01:00 AM EST on Sunday, November 2, 2003

FOXBORO -- So it seems we hit the panic button a little early. And to be honest, we didn't just hit it. We slammed it with both hands, dropped a shoulder into it, thumped on it until little beads of sweat trickled from our brow. Then we whacked it again and kept hammering until it was dangling by a few wires and smoking.

False alarm.

The hastily written obituaries pumped out after the Patriots lost to the Bills, 31-0, on Sept. 7 have turned out to be just blah-blah-blah. They have lost one game since then and the Bills -- ironically enough -- are a fading speck in the Pats' AFC East rearview mirror.

But it was bleak during that week. Remember? Lawyer Milloy was released on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday the locker room was quiet and sullen, and when players did talk, they talked more often about the harsh business realities of the NFL than the Bills.

By Thursday and Friday, the team seemed to be turning the corner emotionally. Milloy talk had slowed, but that was just the calm before the storm. Milloy signed with Buffalo. Worst-case scenario.

And then came Sunday. The Bills introduced Milloy last, Takeo Spikes almost killed Troy Brown, Drew Bledsoe looked like a 6-foot-5 pitching machine, Antwan

Harris looked lost on the field, Buffalo's Sam Adams scored a touchdown and Tom Brady and Damien Woody got knocked on their cans.

The Patriots -- a vogue pick to be one of the AFC's best teams -- had been humiliated. In his four-year New England tenure, never did Bill Belichick have fewer people on his side. Even if releasing Milloy was the right thing to do, releasing him five days before the opener seemed so foolhardy, so dangerous, so un-Belichick.

Was this the first thread loosened in a great unraveling?

Evidently not.

The players didn't quit on their coach. Nor do they hate him. The defense wasn't worse off without Lawyer Milloy. And the offense wasn't as impotent as it seemed.

While we were wringing our hands over that loss at Buffalo, the Patriots were washing their hands of it. And they left no residue.

That the Patriots are 6-2 and in command of the AFC East just 55 days after what seemed to be a crippling loss at Buffalo. The Pats also are one of the league's most intriguing stories at the halfway point. What were they thinking after that game? Did they have even a twinge of doubt? How did they fix it?

"Guys just decided that this was a tough game and a tough situation but we said, 'Let's get over it and make something of this season. We can be a good team. We were 4-0 in the preseason,' " said Tom Brady. "It wasn't like we didn't think we had a chance to win. (The mood after the game) was, 'What did we do? What's the deal with that?' I don't think we were in the tank. I don't think we thought this was the way it would be. We just felt it wasn't us. It was not our game. We got rattled. We lost our poise."

Nasty as it looked while it unfolded, Belichick has watched the films and processed what happened that day. He begrudges the Bills nothing. At the same time, he says, "It should have been a 7-7 game in the third quarter. They win, 31-0, and it looks like it's a non-competitive game. There were a couple key plays in the game and the score is what it is. But there's no 31-point difference between the two teams.

"The emphasis after the game was that we needed to do some things better," Belichick continued. "It wasn't like we never stopped them or couldn't move the ball. We didn't play particularly well offensively. We had some problems. But defensively . . . it should have been a closer game. It should have been a 7-7 game in the third quarter. But there was so much momentum and all that stuff because of a few plays."

Plays like the 48-yard completion to Eric Moulds in the second quarter that seemed like smoking-gun proof that Milloy's absence was haunting the Pats. By the time it was over, a straight-line correlation was drawn from Milloy's exodus to the Patriots' defeat. And since Milloy was gone and gone for good, what guaranteed the situation would be temporary? But the players knew.

"Everybody in the locker room really respected Lawyer," said running back Kevin Faulk. "We knew what type of guy he was. But at the same time, we couldn't let that one incident bring down the whole team. We didn't forget about Lawyer. I still think about it and I know guys in our locker room still think about it, too. But the team comes first. You have to move forward. After that loss, nobody wanted to talk about it. Wednesday after practice (before the game at Philadelphia) is when everything was said. Older guys who stepped up and said we needed to move together as a team."

Belichick will never crow that he was "right" about Milloy. He didn't want to release him. He said then and still maintains that he didn't expect it to come to that. But Milloy committed a cardinal sin when he let himself think he was invaluable and that the Patriots would back down. Belichick has the belly to make hard calls.

"You make a decision and you stick with it," he shrugged. "You wait too long and any decision you make is the wrong one. You take the information in front of you and go with it. That's the only way you can do it."

By the time the game plan for the Eagles was in their hands on Wednesday, the Patriots were moving on. Observers though were still piling on. That Sunday, Tom Jackson said on ESPN's pregame show that the Patriots "hate their coach."

About five hours later, the Patriots had beaten the Eagles, 31-10.

"It was an emotional week, but once everything calmed down and we got back to earth, the veteran guys did a great job of letting everyone know we put too much into this thing," said center Damien Woody. "All the work in the offseason and the work in training camp. We can't let one incident destroy our season. It was said throughout the week, 'This is what we have to do. Focus on the job and be professional because this is what professionals do.' "

That loss at Buffalo is gone but not entirely forgotten.

"It serves as motivation," admitted Brady. "And I think the same thing happened in Washington (where the Pats lost 20-17 in Week 4). It was a feeling where we wished we could start that one over again. The team has really regrouped. After (Washington) we were 2-2, we'd lost a bunch of guys and we're sitting there saying, 'Now we have Tennessee coming to town? Which kicked our butt last year?' And we won that one. Then we get the Giants and we're excited and we beat them. So now we've beaten two good teams and we say, 'Let's go to Miami and then we win there.' You can see how it builds."

Brady uses that game to spur him on. Linebacker Tedy Bruschi does not.

"Our ship isn't right yet," he said with a glare. "And where we are has nothing to do with what happened the first week of the season. No longer do I want to even mention Week 1. Or Week 2. Or Week 5 for that matter. I don't prepare that way. Not by looking back."

Fair enough. Let's forget it ever happened. For everyone's sake.