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Bill's breakdown

Patriots coach Bill Belichick held a conference call with the media today (4 p.m.), recapping the team's 24-7 victory over the Panthers.

He opened with the following statement:

"I think everything we talked about last night we saw on the film. I thought it was a much better effort running the ball than it was in the first couple of games, and I thought overall we defended the running game with some consistency. There are certainly a lot of things we can do better on both our run defense and our running game, but I thought it was definitely a step in the right direction. I thought we did a decent job defensively getting off the field. We gave up a big play there before the half, and we had a couple third-and-longs there in the third quarter, but overall, we had about half of our series as three-and-outs. That was good. I thought our kickoff coverage was good. Our field goal rush was pretty good. We left some points out there on the field. Our return game wasn't what we'd like for it to be.

"So the bottom line is that there are still a lot of things we need to work on. Some of the things that went well statistically -- or looked like they were executed pretty well in the game -- still can be cleaned up. A couple of the other things that didn't look quite as good actually with one or two little corrections could have been a lot better. That's what we're trying to do -- go through the tape today and get ourselves moving closer to real good execution. The difference between some big plays and some not-so-good plays sometimes is a real fine line.

"As I said, a lot of people who played a lot in the game last night, we'll probably switch some of that playing time around this week so we can kind of get a look at everybody here in these last two preseason games.

"Obviously by Tuesday, we'll have to make some roster reductions to be compliant with the 75-man roster size. We'll do those when we feel it is the right time. It could be tomorrow. It might be Monday. It might be Tuesday. We'll just have to wait and see how that goes for us. There are obviously a lot of balls we're juggling on that between some guys that are banged up, and the depth at certain positions and so forth. There is no real timeframe on that, it will just be when we feel we're ready to do it."

A few Belichick bits: