Coach happy, but not high on praise

All we see is the finished product. He sees something take place on the field on Sunday afternoon or evening and it takes him back to Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, when he and his staff worked on something very specific in practice. We see a touchdown or sack and he sees someone — or many someones — executing an assignment. It’s not sexy, but it speaks to the essence of the sport. Very few plays on either side of the ball happen in a vacuum.

So don’t speak to him about Tom Brady’s 350 yards passing or Rob Gronkowski’s three touchdown grabs or Tully Banta-Cain’s big night rushing the quarter back, not that he couldn’t do a half-hour on each man’s performance. To him, Brady isn’t completing passes unless the protection is there, Gronkowski isn’t catching passes unless Brady is delivering the ball, and Banta-Cain isn’t making his presence known to the QB if the coverage behind him isn’t good. And none of it just kind of happens.

With the possible exception of Brady, Belichick doesn’t really like to dwell on individual performances. You’ve pretty much got to reach icon status.

So while it’s starting to become fairly obvious that Patrick Chung is on his way to becoming this team’s version of Bob Sanders, that is to say, an indispensable member of the defense who not only makes big plays, but whose very presence on the field has a residual effect on the others, Coach Bill will barely hint at such a thing.

“He’s a good football player,’’ acknowledged Belichick. “He does a lot of things. He has a lot of different jobs. He’s a valuable player for us.’’

That’s somewhat shy of saying that the Patriots are a very different defensive team with Chung in the lineup, but it’s a start.

The question du jour, of course, was what got into this team to create such a vastly different look from the week before.

“It’s all preparation and proper execution,’’ Belichick said with a shrug. “There was an alertness and an awareness. There were a lot of different situations in the game where I felt, from our viewpoint, that we executed very well.’’

He never mentioned the word “emotion,’’ even though his quarterback was channeling his inner Ray Lewis all night long.