Cost certainty: Samuel big again

FOXBOROUGH -- Rover hadn't yet brought the Sunday Globe into Patriots fan Bill Torpey's house in Westwood yesterday, and Asante Samuel was already Asante $amuel.

Torpey rolled out of bed at about 8 a.m., grabbed a cup of coffee, and picked up the sports section.

"The front page was Asante Samuel, saying, you know, 'I've been disrespected,' " Torpey said.

Torpey, his son, and a few friends were heading to the Patriots' first-round playoff game against the Jets at Gillette Stadium, and after a week of hype and spin, he figured, the last thing that was needed was another incendiary subplot.

"I thought it was poor timing coming before the first playoff game," he said.

Better timing would be Samuel's play late in the fourth quarter.

Samuel backed up his public contract complaints -- how the offers are "disappointing" and "disrespectful" -- by locking up one side of the field for most of the game and returning a Chad Pennington interception 36 yards with 4:54 to play to punctuate the Patriots' 37-16 victory.

And as Samuel stood at his locker afterward, he was unapologetic for his statements.

"The comments are the comments. I said it three or four weeks ago," he said. "That's the way I feel, and that's the way it is."

Aside from a 77-yard touchdown pass to Jerricho Cotchery in the second quarter, Pennington (23 of 40 for 300 yards) had been pressured, thrown around, and even knocked out of the game for one play in the first quarter. The final indignity came when Samuel hawked a ball intended for Justin McCareins, and ran up the sideline for a score that surprised even him.

"Actually I didn't know until I crossed the line of scrimmage," he said. "When I caught it, I looked. I was expecting somebody to be there; once I kept running, I was like 'Nobody's here?' So I went."

It's become sort of a habit.

The pick was Samuel's third postseason interception, tying him with Fred Marion for third on the Patriots' all-time list, and it was the second time he brought one all the way back. (He jumped a pass from Byron Leftwich in last year's playoffs and ran 73 yards for the second-longest INT return in team playoff history.)

It wasn't the biggest defensive play of the game: that would be Rosevelt Colvin's swatted backward pass that turned into a 31-yard fumble return by Vince Wilfork. But it was a big play for a fourth-year cornerback who had filled the locker room, the stadium, and the newspaper with sour statements about his contract situation.

After all that, maybe the sight of him dancing in the back of the end zone after icing the Jets for good said more than enough.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick preferred to keep the discussion on the field.

"You know Asante's great," Belichick said. "He's got a feel for doing things like that. He made a nice play on the ball, and a good run, and it was a big play."

Just the latest big play on a résumé Samuel's been padding this season, when he tied Denver's Champ Bailey for the league lead in picks with 10.

Torpey was impressed with Samuel, but it wasn't anything less than what he expected.

Still in the parking lot a couple of hours after the game, Torpey, his son Matt, and friends Chris Hennessey and Bill McHugh had plenty to say.

"He's definitely underpaid," McHugh said. "But he's going to get a big contract next year."

"He had a huge year," Bill Torpey said.

"He's a great corner," Hennessey said. "But he's no Champ Bailey."

"That interception today was another million dollars," Matt Torpey said. "And that touchdown was another million."

"The unfortunate thing," Hennessey said, trying to sum everything up, "is that it's probably going to be another million somewhere else."