It seems that if we were so worried about the contact situation of Green and Seymour, we would have drafted a DE. Certainly Jenkins and Michael Johnson were within easy reach. I suspect that we will just see how many DE's we need to draft next year.
Belichick does like to give his starting NT a rest if he can, and have someone available who can be a true backup at NT. We used to have Traylor. We then drafted Kareem Brown. There have been various efforts. NT's are difficult to come by.
The solution has been to have almost everyone be able to backup at NT.
Belichick saw the opportunity to get a quality backup in Brace and took it. Brace is also Wilfork insurance against injury or contract issues.
Having gotten this far in their reasoning, it wasn't a long reach to view the Brace position as potentially very valuable to the team, and to consider late round draftees as Practice Squad possibilities. And as a long shot, one of them might beat on Smith for a roster spot, but that would mean that the player could potentially backup at both DE and NT.
