FOXBORO, Mass. — The New England Patriots aren’t required to trim their roster from 90 to 75 players until Aug. 30, but they already have a head start, cutting seven players in the last week.
Coach Bill Belichick explained in detail why the Patriots are making those moves early and whether they’ll refill those spots prior to next Tuesday.
“We’re definitely going to have to trim it down,” Belichick said Tuesday. “We may release players before that cut-down before the game. Again, there’s a lot of personnel movement going on at this time of year. We could acquire a player or two or whatever if that situation is right. I really don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s not like I have five roster moves waiting back there in the office that are about to happen. That’s definitely not the case. But look, it could be in 10 minutes. I don’t know. Or it could not be.
“The intent of doing what we did with the roster is because of where we are, what we feel like is best for our team at this point in time. Although I think some of the moves we made are also what’s best for the players as well, to be honest with you. Not that that’s the main reason we did it, but part of the residual is doing what’s right for everybody. We’ll just have to see how it goes. We could have 84, 85 by the end of the week, or we could have 80 by the end of the week, 78. We’ll just have to see how it plays out.
“Obviously injuries are a factor at this time of year with every team. There’s some players where you need depth, some positions where you have depth where you can’t play everybody. I think that’s definitely the case in some positions for us. We have more players than we could really play against Carolina, so if we’re not going to play them, and we’re going to have to release them at the 75 cut after the game, then there’s an argument to just doing that now, which gives the player an opportunity and kind of clears it out for us a little bit. There’s some of that.”
The Patriots have released two safeties (Brock Vereen and Cedric Thompson), one tight end (Bear Pascoe), two cornerbacks (E.J. Biggers and V’Angelo Bentley), one running back (Donald Brown) and one defensive tackle (Frank Kearse).
The Patriots have plenty of depth at tight end, with Martellus Bennett, A.J. Derby, Clay Harbor, Steven Scheu and Bryce Williams all expected to play Friday. They also have solid depth at cornerback, defensive tackle and safety.
The Patriots are shallow at running back, but Brown still wasn’t practicing Monday, so it looked doubtful he would play Friday. There was no point in keeping him around if the Patriots couldn’t see him in a game before the regular season.
Thumbnail photo via David Butler II/USA TODAY Sports Images
