HOUSTON -- Willie McGinest decided yesterday he'd heard enough of people saying the Patriots are a team without stars.
"I've been to three Super Bowls. We've been to two Super Bowls in three years. I listen to some of the stuff on TV and they say, 'This team doesn't have a lot of superstars but they have a lot of good players. I don't understand what qualifies a superstar. We have a Super Bowl MVP on our team. We have guys going to the Pro Bowl. We have guys who have been playing well all year long. What's a superstar if you can't get to the big game? Maybe it's because we aren't into self-promotion. We don't care about that. Guys can self-promote all they want but if they're home at the end of the season watching, what good is that? Maybe the team concept isn't that popular in the league but it works for us," McGinest said.
Carolina defensive tackle Brentson Buckner, for one, agrees.
"Two Super Bowls in the last three years?" he said. "Sounds like a dynasty to me."
Bad for business
Buckner also had a great observation when asked if the Pats ever tried to bring him aboard.
"I think it was just a rumor," he said. "You think they're going to allow another Buckner to play for a New England team? That is not going down. You know what would happen? The fans that believe in the Buckner curse would turn their tickets in."
Communications work
The Patriots worked out again yesterday in the Houston Texans' practice bubble with music blaring to ready the team for Sunday's stadium noise.
Head coach Bill Belichick pointed out that the Pats haven't been on the road since a trip to the Meadowlands in December, and could use some work on communication.
Tedy Bruschi ran well in practice, and Rodney Harrison capped the day with an end-zone interception during the two-minute offense.
"We've had two good days here," said Belichick. "Friday, we'll just clean up a couple of situational things, a couple of mistakes from today, and we'll be ready to go."
The overlooked one
One coach overlooked in the hue and cry over whether Romeo Crennel or Charlie Weis would get head jobs was Pats special-teams coach Brad Seely.
Seely, Belichick has often pointed out, is head-coaching timber. He hasn't even had a sniff, though.
"Anybody wants to be a head coach at some point. But it's hard from my position because the perception is that you're not a coordinator," Seely said. "Hopefully, that mindset will change at some point because we interact with everyone on the team, but it's not perceived as a coordinating job. It's hard to get a head-coaching job from there, and I don't want to be a position coach to get to be an offensive or defensive coordinator because I like what I do, so it's kind of a catch-22.
"But this is where I am now. I like what I do. I enjoy what I do, and I hope I can continue to do it. Everybody always looks to the next rung on the ladder. Sometimes it's good to look behind and see where you've been."
Plan of attack
Nose tackle Ted Washington sounds pretty sure of things as the week draws to a close.
"We're going to get after Jake Delhomme, but we're going to shut down the run first," said Washington. "We'll get after those guys, then we'll put pressure on them with different types of stuff. But we're going to throw it all at them because this is it. No sense saving anything in your game book now."
