Less than a full day after the Patriots surprisingly opted to carry eight receivers on their initial 53-man roster, the team released veteran Kendrick Bourne .

That news came with a wrinkle: Adam Schefter noted that the move came after Bourne had requested to be released.

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A day earlier, the Boston Herald's Doug Kyed reported that safety Marcus Epps requested his release from the team on cutdown day.

Typically, jobs in the NFL are hard to come by, so it was notable that both reports surfaced in a year when New England certainly didn't have the strongest roster from top to bottom.

And on Wednesday, when head coach Mike Vrabel met with the media, he was asked how he and the front office handle requests to be r

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