Patriots sign old friend Brandon Spikes to 1-year deal

It looks as if the Patriots and Brandon Spikes have mended fences, as the team signed the hard-hitting linebacker to a one-year deal. Adam Schefter and Field Yates of ESPN were the first to report the news.



The Patriots have been looking for some extra depth at linebacker with Jerod Mayo and Dont'a Hightower sidelined by injuries that both required surgery. New England knows full well what it is getting with Spikes.

Spikes will bring what he has in years past, which is a booming, run-stopping presence. He is a liability in pass coverage, so the guess here is that he will be a situational player. Then again, the Pats made the most of Patrick Chung's second tour of duty with the team. Maybe the same will happen to Spikes.

While the idea that Spikes could return to New England had been talked about in weeks past, it's still a bit ironic to see him back with the Patriots considering how his departure was pretty ugly. As soon as he left for Buffalo in the 2014 off-season, he sent an array of tweets that took shots at the fans, Bill Belichick and others.

Most notable was his "four years a slave" tweet, which now seems even more apparent that he was speaking out of anger than anything else. He also blocked a ton of Patriots fans on Twitter when they tried to give him grief, so he'll probably have to spend some time unblocking them all.

In any case, this is a low-risk, high-reward type of deal that Boston sports teams seem to love giving out.

Here's one of my favorite Brandon Spikes highlights. I was more a fan of his interception of Joe Flacco in the 2011-12 AFC Championship Game, but I couldn't find it on YouTube.



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