The New England Patriots closed one of their two open roster spots on Thursday by promoting safety Mike Brown from the practice squad to the 53-man roster, locking in a veteran who had already been elevated for each of the team’s last two games, via the NFL transaction wire.
Brown, listed at 26 by the club, spent the Jacksonville and Buffalo weeks as a standard elevation before reverting to the practice squad.
Across those two call-ups, he logged 12 snaps on defense and 42 on special teams, finishing with a pair of tackles. The Buffalo game was the clearer signal of how the staff views him.
He played 88 percent of New England’s special-teams snaps in the 29-26 win over the Bills, tying for the team lead in that phase and working as a core coverage player rather than a depth fill-in.
That usage explains the promotion. Practice-squad elevations are capped, and a player who is already taking the bulk of the kicking-game workload cannot keep cycling on and off the active roster if the coaches intend to keep using him.
Signing him outright gives New England a reliable special-teams body for the stretch ahead, including Sunday’s meeting with the Raiders, without burning another elevation.
Brown’s path to Foxborough has been the usual one for an undrafted safety. He entered the league in 2022 out of Miami (Ohio) as a rookie free agent with the Minnesota Vikings and was released out of that preseason.
Stints on the Green Bay, Minnesota and Cleveland practice squads followed before the Tennessee Titans claimed him and kept him on the active roster as a reserve and special-teams contributor over the next several seasons.
The Patriots signed him as a free agent on March 12, released him at the final roster cut on August 30, and brought him back to the practice squad the next day.
He is now into a New England career that already includes those two recent elevations.
On the active safety depth chart he joins Kevin Byard III, Craig Woodson and Jaylen Reed. The move is less about displacing a starter than about protecting the coverage units.
New England has already lost depth elsewhere this fall, including safety Dell Pettus to injured reserve, and Brown’s size — 6-foot-1 and about 218 pounds — fits the physical special-teams profile the staff has leaned on.
In the same set of transactions the Patriots signed outside linebacker Jose Ramirez to the practice squad.
Ramirez had been released by New England only two days earlier. The Brown signing is the one that changes the active roster, turning a two-week elevation into a full-time place on the 53.
