Holy Cuts Batman!

I wasn’t too sure what I was going to talk about today. The Sox sweep of the Blue Jays (again), the Pats win on Friday night, Brady’s “injury” that everyone is freaked out about…

How about none of the above.

If I’m going to talk about the man I may as well use my favorite picture of him. Yup, Tedy Bruschi.

In the middle of Sunday Night Football, Al Michaels told us that Tedy Bruschi was going to announce his retirement today. Sure enough there’s a 10:45AM press conference today at Gillette. After 13 years, Bruschi’s going to retire.

I think it went something like this; Belichick calls Tedy into his office. They talk and Bill basically tells him that he’s going to get cut. But to allow him to save face and go out with some dignity he gives him the option of retiring. I can’t picture that Bruschi would want to risk his health for any franchise but the Patriots and decided that if he can’t play for the team his wants, he won’t play at all.

Of course the debate will rage on that his number should be retired by the Patriots, but I think that like the Red Sox, you should be a Hall of Famer in order to have your number retired. I like Tedy a lot, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking he’s a Hall of Famer (sure a Patriots Hall of Famer, but not a Canton Hall of Famer).

Now my headline said, cuts with an “s”. Who’s the other surprise?

How about second year man, third round draft pick, Kevin O’Connell.

This is surprising on two fronts. First off, O’Connell is a third round pick. It’s tough to believe the Pats would quit so early on a high round draft pick. The second reason is a bit less surprising, that they’d release a quarterback when Brady went down with an injury. I think that just shows that Brady isn’t hurt the way everyone was speculating and will be fine. The hole this creates is rather large. Behind Brady you now have Andrew Walter, undrafted rookie Brian Hoyer and in a pinch rookie kick returner/wide out/quarterback Julian Edelman. Not much experience.

I don’t think a lot of people thought Bruschi was going to make the team. I didn’t. But the O’Connell cut was pretty surprising. There’s more to come, so nothing should surprise you at this point.