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Bill's take

Patriots coach Bill Belichick held a post-game press conference following the team’s 13-10 loss to the Buccaneers and opened with the following statement:

“We’re underway. We played a lot of people tonight. We got a look at a lot of people. We’ll take a look at the tapes and see how all that went. I thought there was some positive things. It was a competitive game. It came down to the last series of downs. There are a lot of things we have to work on, but I think there are a lot of things we can build from. Hopefully, we’ll play better next week, have a good week of practice, and keep moving in the right direction. One step. There is a long way to go. A lot of things we can learn from tonight.”

Will we see Randy Moss next week?
“We’ll see.”

How much was the focus on three-wide receiver sets dictated on the personnel you had available at tight end?
“That definitely had something to do with it. We got Marcellus [Rivers] in here a couple days ago and he learned a few things. I thought he did a respectable job. We just worked with the personnel groups we had most available tonight.”

Did you like the look of the three-wide stuff?
“We’ve used multiple personnel groups in the past and I’m sure we’ll continue to do it in the future.”

How did Matt Gutierrez’s first action go?
“I think probably like everybody else –- there were some things that were OK, and there were some other things that weren’t OK. I’m sure you can say that about everybody that played tonight, and coached. It’s the first game. We have a long way to go. There were some good things, and some things that weren’t so good.”

What did you see from Sammy Morris?
“Sammy got to play some. He played in the kicking game, played on offense. Kind of like everybody else, working on their game, trying to get off to a good start this year. Everybody is in the same boat on that.”

What went into the decision to not have Josh Miller punt at all and just have the two young guys go at it?
“To watch the two young guys punt. We haven’t seen them punt [in a game].”

What was your assessment of the punting. Is that something you can assess without watching the tape?
“We’ll take a look at it. It was OK. Some of it was situational punting, some of it wasn’t. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t terrible.”

Any thought to playing Tom –- not necessarily this game, but going forward –- based on the experience last year with meshing with receivers?
“We’ll take a look at next week, next week. Right now, we’re just dealing with the Tampa game, so we’ll deal with Sunday’s practice, Monday’s practice, we’ll deal with that next week.”