Belichick Churning the Roster in the Absence of Pioli?

A co-worker (Eagles fan) told me he read an article on ESPN (I know...I know) to the effect that Pioli kept BB in check as far as slashing and burning the roster. Of course, they had to put the negative spin of him returning to the old Cleveland days of pissing everyone off.

I can not for the life of me find that article.

There does seem to be quite a bit of movement this year.

Was the TBC release a cap manitainence thing? I recall them doing something similar in previous years.

Personally I think the Belioli brain trust was getting a little stale and I hope the recent draft class is an indication of more good things to come.

Pioli had been with Belichick since the Browns days. They were characterized as on "equal footing" in personnel decisions (his power/authority came from Belichick, so not exactly the case), so if the claim was Pioli kept Belichick in check the story appears to be each valued the others respective inputs (not quite the same thing as controlling decisions). You can read something of their relationship here.

If you look to the free agent trackers from year to year, I suspect you will see that the Pats were no more active this year than the organization has been in previous years. Typically, there are more re-signings rather than new players added, but old friends raided the list once they jumped teams so new names were added.

As for TBC, there are a few threads on that, so I will refer you there.