Observations: Day 2 of Tampa week – New England Patriots Blog – ESPN Boston

I’ve remained intrigued by Bolden and these two bits from Field Yates’ observations below only reinforce that. He’ll need to make some plays in these next two games.

As they do each day, the Patriots got receiving work in for their running backs. After taking stock of the six backs on the roster, we’d rank them like this in terms of receiving ability: Shane Vereen, Leon Washington, Brandon Bolden, Stevan Ridley, LeGarrette Blount and George Winn. The top four are particularly comfortable handling the football in the receiving game, with Bolden getting the slight edge over Ridley due to route-running ability. Speaking of Bolden, he remains a player of interest for us. He doesn’t have any glaring deficiencies to his game, and we saw in small doses last season that he can be an effective runner. Whether or not he’s shown the coaching staff enough since his suspension in the middle of last season to take carries away from Ridley and others is a big question entering the season. He appears to be behind Blount as things currently stand, but with as much talent as Bolden has, he should have a chance to earn some carries back with a strong rest of his preseason.