Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick announced in his Thursday afternoon press conference that the team had released veteran guard Corbin Lacina, as well as all five of the team's NFL Europe players which include tight end Rod Trafford, fullback Michael Malan, running back Frank Moreau, cornerback Dyshod Carter and defensive lineman Brad Harris.

While NFLEL players are generally long shots for team rosters, Belichick had good things to say about this year's five candidates.

"I would just say that since I have been here, even going back to the 2001 season, I thought that this Europe group was a very competitive group," Belichick said. "None of them ended up making the roster here, but I thought overall they performed well. They were competitive and I wouldn't be surprised if those guys continued to play football one way or another."

The most notable move was the release of the veteran Lacina. The 6-4, 314-pound guard signed on Aug. 19 and was expected to provide veteran experience, including 121 career games played with 79 starts, for the New England interior offensive line. Apparently things just didn't work out that way.

"Corbin came in here on pretty short notice and I thought gave a pretty good performance in the last two preseason games," Belichick said. "You just can't keep everybody."

On the whole, Belichick pointed out that the last preseason game, Wednesday night's 38-23 win over the Bears, doesn't generally stick around long in either the film machines or minds of NFL coaches.

"There is an old saying that no game is more quickly forgotten than the last preseason game," Belichick said. "There is a lot of truth to that. We looked at it this morning and we are going to show it to the players this afternoon just to correct some of the things that came up in game. But basically today is a day that we want to try to recap and put the preseason behind us as much as we can. Not that there aren't a lot of lessons that we can learn from it, but to try to take those and compile them as quickly and efficiently as possible and make our personnel decisions and start our preparations for Buffalo."

Notes

Belichick said the players would have both Friday and Saturday off this week off. The team will then return to Gillette Stadium on Sunday to start to work on Bills preparation, before another day off on Monday and then the start of a regular season game preparation on Tuesday for the season opener in Buffalo on Sept. 7. … With the day's moves the Patriots now have 64 players on the roster and will have to make 11 moves in order to get down to the 53-man roster limit by Sunday at 4 p.m. … Belichick said that former Harvard player and new Patriot Jamil Soriano will be working as a guard with the team, although he may have some position flexibility based on his experience as a tackle in college.