Patriots' perplexing Deion Branch back in the Super Bowl
By Danny O'Neil | The Seattle Times

Seattle was done with Deion Branch.

That became clear midway through his fourth -- but not final -- season as a Seahawk. By Seattle, I mean the city, not the team. It had gotten so bad that he couldn't even celebrate a touchdown without inspiring animosity.

"If y'all want me, y'all know where to find me," he said to a television camera in Dallas after scoring against the Cowboys.

I interpreted that as a player who had seen his playing time slashed making it clear that he was still capable of performing at an elite level, and if the coaches wanted him, well they knew they could see where to find him: in the end zone catching touchdown passes.

I returned to Seattle after that game, got in my car to drive back from the airport and heard Mitch Levy on KJR Sports Radio (which was then just 950 AM not having expanded to 102.9 FM), and he was declaring that if Branch said what Levy heard him say, and if Branch meant what Levy thought he meant, he should be cut.

What Levy -- and plenty of others thought -- was that Branch was essentially telling the rest of the league, here I am, come and get me.

And by the time Branch actually left -- which was four games into the 2010 season -- the biggest surprise wasn't that he was gone, but that Seattle still managed to get a fourth-round pick for him.

And so Branch returned to New England where he was considered -- then and now -- as a consummate professional, the embodiment of how that team brings the most out of players.

In Seattle, he is considered a signature mistake, an overpaid, underproductive player who was vertically challenged to boot.

Was he the biggest bust of the Tim Ruskell era? I don't know. It's hard to say he's a bust considering he did produce, just not at the level he was paid to. But I do know he became one of the least liked players.