10. Brandon Meriweather's improvement

Bill Belichick has made the point that players often make their most significant improvement between their rookie and second seasons, so this is a big year for 2007 first-round pick Brandon Meriweather. The former University of Miami safety (19 games, 1 start in 2007) seemed to generate momentum late in the season when he was a more prominent part of sub packages -- a key part of today's NFL with more teams running three-wide packages. His potential emergence would aid the team's goal of getting faster on defense.