Quick hits

Notes from a busy day at Gillette Stadium.

PRACTICE ATTENDANCE: Defensive lineman Richard Seymour (knee), linebacker Monty Beisel (hand), running back Corey Dillon (ankle), outside linebacker Willie McGinest (finger) and receiver Troy Brown (foot) weren’t present for the first part of practice in which the media was allowed to attend. It is unknown if those players arrived at practice after the media left.

INSIDE AGAIN: With heavy rains in the area, the Patriots practiced indoors for the third straight day.

HARRISON’S CALL: Safety Rodney Harrison held a conference call with the New England media (12:15 p.m. EDT) and said he had yet to undergo surgery on his knee. “We are still waiting for some of the swelling and some of the trauma to go down,” he said. “Some time in the next month or so we anticipate having surgery.” As for if his career is over, Harrison said: “I’m going to work extremely hard to come back from this. I have no other intentions but to come back and play next season.”

PRAISE FOR FREEMAN: Asked how free agent safety Arturo Freeman has looked in Wednesday and Thursday practices, Bill Belichick said: “I’ve been impressed with Arturo the past two days, for a guy that hasn’t had really any background in our system. It’s not like, Miami and Green Bay, the teams that he’s most recently been with, are pretty compatible to ours. I think there are a lot of differences. He’s come in and I think he’s absorbed a lot of things that we’ve given him, his communication back there in the secondary, his anticipation about going in and out of calls or making a formation adjustment and those kind of things. He has a long way to go, but not bad for a couple of days. I’ve been impressed with it actually, from the mental part of it and the adjustment and picking things up and all.”

DENVER’S SPEED: Belichick said Denver plays with a quick pace. “I think they’re definitely one of the fastest teams in the league, no doubt, and they play fast. They run fast and they play fast. They have an up-tempo style of play. They shift fast. They motion fast. They run fast crossing routes. They run fast stunts. They blitz fast. There’s not a lot of hesitation in their play.”

Looking ahead, we’ll plan on posting our next update Saturday, looking at three areas of focus in the game.

–Mike