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New England Patriots Links 10/20/09 - The Galloway, Thomas, Banta-Cain Mystery Series Continues

By Marima

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Another mystery: Can Maroney keep running like he did on Sunday?
Another mystery: Can Maroney keep running like he did on Sunday?

Monique Walker tries to figure out why Adalius Thomas was inactive on Sunday.

Thomas has not been available for comment since Sunday, but NFL Network analyst Deion Sanders, who played with Thomas while with the Ravens in 2004-05, said on the "GameDay Final’’ show that he spoke to Thomas and, "He’s upset. He’s going to work it out with his coach, but he’ll be back.’’

"I’ve said many times, I think he’s a good football player,’’ Belichick said. "He’s versatile. He’s made some big plays for us and he’s done a lot of different jobs and we have a lot of confidence in him. If that wasn’t the case, then he wouldn’t be here. I’m glad we have him. I think he can help us, I think he will help us, and he has helped us and I feel that way about our other players as well.’’

As for the future of Thomas, Belichick said, "I don’t know. It was one game. We’ll evaluate it this coming week against Tampa like we always do. This week’s different from last week.’’

Clay Travis (NFL Fanhouse) A fan's perspective of Tennessee's titanic crash.

The Patriots scored their second touchdown on a 40-yard flea flicker.  Let me repeat that, they scored on a flea flicker!

If you've ever sought play-calling evidence that one team doesn't respect the talent level of another, calling this play was the perfect example. It's snowing and players have been losing their footing the entire game. Yet the Patriots hand the ball off in the snow, run a man into the line of scrimmage, have him pause with defenders all around him, turn away from the defense, toss a wet football back to their quarterback, have the quarterback field the wet toss, reposition the ball, survey the field still without a defender near him, and throw a laser to a wide-open Randy Moss. Oh, and the Patriots are driving into the wind when they score.

Bill Belichick details the difference between preparations for the West Coast trips in 2008 and Thursday's trip to London.

I think those two trips last year were completely different from this one. Those trips were situations where we went out, we stayed, we took all of our preparation materials out there with us: the video systems, our copies - we rented them out there, obviously, but - we took our whole operation and moved it to San Jose, and we did everything there. We had our meetings, our game plans, our films and we did the preparation out there.

This is a situation where we'll do all of our preparation here and - once we travel to London, when we get on the plane - we will have covered everything that we're going to do for the game. Schematically, we'll have practiced it, and then it's really just a question of making the trip and going through the usual day before the game and day of the game reminders, tying up some loose ends on a play here, a play there, if they do this, then how do we handle it, and that kind of thing. A great percentage of the work will be done when we get on the plane Thursday after practice to head out there and that's a lot different than the two West Coast trips we had last year where we did all of our preparation out there for the second game.

TEAM TALK

LOCAL LINKS

"When we put Brian in … look, we’re not trying to do anything but run our offense. And that’s what we wanted to give Brian a chance to do was to run the plays he’s going to have to run at some point if he plays, whether they’re passes, third-down plays, check-with-me plays, whatever they are. We went into the game with a game plan and I know the score got out of hand, but we were just trying to run our offense when Brian or whoever else was in there, whether it was Kendall [Simmons], Dan [Connolly], BenJarvus [Green-Ellis] - and all those guys got to play. When they were in there we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do. You’ve only got 45 guys for the game. Somebody’s got to play."

NATIONAL NEWS

VIEW FROM TAMPA

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