NE in the big D years had Vrabel, Bruschi, Seymore, Ty Law, and Harrison. Indy has Manning, Harrison, Wayne, Clark and Adai. Back in the day TB had Warren Sapp, Simeon Rice, Derrick Brooks John Lynch and Ronde Barber.
Bruschi, and not really Vrabel, were never big "play makers" though. And they didn't have Ty Law for their best defensive years.
By the same token, the great Dungy defenses didn't have Simeon Rice, and no CB could ever be called a "playmaker" for a Tampa-2 defense. It was largely Sapp and Brooks, and to a lesser extent Lynch.
The great 1999 Bucs defense you're thinking of had Chidi Ahanotu, Marcus Jones, and Brad Culpepper starting on that defensive line with Warren Sapp :shrug:
The 2000 Ravens had Boulware and Ray Lewis, sure. It also had Michael McCray and Rob Burnett at DE and Sam Adams and Tony Siragusa at DT.
You appear to be really overrating how much talent it takes to have a good, even World-beating defense.
To reiterate, we had the #12 defense in 2006 with not a whole lot. And we made it to the NFC Championship game.