Today the Patriots traded Deion Branch to the Seattle Seahawks for a 2007 first round pick.  This was pretty much inevitable after the fiasco the Pats turned this negotiation into and we were lucky to end up with a first round pick.  The Patriots totally messed this up.  Between the negotiations (or lack thereof) with Vinatieri, Givens, and Branch, the Patriots have gone 0 for 3 and looked like they made a mistake all three times.  Here’s my synopsis of the Branch situation:

Back before the 2005 season, the Patriots tried to extend WR David Givens contract but would not offer him the amount of money he was looking for.  This offseason, when Givens’ contract was up, the Pats eventually offered him what he had wanted a year earlier.  However, now that he was a free agent he was able to get more money from Tennessee.  I think a lot of people thought that one of the reasons the Pats let Givens go was because they could not afford to keep both Givens and Branch at WR and they had decided to focus on extending Branch’s contract.  Branch had one more year left on his contract and the Pats and Branch couldn’t even come close on numbers for a contract extension.  So the Patriots gave Branch permission to seek a trade, possibly hoping that Branch would not find anyone willing to pay the price he was asking.  Instead the Jets and Seahawks both made great offers to Branch.  The Pats, although unwilling to pay Branch the money of a top WR, wanted to get at least a first round pick for him.  Branch was about to go to arbitration when Seattle did finally offer the Pats a first round pick.

I’m not sure what is going on with the Pats organization right now.  Perhaps their valuations of players’ values are too low or at least lower than the rest of the teams in the league.  Maybe they haven’t adjusted to the new CBA with the much larger salary cap.  But it seems like the Pats are unwilling to offer their players contracts even close to what they can get from other teams.