Brady goes out on limb for Branch

``The bottom line is that Deion is one of the best in the world at what he does," Brady told SI.com. ``It's so hard for him and for us because this is really a ruthless sport."

The last time Brady used such harsh language was to describe the departure of Milloy, his friend and running mate through both the NFL and the streets of Boston. Brady has been mum since then on internal matters, occasionally acknowledging someone as a good player but never going as far out on a limb as he did for Branch yesterday.

Brady said he talked with former Chiefs cornerback Eric Warfield, who played against Branch last season before being released and ending up as a Patriot this summer. Brady asked Warfield how Branch stacked up among the league's best wideouts. What he heard back, and made public yesterday, seemed to bolster Branch's case that the club's three-year, $19 million offer undervalued him enough to compel him to accept a $14,000-a-day fine for withholding his services despite having a year remaining on a five-year-old rookie contract that was due to pay him $1,045,000. Even that figure is skewed, however, because nearly half of it ($500,000) was a result of Branch hitting certain incentives last season, when he had a career-best 998 receiving yards to lead the team.

Brady said Warfield told him, ``Deion was the best I faced. He was spectacular."

Brady did not express anywhere near that kind of emotion when he was asked about the absence of Branch by the local media the day training camp opened. That surely will cause some in the Boston media to grouse about the quarterback's choice of venues in which to express his feelings, but that is of no importance.

What is important is that Brady, so clearly the leader of the Patriots, came out fully in support of a teammate who claims he is being unfairly treated by management, which has long been praised by its customers for both its hard-and-fast fiscal policies and its hard-nosed on-the-field ones.