Lets see. Gostkowski is the new kicker, which we all probably saw coming. He made a 54-yard field goal in the Giants game which should ease a lot of concerns. More interestingly, Vinatieri remains injured over at the Colts. Hmmm …

The Patriots let Cobbs go to the Steelers for a draft pick. No doubt his fumbles had something to do with it. But it’s good to see the kid get a break in the NFL – I suspect the Patriots showcasing him as they did helped him land on his feet. Assuming Dillon can get it cranked up and Maroney isn’t too badly hurt (a mysterious knee injury has cropped up), they really didn’t need a fifth running back.

So far it looks like they’re keeping Heath Evans, which I’m happy about. They need a Mike Alstot/Moose Johnson kind of fullback for short-yardage and goal-line drives. Besides which, Evans has shown a good capability to break open some big runs of he gets past the linebackers.

A fight broke out on the field during the Giants game. Which is very non-Patriots-ish, but with so many 2nd and 3rd stringers in there I guess anything’s possible.

Troy Brown took a couple of snaps at QB, and they let Corey Bramlet go. So the quarterback depth is Bradey, Cassel, Brown I guess. What can’t Troy Brown do?

Sullivan was the leading tackler for the game, so maybe he’s turned the corner. It would be great to see the Belichick system turn a player around.

There’s still a few more roster slots to cut and it’s unfortunate that Poteat and Mincey are already gone. The former contributed a lot to the team, and the latter showed potential. But just being on the Patriots roster makes these guys attractive to other teams, so hopefully they’ll get picked up sometime during the season.

The big question remains what will happen with Branch. There were rumors of a trade with the Jets and Seahawks, but 4pm came and went and he’s still under contract with the Patriots. There was a rumor of a complaint to the NFL commission (or some such thing), but I tend to think the owners will make things bend the Patriots way – they’re drawing a line in the sand with players asking for a pile of money just because someone else got it on another team and I have to think the owners are all for that.

Not that the players don’t deserve to be paid well. They have a short enough career as it is. And Branch is drastically underpaid given his performance. But how many millions of dollars do you really need? Especially when a lot of the starting players on the Patriots stay on at salaries below what they could get elsewhere. And why do they stay? Because they’re successful in the Patriots system, the owner is a good man (a rarity), they have a genius for a head coach, and the team wins SuperBowls.

I can see it from Branch’s point of view, though. He’s won the SuperBowl, been the SuperBowl MVP, and is being underpaid. The flip side, though, is this. The Patriots made him a good offer – not as good as Owens or Moss would get – but enough to make him a multi-millionaire. So it’s not like he was going to starve if he took the deal.

From the outside looking in it feels like his ego is getting in the way, or he’s getting bad advice from someone (his agent? what a concept!). Most of the NFL pundits agree he’s successful on the Patriots because of the system and because of Brady. The fact that no one grabbed him like they did Givens indicates that the rest of the league feels the same way.

He should just swallow his pride, come to some agreement, and get back to playing. Because if he holds out until November just so he can enter free agency I don’t think many teams will want someone who behaves that way.

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