T. Brown

As of this morning, the New England Patriots have seven wide receivers on their roster.

Yesterday, the Pats activated Troy Brown off the physically unable to perform list, where he had been recovering from a knee injury suffered in January’s AFC Championship Game.

While New England welcomes back one player, it took a hit in its linebacking corps, placing Rosevelt Colvin on season-ending injured reserve with a foot injury suffered against Philadelphia on Sunday night.

To shore up the linebacker group, New England re-signed Chad Brown, who had been with the team in training camp and a month earlier in the regular season. Rookie defensive lineman Kareem Brown was released to make room for Troy Brown on the 53-man roster.

Colvin was hurt late in the third quarter of the Eagles game, and at the time it was announced as a foot injury.

New England coach Bill Belichick was asked to clarify where the injury was on Monday — it appeared members of the Patriots’ training staff were tending to Colvin’s arm on the sideline — and seemed surprised when the foot was mentioned.

“It was announced as a foot?,” Belichick replied. “Then we’ll leave it at that announcement.”

Regardless, Colvin is gone for the season. Colvin had been starting at outside linebacker with Mike Vrabel, with Adalius Thomas, Tedy Bruschi and Junior Seau rotating at inside linebacker. But now we may see Thomas shifted to the outside.

Against Buffalo two weeks ago, New England played a high number of snaps in a 4-3 formation, with Thomas playing outside ’backer. The result was a career-high 2½ sacks and four quarterback hits.

Chad Brown has proven more effective on the outside. In his first tour with the Pats, in 2005, he was moved inside and did not respond well to the conversion.

However, that means Bruschi, 34, and Seau, 38, will probably see most of the snaps at middle linebacker unless the Patriots choose to go away from their normal 3-4 alignment and use four down linemen on a more regular basis.

Fan favorite Troy Brown is in his 15th season with New England, and last year became the team’s all-time receptions leader. In recent years, he has played slot receiver, special teams and cornerback for the Pats.

Though he’s not filling a need, as the Patriots have more than enough wideouts in what has been a largely healthy group, Belichick has a great deal of respect for Brown, and his activation may be more of a sentimental move.

Had the team not activated him by yesterday’s 4 p.m. deadline, the other options were to place Brown on season-ending IR or release him, both of which would have likely led to him retiring.

Kareem Brown, the Patriots’ fourth-round draft pick out of Miami, has not been active for any of the team’s first 11 games. If he is not picked up on waivers, he can be signed to New England’s practice squad.

smanza@projo.com