Well, it's over. The drama has ended, though the questions will linger, no matter how much Bill Belichick wishes they'd go away. Deion Branch is a Seahawk, his pockets fat with Seattle's money, and New England at the moment has a five wide receiver corps (Troy Brown, Doug Gabriel, Reche Caldwell, Chad Jackson, Bam Childress) that won't exactly strike fear in the hearts of opponents.

Belichick began his press conference with a summation of his team's performance yesterday in its 19-17 season-opening win over Buffalo, but then moved to the Branch situation, saying, "It was a long process and we tried hard to get it to work out. In the end, it just didn't work, so we made the trade with Seattle. It's been such a long process and it got complicated at the end. The bottom line is, it just didn't work out."

He said he didn't have a word to describe the organization's feelings, whether they be that of relief or disappointment, and didn't expound much upon what he said in his opening statement.

The locker room was like a ghost town, though surprisingly, Branch's locker had not been cleaned out and his nameplate was still up. Inside were some reminders from the team, including about the travel dress code, and a letter taped to the shelf about game day child care. That letter had been there for about two weeks. His practice pants and jersey as well as a sweatshirt, were hanging up, but there was nothing personal like pictures or even deoderant to be seen.

Co-captain Richard Seymour did answer questions and seemed pretty down about the situation.

"It's a sad day, to say the least. You know, um, I don't know. It's a sad day."

Asked if he thought Branch would be back, Seymour said, "I thought he would be back. Obviously I don't hold those cards, but I thought he would be back in a Patriots uniform. You know, it's one of those things. I went through my siutation and you know, the guys were like well, eventually, things will work themselves out and he'll be back in a Patriots uniform, but I don't think any of the teammates envisioned something like this happening because I think when you look at Deion Branch, I think he embodies everything that we want as a football player, everything that we talked about that we want, the type of guys on this football team and he did as good a job as anybody else of embodyng that. It's a tough day for a lot of the guys on this football team, especially a guy like myself, guys that came in with Deion Branch and not just what he means to us on the football field but in the locker room, as a person, um, and then you also talk about what he meant to us on the football field -- a heck of a lot. Super Bowl MVP, Pro Bowl-caliber player and you know, I saw a lot of hearts broken when coach Belichick announced that news. We just have to play with the guys we got; that's all we can do."

Another defensive co-captain, Mike Vrabel, said, "I couldn't have done anything about it. Any other player on this team couldn't have done anything about it."

So now, we assume, Branch is happy. He got his big payday, he got away from New England. Seattle is even tearing up his current contract, the one that paid him $1.045 million for this season, and is starting his 5 year, $39 million deal now.

We'll have more on the reaction in tomorrow's ProJo.

shalise