Is Vince Wilfork ready for Sunday? Well, Kilgore passed along the first piece of evidence that he will be about an hour ago ...

And the reason why he's feeling so fit and ready is pretty simple. The rest paid off. He's missed three weeks, and getting that injured foot up some has gone a long way to being in optimal shape heading into the Baltimore game.

"Athletes always want to play, no matter what it is," he said this afternoon. "But there's being smart, and there's being stupid, and that's the one thing I didn't want to be: Stupid. Got with the trainers and the coaches, and we made those decisions. We made the decision on what was best for the team.

"Sometimes I don't like those decisions. I'd love to play. But you have to be smart about some things and that was one of them."

Wilfork added that he's "feeling pretty good" and will "do everything in my willpower to be out there Sunday."

The Patriots will need him there. Without Wilfork, they yielded an unsightly 144 yards on 27 carries to the Texans, the 30th-ranked running team in the league coming in. Even with him, the Ravens ran up 116 yards on 17 carries back in October. And that's a Baltimore team that has redoubled its commitment to the run game.

So, yeah, it's not hard to see the reasoning in New England's decision-making on this front.