From a BB press conference today:
Q: Would you feel comfortable with Matt Cassell as a backup?
A: I don’t know. I don’t know. I think Brady has established himself.
Ya think, Bill? 
:-)
Who are these people and what did they do with the real Bill Belichick? In the fourth round the Pats picked yet another TE and a kicker (ok — you can’t blame them for drafting a kicker). How many people would have thought that the Pats wouldn’t pick a single person on the defensive side of the ball in their first five picks?
UPDATE:
Ah — it appears Mills is more of an H-back/FB than a real TE. That makes more sense. Still, to go five picks and not select a single defender. Interesting…
The Pats took TE Dave Thomas (have a square cheeseburger! ) with their 3rd-round pick. Oh well.
An interesting insight on the Pats from second round draft choice Chad Jackson:
In an interview, Jackson said that on one of his visits the Pats gave him some offensive game film and told him to have it broken down by the time of his next visit. Jackson said no other team he visited did anything like that. Add another player to the list of those who have in interviews pointed to something the Patriots do that no other team does. The weird thing to me is that for a lot of those examples I hear (like this one with Jackson and like when Rodney Harrison talked about the situational practices the Pats do that he’d never seen before) are things I would have assumed that all teams do as a matter of course. And yet the Pats seem to be the only ones doing them. Hail Bill!
Well, I didn’t quite expect that. With the Pats’ first two picks (the latter moving up in a trade), they took RB Laurence Mahoney and WR Chad Jackson. I don’t follow college ball, so I can’t comment on the quality of the players and whether they are likely to be good value for where they were picked, but at least at first I have to say I was surprised. Given how old the LB corps is, I thought for sure they’d take a LB or someone they felt they could convert to LB. And maybe a CB, too.
But no! A RB and a WR. However, when you think about it, you can’t complain too much about taking people at those positions. Dillon is 32. Falk is 30. Pass is pushing 30. They have to start getting younger there. As for the flankers, there’s Branch, Caldwell, Troy Brown, and Bethel Johnson. Troy has been great for this team, but he’s on his last legs. Bethel is a failed experiment. It appears the only thing he knows how to do is run a flag, post, or go. If it doesn’t involve running mostly straight down the field, he can’t do it. And that’s even before we get into his numerous healthy scratches for having bad practices or for disciplinary reasons. Especially if the Pats can pick up one more decent WR, I can’t see Bethel on the team this year.
Is this it for Pass, too? Will the Patriots really keep four RBs? Then again, maybe they’ll cut Klecko (especially if they don’t think he can do it at LB) and use Pass as a fullback instead of playing games with Klecko, Seymour (don’t EVER do that again) and various OLmen.
ESPN’s Michael Smith was on WEEI today saying that the Pats are in the thick of the Jevon Walker hunt. I’d imagine they’d have to trade away a pretty high draft choice to pull that off. And Walker’s coming off ACL surgery. Well, we’ll find out soon enough with the draft this weekend.
Football Outsiders has the news.
The guys from Football Outsiders have a very interesting article out on the importance of footwork to offensive linemen. Check it out!
Here’s the latest AFC East analysis from Football Outsiders (a great site that should be on every football fan’s list of sites to regularly visit).
When the details of the extension came out, I was surprised there wasn’t more front-loading, given the cap space the Pats have this year. I figured they’d want to use some of that up now when the had the room, preserving future flexibility. But I had forgotten about the “can’t have two raises in a year” rule.
Not surprisingly, the Patriots didn’t forget about that rule and ESPN has reported that the $18.66mil option bonus is broken into two pieces — a $6.66mil piece that can be paid anytime between 5 August 2006 and next March and a $12mil piece due next March. I think it’s fair to say that the $6.66mil will be paid on 5 August :-), thereby moving a decent chunk of the contract onto this year’s cap.