One of the NFL’s best players, Linebacker Tedy Bruschi, has announced that he will retire Monday. They haven’t announced it officially, actually, but they have announced an announcement of an important player announcement. I think that’s how they described it in the press release. Nevertheless, NBC seems to know that Bruschi is leaving. Part of the reason he stayed until this late date is so that he could teach the new younger players how to play the Patriots’ way and make sure that there were decent players coming after him. This has worked well, actually, and it will be helpful for the team to have some stability at LB thanks to his hard work.

This evening, we will see another game with Tom Brady battling against the Washington Redskins. It’s going to be an interesting evening, and we’ll hopefully get to see Brady improving himself in some kind of big way. When he takes the field, we’ll get an idea of how able he is, whether he can mentally get past the knee injury. He seemed a little timid last time he was out, but he still played well enough. Ben Watson: will he play at any point again? It’s certainly not clear that he will. And we need some more support at the linebacker position. This is a very good team and we’ve seen over the years that new players are able to step up in a big way whenever they have to. We saw that with Cassel last year. We saw that with Brady when he first entered the game for Drew Bledsoe. It’s going to be an exciting, starting with a fun game tonight.

Nick Kaczur has signed a 4 year deal with the Patriots to play longer with this great team. While he’s a talented right tackle at times, he has had a lot of trouble on certain occasions. Fans don’t like him too much sometimes, but apparently the Coach has enough confidence in him that they’re sending him back to practice for this season and for a few more after it. For Kaczur himself, this is a good thing because he gets to continue playing for a strong organization with real postseason chances. He has worked hard throughout his career to get to the level of play that he’s currently at. It’s going to be fun to see him back on the field and hopefully he’ll be even better than he was before!

The Patriots have won so many games on trick plays that it kind of makes sense that they would lose a preseason game on a kind of trick play. Last night, they played against the Cincinnati Bengals and it wasn’t expected to be an exciting game. But the Bengals won 7-6, a surprisingly low-scoring game. Whether you are a fan of one of these teams or another (and why would you be reading this blog if you weren’t a Pats fan?), you can appreciate the play that won it for them. Their kicker was slightly injured, so the Bengals coach decided to let him rest instead of getting more injured. So Chad Ochocinco decided to take the point-after-touchdown kick. He did a nice job with it too, as it sailed right through the uprights. Many people watching it didn’t notice, because there is usually no real attention given to the extra point. The Patriots put up a good fight, though their A-List wasn’t on the field all that much.

Le Kevin Smith has been traded from the New England Patriots to the Denver Broncos. He was one of the better players on the defensive line, but the Patriots have a lot of depth at that position, so we don’t need to expect too much from them. Smith is looking forward to the opportunity to help out this other team that appears to be struggling, though it’s hard to tell if it’s really struggling when you have seen only one game so far. On that basis, the Patriots are struggling a bit too, so we’ll see. In any event, the Patriots will have a 5th round draft pick for 2010 as a result of the trade and it will be very interesting to watch what happens for both of these teams.

In the last post, I mistakenly said that the Patriots would be playing the Eagles in a couple of weeks. It turns out that the game was last night. It was a great game too, with the return of Tom Brady. He played pretty good, especially for someone who hasn’t played in a real game since last September. He had to wear a protective brace on his knee just to keep him moving. The game ended up with the Patriots winning 27-25, with Brady throwing two touchdowns and an interception on 100 yards. It was not a great game for him, but it shows that he’s in good shape for the season. Meanwhile, the game was fully overshadowed by the news that the Eagles had taken Michael Vick, who has just come out of prison for dog fighting. He will be the backup QB there. Hopefully, Brady can keep improving to take on all these improvements in teams across the league.

The Philadelphia Eagles are going to be the first team to take on the Patriots this year in early preseason. It’s going to be an interesting game, because the Pats will probably keep Brady out for most of the game. It’s partly intended for him to cut his teeth on the game again. They don’t want to take the chance of having the Eagles knock him down hard or anything. Meanwhile, on defense, the addition of Burgess will give them such a big boost over what they had thought they’d have before that we might be able to win impressively. The next few weeks will show a lot, most importantly the September 13th first preseason game against the Eagles.

When I first read the headline, I thought that it read “Burress”, and I thought, “What’re they Crazy?” Plaxico might be in prison for a few years on his weapons charge. But no.  They got Derrick Burgess, outside linebacker from the Oakland Raiders. He will give the team a good pass rush and a strong line presence that they looked to be missing without Mike Vrabel, who left as a free agent. Burgess allows the defense a little more help up front where they need to be. It’s going to be a nice year, with Brady back and all these other strong players on offense and defense. Burgess is a stronger player than many of the other options that they had at that position, one of whom hasnt’ even practiced yet. Hopefully he will be as good as before and stay healthy during the entire season.

Andrew Walter played with the Oakland Raiders for the last few years, but hasn’t been seen as a particularly impressive player up until now. But then, the Patriots have chosen him as their backup QB, so it’s possible that he has a lot of potential in the future. Almost any QB looks good with the Patriots and their offensive juggernaut, so perhaps they know something that we don’t. This is one of the most interesting things that has happened with this team in the offseason, because we know that sometimes the team needs a new QB. Last year is a perfect example of that, when Matt Cassel had to come in and take on all the other teams. Hopefully we don’t have another year like last year, because that was perhaps the most scary moment for us in awhile, a little cardiac jump every week. Walter might well be a good player and surrounded by the other players he will probably be especially good.