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Two underdog skill position players that have come to define the Patriots offense over the last few seasons have both left the team over the past 48 hours.

Neither wide receiver Wes Welker nor running back Danny Woodhead are the prototype at their respective positions. Their short-area quickness made them nice fits in the offense, but it was their dependability that defined who they are.

They were a known commodity. Their pseudo-replacements, Danny Amendola and Shane Vereen, are an unknown.

The Patriots are trading in their Toyota for a Ferrari. Amendola and Vereen are the turbo-charged replacements for Woodhead and Welker. It's a swap of old reliable for slick but at times impractical.

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Addition by addition and subtraction.

It's always a win-win situation when a team is able to poach a talented player away from a division rival.

Landing tight end Dustin Keller wasn't the missing piece to the puzzle for the Miami Dolphins, but it provides a short-term answer to a big question on their roster.

After losing tight end Anthony Fasano to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Dolphins were staring at the prospect of either Charles Clay or Michael Egnew as their leading tight end for 2013. Instead, they added a talented but limited tight end who should give them the answers they're looking for.

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One of the disadvantages of being consistently competitive every year?

The New England Patriots are always picking at the end of the first round.

There will be plenty of good players still available in the draft this year, and with the recent wave of free-agency departures, the Patriots have some holes to fill when their picks roll around.

Here's a roundup of some thoughts on where the Patriots could turn to fill some of those holes.

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Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

The New York Jets were not a very good team last year. Couple that with season-ending injuries to their two best players, and the results are what we have before us today: trade rumors around the team's best player and a free-agency purge that has left the Jets absent five starters thus far.

Defensive tackle Mike DeVito, nose tackle Sione Po'uha, running back Shonn Greene, free safety LaRon Landry and strong safety Yeremiah Bell all started at least 10 games, and Po'uha's back injuries made him the only one who started fewer than 13.

That's a combined 68 starts the Jets are going to have to replace, but given the situation—a lackluster roster and a frustrating situation with the salary cap—that's quite alright.

This is not to say the Jets are problem free—far from it—the mass exodus is an example of how bad things got for them, both with the cap and with their overall talent. 

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Out with the old, in with the new.

It's been a theme throughout the AFC East and the NFL as a whole in free agency. The Patriots embodied it in a five-hour span on Wednesday, when they watched Wes Welker walk to the Broncos and signed a similar slot receiver, Danny Amendola, to a strikingly similar deal just hours later.

What exactly does Amendola bring to the table?

I asked B/R NFC West lead writer Tyson Langland for his thoughts on Amendola, and his belief is that the Pats have found a Welker replacement in the ex-Ram. 

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Out with the old and expensive, in with the new and equally expensive.

Linebacker was not listed atop the Miami Dolphins' offseason needs, but they addressed it as aggressively as if they had none on the roster. That's probably because, shortly after the respective signings of Dannell Ellerbe and Philip Wheeler were announced, they released Karlos Dansby and Kevin Burnett respectively.

Dansby and Burnett were brought in during the Tony Sparano era to help implement a 3-4 look. Now, with defensive coordinator Kevin Coyle running a predominantly 4-3 front, the Dolphins felt it was time to target linebackers to fit that scheme.

ProFootballFocus.com released a detailed chart of the grades for all four players—the two signees and the two released veterans—which seems to indicate the Dolphins took a step back with both signings.

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Miami Dolphins fans, meet your shiny new deep threat.

The rumors ran rampant for weeks, and now it's official: the Dolphins have inked wide receiver Mike Wallace to bolster their passing game.

We've talked at length about what he could bring to the offense.

His ability to stretch the field was sorely missing from Miami's passing game last year; it looked as though they were stuck in a red-zone offense all the way up the field. Words can't accurately describe the stress that puts on the quarterback and receivers.

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Well, that didn't take long. 

Just minutes after the free agency period opened on Tuesday, the Buffalo Bills announced they had released starting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.

The news came hours after a phone call surfaced on Deadspin between Bills GM Buddy Nix and Buccaneers GM Mark Dominik.

During the call, Nix was heard saying, "We're still struggling here with our quarterback...We're not really struggling--he's going to have to do something, or we'll have to."

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After years of pushing their salary cap problems forward, the New York Jets are paying the piper by the fistful in 2013. 

A pair of last-minute moves (per ESPN's Rich Cimini)—releasing defensive tackle Sione Po'uha and restructuring the contract of wide receiver Santonio Holmes—have helped free up some much-needed cap space for the Jets.

Even with that and all the previous cuts from earlier this offseason—Bart Scott, Calvin Pace, Jason Smith and Eric Smith—they still don't have a lot of money to make moves. That being said, they could still find some good value on the open market.

There's already a hot spot for all the news, rumors, analysis and grades for every move the Jets make, but what about the contracts themselves?

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The New England Patriots are rarely ever big players in the free-agent market, and even with a bit more cap space than usual this year, they're still not in the discussion for any big-name free agents.

That's because a majority of the attention is locked on wide receiver Wes Welker and cornerback Aqib Talib, both of whom are set to hit the open market.

Those deals, and any others, will have a big impact on the team's salary-cap situation.

There's already a good spot for you to grab all the news, rumors, analysis and grades for every move the Patriots make, but what about the contracts themselves? Here, you'll find all the updated contract info as it becomes available, complete with analysis on how it affects the Patriots' salary-cap situation.