Mike Dussault

The Patriots 53-man roster is set (for now), and as expected there were quite a few surprising moves. Nuggets and observations below…

Derrick Burgess, Pierre Woods and Eric Alexander were all cut. That’s two more players who played in Super Bowl 42 gone, and our supposed starting LOLB.

What’s clear is that there is a full blown youth movement in New England, almost entirely on the defensive side of the ball.

Rather than stretch one more half-productive year out of Derrick Burgess they went with the young, unproven guys. It’s a little scary, I know.

But it’s kinda of funny that we hear Jermaine Cunningham will be ready to go for the opener just before we heard Burgess was gone. They must’ve seen enough of something in him during the first couple weeks of practice to like what they saw. At least like it more than Derrick Burgess.

Not that I expect Cunningham starting at OLB. But I hope to see more and more of it as the season goes on. Patriots fans shouldn’t be worried about losing Burgess. They should be excited about seeing what Cunningham can do.

Tyrone McKenzie and Dane Fletcher both showed potential in the preseason. I believe we might see Fletcher at OLB at some point, at the very least as a pass rusher. He has great length, and props to nepatriotsdraft.com for having an eye on him since the spring.

The offense is exactly what we’d expected it would be. They are thin on the line, and will have only two backup lineman against the Bengals before Quinn Ojinaka returns from suspension for week 2.

We hit on the kept offensive lineman, we’ll see how many of the cut guys end up on the practice squad.

We missed on Dane Fletcher, Marques Murrell and Matthew Slater. If anyone should be called Terminator it should be Slater… you can’t kill him. I don’t get it. But right on, everyone says he’s the greatest person ever to live.

I honestly believe that Page is going to be an upgrade over McGowan. McGowan was horrible in pass coverage. He was great up close to the line of scrimmage. Page can do both. And will undoubtedly be excited to be coming to New England.  This is just the kind of injection we needed after losing Bodden. New energy. Aggressive energy. I like it.

No idea what to expect out of Tracy White.

Seems like the decided to cut some ties with the past. Throw all the young guys up against the wall and see who sticks.

Prepare yourself people. This is a young defense. It will be inconsistent. The hope is that it fights through the ups and downs of the first eight games then start to gel and get better every week. 

Adjust expectations.  It’s okay. We’re going to be watching these young players develop for a while. Give them time. 

Now it’s time to get excited. Kick off in one week.