A little excerpt from BB's Press Conference from Mike's Blog

[DefenseRules]

http://www.boston.com/sports/footbal.../reiss_pieces/
Link|Comments (0) By Mike Reiss, Globe Staff January 3, 2008 11:18 AM
FOXBOROUGH – Patriots coach Bill Belichick opened his Thursday press conference (10:50 a.m.) at Gillette Stadium by noting that the team will be focusing solely on itself over the next two days.

“Happy New Year, everyone,” Belichick said. “We’re definitely in one. It’s a privilege to be involved in the second season of the NFL. The new one where everyone is undefeated and we’re all starting at the bottom. We’re going to take these couple days and try to emphasize and work on the team that’s most important – that’s our team. We’ll do the best we can to try to improve our situation heading into next week. We know whoever we play is an outstanding team, whoever it will be. It will be tough and we’ll have to be at our best.

“That’s what we want to try to do, get our game up to the highest level we can, work on things we need to work on, regardless of who we play. There are certainly a lot of generic and fundamental things we can improve on, and that’s where we’ll try to put our emphasis. Once we know we who we’re playing, then we’ll certainly turn it all toward that opponent.”

The Patriots will practice inside the Dana-Farber Field House this afternoon. Media access to the locker room is from 11:10-11:55 a.m.

We’ll plan on passing along a few updates along the way.

Amen Bill. Rally the troops.

[BelichickFan]

Bill knows the only team that can beat us is ourselves

Actually, with the only teams we can play being Pittsburgh, Jacksonville and Tennessee, we've played them all since the last few weeks of last year so there's not much preparation to be done whoever we play.

[Halifax_Pats_Fan]

Originally Posted by BelichickFan

Bill knows the only team that can beat us is ourselves

Actually, with the only teams we can play being Pittsburgh, Jacksonville and Tennessee, we've played them all since the last few weeks of last year so there's not much preparation to be done whoever we play.

so who is it going to be..?

I will take a stab at it....

Pitt.

[DefenseRules]

BB is not playing around either. They are going to practice in Pad.

Locker room look
Link|Comments (0) By Mike Reiss, Globe Staff January 3, 2008 12:01 PM
FOXBOROUGH -- A large media contingent flooded into the Patriots locker room today (11:10-11:55 a.m.) for interviews with players. About 15 different television stations were present at the stadium, from ESPN to local New England-based outlets.

One aspect that stood out was that the players were dressing in full pads for today's practice. It is more common that late-season practices are held without pads. Full-pads practices are usually harder on players, especially later in the season due to the physical grind of having played a full season.

An 18-year veteran, linebacker Junior Seau agreed that it wasn't necessarily common to be in full pads at this time of year, but he endorsed the decision.

"It's well accepted," Seau said.

"Whatever it takes to get better," added running back Kevin Faulk.

Seau and Faulk were among a handful of players to draw large media crowds in the locker room. RB Laurence Maroney, S Rodney Harrison, DL Richard Seymour, WR Wes Welker, CB Ellis Hobbs and C Dan Koppen were a few others.

Harrison was asked how long he allowed himself to enjoy the team's accomplishment of a 16-0 regular season.

"I closed the book on that probably Tuesday morning," he said. "I enjoyed it Sunday, Monday and a little bit on Tuesday. After that, you call me, you get hung up on."

LOL, I'll make sure that I never call Rodney.

[BelichickFan]

Originally Posted by Halifax_Pats_Fan

so who is it going to be..?

I will take a stab at it....

Pitt.

Well I think most expect Tennessee to lose to SD, making it the winner of Pitt/Jax - the cool opinion is Jax and while I'm not sure I buy them, I think I have to go with it simply because the Steelers are so injured right now. Their LT is gone, as is Parker, as is Aaron Smith. Tough going.

That would give us Jacksonville for their third straight road game. As Felger said last night, the Patriots would find a way to make the cool pick of Jacksonville make them feel like the underdog - somehow Rodney would come out of that game saying "no-one believed we could do it"