosophy by going out there each morning and asking himself, Dirty Harry-style, “Do I feel lucky?”Most of all, what these first steps in the post-Pioli era reveal is that Belichick misses Pioli’s influence, and that he needs to find someone who he can bounce trade ideas off before pulling the trigger. (Sorry, Floyd Reese, but it seems you’re not that person yet.) Then, maybe, the Pats would still be starting 2009 with Big Sey lining up on defense and Big Bill causing a little less gray hairs in the fan base.Rich Tenorio is an Item sports copy editor.