FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Leftovers from media access at Gillette Stadium today:
1. One question often asked at this time of year is how much a player claimed by a team could help with intelligence on his former team, especially in a situation where the two teams are facing each other in the season opener. Bill Belichick was asked this specific to tight end Will Yeatman (Dolphins). His response: "I think it's marginal."
2. One could clearly feel the page turning in the locker room. Vince Wilfork, one of the team's returning captains, echoed that in his remarks to reporters. "It's been a tough camp and now it's time to move forward to the Dolphins," he said. "We have our plate full. I know one thing, they'll be ready to go, Monday night. It's a test for us, going on the road, a division game. Hopefully we can match their intensity. That's where we're at; we're getting started. We have to put everything into this week."
3. Bill Belichick said the Patriots were competing to sign rookie long snapper Danny Aiken as a free agent before Aiken decided on Buffalo. The Patriots had been monitoring him in Buffalo ("it looked like that was a close competition there") and were ready to pounce if he was let go. "We didn’t get him the first time, but we got him this time around," Belichick said, adding that the plan is to stick with Aiken for now.
4. Part of the reason the Patriots liked Brian Waters as a free-agent was his style of play. "The way that he plays the position is kind of the way we feel like we would want it played," Bill Belichick said. "I think the fact that he has a little familiarity with our system relative to what Kansas City is doing [with former Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis having coached there] and all that doesn’t hurt."
5. Bill Belichick on the upcoming NFL Films piece on his life in football: "It was the Patriots’ 50th season and my 35th season in the NFL, so it was a little bit of a unique situation. So organizationally, they captured the team’s 50th year along with what I did. They really did it in a way that was not intrusive. They just did it to archive it, to keep it as a historical – to do it in a historical way and there were no set plans on what to do with it, or how to present it or anything like that."