Less than a full day after the Patriots surprisingly opted to carry eight receivers on their initial 53-man roster, the team released veteran Kendrick Bourne.
That news came with a wrinkle: Adam Schefter noted that the move came after Bourne had requested to be released.
A day earlier, the Boston Herald's Doug Kyed reported that safety Marcus Epps requested his release from the team on cutdown day.
Typically, jobs in the NFL are hard to come by, so it was notable that both reports surfaced in a year when New England certainly didn't have the strongest roster from top to bottom.
And on Wednesday, when head coach Mike Vrabel met with the media, he was asked how he and the front office handle requests to be released.
"I don't know," a slightly cagey Vrabel said. "Who are you referring to, I guess, specifically?"
"I mean, we ... ," Vrabel began, before shaking his head. "Yeah I mean, I think that we just try to put the roster together. I guess when it doesn't work out, you know, you break up with somebody, your girlfriend doesn't want to be with you. And then you say, 'Well, I don't want to be with you, either.' Like, I'm not gonna get into all that."
Vrabel then interrupted a follow-up question on the matter.
"I just said I'm not going to get into it. You know what I mean? Like, we're not gonna go back and forth here," he said. "We're trying to build a roster. You've gotta move on from some guys. You make connections with guys. You coach 'em. They earn more opportunities, they get more opportunities, they take advantage of 'em, and that's kind of how these things go."
The answer was interesting, in that the head coach seemed to be suggesting that the players were essentially saying, "You can't fire me; I quit." Yet beyond that, it was perhaps illuminating on the behind-the-scenes process of how veteran players -- and, of course, their agents -- try to retain some value on the open market before getting cut.
Epps is 29 years old, with six years of NFL experience under his belt. Bourne just turned 30 and has been an NFL player since 2017. Neither one intends to retire from football, yet neither one had a role on this year's Patriots team. And with reporters and agents often helping each other out whenever possible, a reporter like Tom Pelissero stating the Epps news by adding that the safety "just wasn't a fit and he wanted a fresh start" while projecting that he "should land elsewhere soon"? It may best be described as a professional courtesy.
Vrabel, though? After a couple of long days making roster decisions and informing players they were being let go, he didn't seem to have too much interest in doing the same.