By Bruce Allen, Patriots Daily Staff

In some ways, the media coverage of last night’s game mirrored the sloppy product on the field.

We won’t even get into Randy Cross turning Patriot Place into a phallic symbol.

  • Much of the pregame radio talk focused around some of the players who needed to make an impression. Benjamin Watson and Laurence Maroney were the obvious choices, with the talk coming down to whether the Patriots would be able to just cut ties with former first round picks if it came down to it. Later talk included Brett Favre’s return to the NFL with the Vikings.
  • In the TV telecast, Criqui again had a few issues, flipping the teams around “Wilfork’s Bengals teammates absolutely love him” and making some other similar type statements. It’s the preseason for announcers too, I guess.
  • Steve Burton once again proved he is the king of unintentional comedy. Or is it just awkwardness? When talking with the two $1 million winners of the new Patriots Instant Scratch Ticket from the Massachusetts State Lottery, Burton felt the need to rub himself on each of them. For luck, you know.
  • I didn’t check out more than a minute or two, but it appeared that the NFL Network reply had the Cincinnati announcers. Did anyone watch this? Anything of note from that telecast?

This isn’t exactly from the game coverage, but in the show prior to the Pregame show on 98.5 FM, host Michael Felger offered an interesting theory on why the Patriots included Mike Vrabel in the Matt Cassel trade. His theory is that perhaps the Patriots were going to cut Vrabel this offseason, but feared that he would be immediately scooped up by Eric Mangini and the Browns, or by division rivals New York or Miami or perhaps even by the Steelers, Vrabel’s first team. They asked KC to take him off their hands, and as a result, the price for Cassel went down a bit, since the Chiefs were doing the Patriots a favor.

I’m not saying the theory has any basis in fact, but it’s something different that what we’ve heard before. At least from what I’ve heard before.

By the way, Stripe Hype has posted their Q&A with Pats Daily.

What did you see/hear last night that caught your attention?