Reading between the lines with Rosevelt Colvin

It was interesting on Wednesday to hear Bill Belichick and Rosevelt Colvin talk about the transaction that brought the veteran linebacker back for a sixth season with the Patriots. Colvin has spent the fall shuttling between his family's home in Houston, where he thought he'd be playing this season, and the two UPS stores he owns in his native Indianapolis, and he said he was at peace with that life.

Most players cut from NFL rosters will take any chance they can get to return to the field. Sure, money is an issue, and an opportunity to win is another issue. But few talk about it the way Colvin talked about it on Wednesday:

"This opportunity really is a chance just to get back in for a split-second, to do something maybe unique, one more shot to try to get to the highest level. If it works out, great. If not, I'll definitely be going back home to spend more time with my kids."

Colvin, particularly for a football player, is remarkably well-rounded. He even already has a business networking page at LinkedIn describing his business interests in more detail than his football career. He owns two UPS Store franchises in Indianapolis; he said Wednesday that his release by the Texans gave him a chance to do some hands-on work with employees and customers that he hadn't been able to do since buying the stores in 2004.

He almost didn't want to come back to the NFL. If the Patriots hadn't called, one can surmise, he probably wouldn't have. He got to go to church on Sunday with his family; he got to go to Thanksgiving dinner at his parents' house for the first time in 14 years.

And next fall, he'll be right back at the UPS Stores -- his family will have moved to Indianapolis, and he'll have moved onto his post-football life full-time. There can be no doubt about that. When he says "split-second," it's clear that he intends to play out the season with the Patriots and try to lift his team to an improbable playoff berth. After that, though, it's back to mowing the lawn and spending time with his kids. He doesn't have to make more money; he's got plenty stashed away, and his business interests likely will take care of him for the rest of his life.

It's an unbelievably refreshing look at life. Colvin isn't a football player -- he's a well-rounded man who happens to be really, really good at football, and his loyalty to Bill Belichick and the Patriots is the only thing that could drag him away temporarily from the life he's built for himself.

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Belichick, on the other hand, didn't say much about what prompted the move except that his team is shorthanded at the linebacker position. One thing he said, though, stuck out as interesting:

"We kind of got depleted there at outside linebacker. Rosie's been here before; he certainly knows what we're doing, knows the defenses. It's a smaller learning curve with him. We went with some younger players, and I think they did a good job, and it was good to work with them. But right now, we're just a little thin at that specific position."

Look at the use of his past tense when he talks about working with younger players. Pierre Woods, a fourth-year linebacker out of Michigan, inherited a starting spot at outside linebacker when Adalius Thomas went down. Vince Redd, signed in May as an undrafted free agent, was signed to the active roster last week to provide depth.

But a team that needs to win out to get to the playoffs can't just depend on depth. The fact that Belichick brought on board a player who (a) was happy away from football and (b) hadn't played since training camp does say something. Thomas is a veteran player who should pick up the Patriots' scheme quickly; after all, he spent five years in it. He isn't the pass-rusher he was when he led the team in sacks in 2005 and 2006, let alone the pass-rusher he was before the debilitating hip injury he suffered in 2003.

Belichick's team is thin at linebacker. It already was thin before Woods suffered a mouth injury against the Steelers on Sunday. It'll be very interesting to see what happens in the offseason because, based on his use of the past tense on Wednesday, Belichick doesn't appear to see much of a future for Woods and Redd as contributors.

Could someone like USC's Brian Cushing, an outside linebacker with great football instincts, be a target in the first round of April's draft? Who knows?