Patriots waive Dominique Easley

AP Photo

In a surprising move, the Patriots have released defensive tackle Dominique Easley. The 2014 first round pick had three sacks over two seasons with the team, despite never truly being healthy.

The Patriots drafted Easley knowing that his knees were a concern. At the University of Florida, Easley had his first two seasons interrupted by knee and thigh injuries. Easley was most recently put on IR in December after he'd suffered a quad injury.

Due to his health and possibly facing charges for a dog-bite incident, it's a bit clearer as to why the Patriots decided to make the move. Even without Easley, they are very deep at defensive tackle. They'll employ the likes of Terrance Knighton, Alan Branch, Markus Kuhn, Malcom Brown, Frank Kearse, Chris Jones, Joe Vellano and Ishmaa'ily Kitchen, so Easley probably isn't a massive loss seeing as how strongly Branch and Brown played last year on top of the rest of the players housed at the position.

Additionally, Easley had apparently been experimenting with different forms of rehab that the team didn't agree with. This, in all likelihood, also played a factor in the decision to waive him.

Regarding Easley, there is no one incident that led to release. Call it philosophical differences on following injury programs, etc

— Tom E. Curran (@tomecurran) April 13, 2016

Mike Reiss of ESPNBoston.com put out an interesting piece on Easley just a short time ago that offers a more in-depth look at his release and how he essentially fell into Bill Belichick's doghouse.

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