01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 24, 2004

FOXBORO -- In a never-ending effort to find a crevice that hasn't been plumbed with the wildly efficient (that's an oxymoron), terribly successful (another one) New England Patriots, we figured this week we'd go off the board and ask what kinds of pregame rituals the players go through.

Somewhat predictably, many have none. They feel they are a distraction, an impediment to focusing on what matters.

"What do you mean, do I tie my left shoe first?" asked head coach Bill Belichick when the subject was broached. "No. There's plenty of people who do that but you're not talking to one of them. There's gotta be more to it than wearing the same underwear. I don't buy into it and I won't knowingly let [the team] buy into it. We're not doing something one week because we won when we did it two weeks ago."

Said kicker Adam Vinatieri, "I don't want to be superstitious. It's a distraction. I don't like to think I have a lucky this or that. When I think I'm developing one, I break it purposely because I don't want to feel like if something doesn't work out it will bother me."

And the ones they do have are relatively benign. Here are a few.

Richard Seymour: Defensive end

"I like to do some kind of spiritual reading. I try to do it during the week as well, but Saturday we have more time so I try to read the Word. In college I was more that guy [who had rituals and superstitions]. Not anymore. If you can do it, you can do it. If you can't, you can't. All that is ridiculous. But everybody has their own deal."

Russ Hochstein: Offensive guard

"I usually come in three hours before game time. I'm a pretty simple guy. I like game day to go nice and easy. I come in and do some light stretching, take a hot tub, hang out by my locker, put my pads in my pants. I go through my game-plan book pretty well but other than that, I'm a simple guy. Some guys are more traditional."

Lonie Paxton: Long snapper

"I do some little things. I like to be one of the first ones on the bus from the hotel and I have the same side that I sit on. The last 10 minutes before we go out I have a band from back home that I listen to called Pennywise. I don't do anything too freakish. I feel like my grandmother and god-grandmother are my guardian angels. They both passed. I talk to them on game days. It's nothing too weird where I have to take the same number of steps to the bathroom or anything like that."

Rodney Harrison: Safety

"I normally get to the stadium for a home game around 9:30 a.m. Lately, me and Phif [Roman Phifer] have been going to an IHOP on game days. We eat the same breakfast, same time, sit at the same table. That's something we've been doing. And I gotta get in the hot tub and warm these old bones up and get going."

Willie McGinest: Outside linebacker

"I always get here early and take a hot tub. I'll sit in it for 10 minutes, stretch. I call my mom before every game. Then me and Roman go out together and warm up. We do the same things every time, same warm up."

Christian Fauria: Tight end

"I just get up right before the pregame meal. Then I come over here and stretch. The only thing I do on a regular basis is drink a cranberry juice-orange juice mix every week."

Adam Vinatieri: Kicker

"Say the game's a 1 o'clock game, I'm here at 9:30 or 10 o'clock. I hate to feel rushed. I take my time stretching out and take a nice hot tub. We've got one big [hot tub] and a bunch of little horse trough ones. They're full. Guys are waiting in line for them. Some guys put their headphones on and listen to music. I'm not much into listening to music before the game. I spend a lot of time stretching. I don't like to do it in 10 minutes so I stretch once, walk around . . . relax then go on the field and stretch again. Josh --[Miller, the team's punter and Vinatieri's holder] and I will throw the ball around a little and check out the wind and the field.

Herman Edwards: Jets head coach

"I go sit in the stands and watch those kickers out there. I always wondered when I was a player, 'Where do those kickers go all the time?' I see them out there and they are thinking they are receivers and all that stuff. It is almost hideous when you watch them. If you go early enough, you hear the national anthem singer singing, so you kind of know what the national anthem singer is going to sound like because they are practicing. You see a lot of things going on in the pregame warm up before the real pregame warm up. That is kind of interesting, how the security guards are coming down and they are all up in the seats and the guy is telling them how to check the tickets and all that. You see all that when you sit up in the stands. It is amazing. I don't know why I [sit in the stands], but I do. I always want to feel like a fan and sit in the end zone and just look down on the stadium and go, 'What are those guys doing?' I kind of wave at [opposing coaches] as they go by, if I know a few of them. They are probably going, 'What is he doing up there?' I am kind of relaxing, enjoying it. It was nice when the Patriots had the old stadium because you could walk right out of the locker room, walk down the little ramp to the left and walk right out there. That was pretty convenient for me."

Larry Izzo: Linebacker and special teams player

"I'm habitual. It's more obsessive-compulsive type deals. I come in, after our meeting I go out around 11:15 a.m., go out there for 20 or 30 minutes, come in and stretch with [strength and conditioning coach] Mike Woicik. I read the game program in the bathroom. I get here early enough to beat the line to the bathroom."

Keith Traylor: Nosetackle

"I don't get involved in that stuff, but I had a friend who used to throw up. And he knew he'd have a decent game if he threw up and he was worried if he didn't. I threw up sometimes, but it didn't seem to affect me either way. I remember guys who had to have little dolls in their locker. Godzilla or something. I remember Harold Hasselback [a teammate in Denver] always had to have a little doll in his locker posed a certain way."

And even though Belichick doesn't hold to any rituals, he's acquainted with the ways and means of them.

"When I was with the Giants, the players used to pull that stuff on me," he said. "One week, if we broke a meeting 10 minutes early and won, then the next week they'd say, 'You know, we broke that meeting on Thursday 10 minutes early.' I would always say to Lawrence Taylor, who went to North Carolina, 'Lawrence if that was all there was to it, Duke would be national champions.' There's more to it than that. But that's the way it was with the Giants because Bill [Parcells] was like that. If we did it one way and won, then the next week, if we were about to do it differently, someone would say, 'No, no. last week we were going that direction in teamwork.' I personally don't care, other people do. I just don't want people thinking that's why we won or lost the game because in the team period we were going in a certain direction.

"And the only thing the players remember is something easy we did and happened to win," Belichick said. "If we did something hard one week and won, they'd never bring that up. Nobody would ever say, 'We did that 1-on-1 tackling drill, remember?' It was always, 'We were in shorts,' or 'We ran four sprints instead of eight sprints.' "