Actually, I don't believe I've made that statement. It's entirely possible that there are other starting guards who shouldn't be starting in the NFL, after all.
You might as well observe that almost half of all starting guards are below average. If they start, they're starters. But if you're admitting that there might be worse starters in the league than Connolly, that's progress.
Belichick has rolled the dice with his guards before. This is the same guard he benched last year, you may recall. Also, he's working his rookie tackle at RG now, instead of having him focusing exclusively on getting better at the two tackle positions. You can take that to mean that he's fine with Connolly if you want to.
The OL in general played poorly vs Cleveland. That he pulled Connolly for the game but later went back to him implies to me disciplinary action for poor preparation. One of the mysterious things about Connolly and Koppen last year was their sometimes poor communication in overload situations.
It's a real stretch to assume that Belichick's and Scarnecchia's trying of Solder at RG somehow indicates they agree with your assessment of Connolly. More likely they're concerned about depth at guard overall and about Ohrnberger specifically.
You argued this all last year and were wrong, as we saw by the end of the season, and you're doing it now as well when nothing's changed. You're now trying to argue that being the team's best backup last season, and only getting pulled once in favor of the lesser backups, is something not to be discounted when discussing his abilities as a starter. He's better than Ohnberger and Wendel. That doesn't make him starting caliber. The starter was Neal, with Connolly as the backup.
Huh? A healthy Neal being better than Connolly is not in dispute. But what does that have to do with your assessment of Connolly not being and NFL quality starter? For all you know, he could be the 3rd best guard in the league last year, and still backup Mankins and Neal. If Belichick shared your extremist view, you'd think he'd do something in the offseason besides drafting a project and experimenting with Solder.
It's ironic that you attack Ohrnberger's play (backup coming in for the current starter) during the Lions game in comparison, because I haven't attacked Connolly for his play against the Lions. So you're now saying that Connolly played better than a complete scrub in an exhibition game as if it means something. IMO, he's not shown himself to be a starting caliber guard, and being better than the Ohrnbergers of the world doesn't serve as such a showing.
Your universalization of such transitive comparisons is both illogical and irrelevant. Playing injured across from one of the better DT's in the game, Connolly was at best mediocre, and Ohrnberger played very poorly. But making NFL-scope conclusions from that observation actually requires knowledge both of football and of the current personnel of other teams. You have demonstrated no case to claim either that Connolly couldn't start on any other NFL team or that Ohrnberger is a "complete scrub". The former claim is extremely unlikely, the latter possible but remains to be determined.
Starting at RG on the line when the team has no depth on the interior isn't any kind of evidence in favor of Connolly being anything more than better than the likes of Ohrnberger. You're welcome to think that's meaningful. BB brought in a lot of players, and he may have fixed some major weaknesses. However, he hasn't got the safety position down, and he hasn't fixed RG, either.
Starting on a good OL no doubt correlates with being a good OLineman. If you persist in making only indirect observations, that should be important evidence for you. My personal practice is to actually review the play on the field. I started doing that last year in this case precisely because your jihad against Connolly seemed so odd based on what I had casually observed. I'm glad that I did, I learned a lot about the team's OLine. When I reviewed Connolly's play, I saw that he was a surprisingly good pulling guard but could be overpowered at times. So your statement that he isn't a starter despite starting continues to make no sense to me. Or to Scarnecchia either, clearly.
You're welcome to disagree. That's what's so great about free speech and message boards such as this one.
You don't seem to be a fool, so I'll speculate that you have had an agenda. I recall it started with your slamming the front office for going with Connolly and G. Warren instead of signing Mankins and Seymour. I actually have no problem with your questioning the team about those particular decisions, but I do have a problem with your demeaning Dan Connolly to make your point. He's no Mankins, but he's proven he can be an NFL starter, and deserves respect for what he's accomplished.