Peter King: Clairvoyant or well informed?

In his Monday Morning Quarter Back column, Peter King observes

I think New England's much-too-tough win (51 receiving yards by wideouts) and Seattle's offensively punchless 9-6 win at Detroit say one thing to me: This Deion Branch thing has to get resolved one way or the other, and very, very soon. It's clear to me he's not going to report to the Patriots until at least Week 10 (so he gets his year of credited service toward free-agency), so New England has two choices. It can give in and pay him $6.5 million a year or so, erasing the current one-year, $1.05-million on his contract and starting over. Or it can rekindle talks to trade him. In my mind, Seattle, which has offered a second-round pick and a later draft choice, needs to get serious and step up and surrender its first-rounder in 2007 if it wants to get the deal done. I just don't see the Pats forgetting this year's dough and handing Branch six- or seven-percent of their salary cap.

For reference: Javon Walker was traded to Denver for a second rounder and Donte Stallworth went for Simoneau and a 4th rounder. At first blush this deal with Seattle appears to be very good value for Branch.

It obviously doesn't help us at WR this year, but I'm not sure that was even our biggest problem yesterday. I'm only a semi-educated football scout, but our pass-blocking was absolutely awful in the first half. On many possessions our tackles and tight ends couldn't stay in front of Buffalos outside rush and Brady had almost no time to do anything with the ball. Brady was extremely classy about it in the papers this morning, making no mention of his offensive line and throwing himself under the bus over the whole thing. Is Branch an upgrade over Reche Caldwell? Sure. Given a choice between that upgrade or better execution by our O-line yesterday, however, I take the later.

Anyone who watched the whole season in '01 has to feel pretty good about where the Pats sit this morning.

EDIT: The Pats have reportedly one of the best rookie WRs of the last draft coming back from a minor ankle injury in the next couple of weeks. They also recently traded for Doug Gabriel, who was reported as starting in preseason on a Raiders team loaded with Randy Moss, Joey Porter and Ronald Curry. The Pats running game looked fantastic yesterday. I have no problem going forward with a two-TE power offense for several weeks, seeing if Gabriel or Johnson can provide 90% of Branch's productivity this season, and seeing what we get with a mid-1st round pick next spring.

EDIT 2: I'm deliberately staying away from CHB's highly unfortunate tangent into football this morning. It was a classic mailed-in piece where Shaughnessy simply took the easiest, laziest storylines (e.g. laying yesterday's passing attack woes on the absence of Deion) and cranked out a template CHB column, complete with comparisons to the Red Sox and shots at Patriots fans.