The team made 17 roster moves today to get down to a 53-man roster and at least a handful had some shock value to them. Let's get a list up of every player that was cut or otherwise removed and offer a bit of insight into a few of the more surprising cuts.

Cuts:
DL Titus Adams
CB Fernando Bryant
TE Tyson DeVree
S Mark Dillard
C Mike Flynn
RB BenJarvus Green-Ellis
QB Matt Gutierrez
LB Victor Hobson
LB Vince Redd
CB Mike Richardson
T Stephen Sene
S Antwain Spann
DL Santonio Thomas
G John Welbourn

Non-cuts that won't count against the roster:
LB Bo Ruud, DL Kenny Smith (Injured Reserve)
OT Oliver Ross (Reserve/Non-Football Injury list)
RB Kevin Faulk (Suspended by NFL for one game)

It's always interesting when final cuts roll around; we can speculate all we want as to what the Pats will end up doing (and for some of us, it may actually be our job to do just that), but as is the case with much of the goings on within the organization, they always like to throw us a few curveballs that keep us on our toes.

Curveball number one comes in the cutting of d-backs Richardson, Spann and especially Bryant (even though he looked like a little boy while getting carried into the end-zone by that huge tight end in the Giants game). According to just about every depth chart I scoured at the start of the preseason, Bryant was tentatively penciled in as the Patriots' starting left cornerback (with Hobbs taking the right side). Bryant was underwhelming during camp and the preseason, but the fact that he had so much NFL experience relative to the rest of the CB corps seemed to merit a roster spot. Guess not. The Pats must feel confident that Terrence Wheatley can start at corner right away with Lewis Sanders, Jonathon Wilhite and perhaps Brandon Meriweather seeing time at corner in sub and nickel packages, as well. (As always, speculation is rampant that a Ty Law deal could be in the works, so perhaps the cornerback corps isn't set just yet.)

Next surprising would have to be Gutierrez. Relatively speaking, the axing of a backup quarterback should never be terribly earth-shattering, but I'm very shocked and admittedly disappointed that Gutierrez got canned before Cassel. Neither played substantially better or worse than the other during the preseason, but Gutierrez is younger, more versatile and considerably more composed. We've had to suffer through far too many Matt Cassel moments over the past few years (even though he's only appeared in 14 games dating back to 2005) and it looked like his time was up. The big thing in his favor is that he knows the system best of all the potential backups, but it's not saying much when that's the guy's biggest plus. A lot of Pats fans will look at this one and think they got it wrong, but as always I'm sure there's some sound reasoning behind it (can't wait to hear what it is...).

Rounding out the list are Hobson, who was brought in to compete for a starting gig at ILB, and Redd (to a lesser degree). Hobson must be dyslexic or a functionally illiterate adult or something because there's no way it should have taken him this long to learn the defense. I mean the guy's been in the AFC East his entire career! The Pats seem intent to embrace the youth movement in the linebacking corps as Jerod Mayo will get a chance to start right off the bat. Eric Alexander should see a good amount of time in the middle, as well.

Surprises in terms of guys who were retained would have to go to wide receivers C.J. Jones and Ray Ventrone, tight end Stephen Spach (interestingly, the Pats'll be going with 3 TEs - Spach, Watson and Thomas), and the aforementioned Cassel.