The New England Patriots were quite busy on Saturday, cutting down their roster from 77 to 53 players. While most of the moves were expected — such is the case in a year without preseason football — some were not, at least to a degree. With that in mind, let’s go through the releases based on five categories and rank the releases from the least to the most surprising.
The “We all saw that one coming” category
The players listed here all were in an unfortunate situation. They either were buried on the depth chart (Lewerke, Thurman), joined the team relatively late in the process (Quessenberry, Gauthier, Baccellia, Braden, Butler, Williams), were unable to regularly see the practice fields (Bower), or were in the unfortunate situation that they had to prove their value as rookies without the benefit of actual exhibition games (Murray, Zuber, Burt, Berry).