What a surprise. Patriots trade down.

Bill Belichick stands by the ready to not make a draft pick Thursday night.

The Patriots lived up (or down) to their reputation Thursday night by trading away their only pick in the first round of the NFL Draft.

The Patriots dealt the No. 23 pick overall to the Los Angeles Chargers for a second-rounder and a third-rounder, Nos. 37 and 71 overall. With the Patriots' former pick, the Chargers took Oklahoma linebacker Kenneth Murray.

As a result of the move, the Patriots will enter today's portion of the draft with 13 overall picks, and they restored their status in the second round in the process. They now have two new selections between No. 23 and where they would have picked otherwise, No. 87 overall.

Like many of their other picks this year, the Patriots now have selections at places in the draft where they have rarely picked before. They have never made a selection at No. 37 since the institution of the joint NFL-AFL Draft in 1967, while they have picked only once before at No. 71, taking running back Kevin Turner from Alabama in 1992.

Bill Belichick was heading up the Patriots' draft from the kitchen of his summer house on Nantucket, in the Siaconset area on the eastern coast of the island. A photo of him appears above, sitting before three computers on his dining-area table (and maybe an iPad to the far left of the photo, I'm not sure), with a bottle of hand sanitizer, a TV remote and presumably a vitamin bottle sharing the table. I'm assuming he was watching the draft, although given the result of the first night, he might as well have been watching the "Xena: Warrior Princess" marathon on the SyFy channel.

We'll be back tomorrow night for more draft coverage. And by the way? One of the things I don't miss about my former career were those days when you'd expect Belichick to make a pick at a reasonable time and he'd trade down to the bottom of the round or trade out of it altogether. At least as a blogger, I can wear gym shorts and feel comfortable.