Notebook: Belichck praises contributions of Edelman, Ealy

In a conference call with the media Saturday afternoon, Bill Belichick called wide receiver Julian Edelman “a great competitor,” but added that the Patriots will have to find a way to make it work without him going forward.


“He works hard and is tough. (He) does all the things you ask him to do. I feel badly for him, of course,” Belichick said, roughly an hour after the team issued a statement saying Edelman would be out for the rest of the season because of his knee injury.

“We feel badly for Julian, and hope that he will have a speedy and complete recovery. The team will have to move on and compete this season without him. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is. We’ll have to figure that out.”

Belichick also acknowledged the "personal side" to what had happened to Edelman.

"There's a personal side," Belichick said. "You never move on. Julian will be here on a regular basis doing his rehabilitation and so forth. You never really move on from that standpoint. ... But this team has to move forward with the resources that we have. Unfortunately we've lost one, and an important one. But as a team we still have to move forward. That's what we'll do. That process has already started."

On Saturday, the team also released defensive end Kony Ealy. The former Carolina pass rusher had been uneven over the course of the summer, and appeared to struggle with his responsibilities at times. On Saturday, Belichick indicated that Ealy looked like he was headed in the right direction. But less than 24 hours later, he was cut.

“I do think he was making progress and getting better and really working hard,” Belichick said of Ealy, who is now subject to the waivers process. “I just think it was one of those things that didn’t work out or wasn’t going to work out. It was nobody’s fault. He worked hard, we worked hard. A lot of effort put in. But in the end, we didn’t feel like this was going to work out.”

One thing Belichick noted was that the release of Ealy at this point on the calendar — with a little less than a week to go before the NFL’s mandated cutdown day — would put him in a better spot when it comes to finding a new team.

“It gives him an opportunity about a week ahead of next week to hopefully create a better opportunity for himself, and think he deserved that,” Belichick said. “He did everything we asked him to do. It just didn’t work out for either one of us.”