FOXBORO – After watching the film of Monday night’s game in which Drew Brees surgically dissected his team and the Saints racked up 480 yards of total offense, Bill Belichick walked away disappointed with his defense, he says he still believes in them.

“I have confidence in our players, our coaches and our scheme and I think we’ve been competitive defensively all year,” Belichick said. “Not that we’ve been perfect by any means. We’ve had times where we’ve had some problems like any defense have, but from a league-wide basis I would say we’ve been pretty competitive, but we weren’t [Monday] night and I know we can do a better job than that and that’s what we’ll work toward.”

The Saints, who averaged a team-record 9.6 yards per play, had eight big plays of 20 yards or more. That has not happened a lot against the Patriots defense this year, said Belichick, who defended his defense.

“I would say overall when you look at a 10- or 11-game evaluation that there are a lot of positives there and a lot of the problems we had last night weren’t problems that occurred in earlier games or they were very infrequent,” Belichick said. “Last night, giving up big plays was a huge problem and it’s something that really hadn’t occurred anywhere close to that level during the entire season as, for example, it did last year or the year before. We were giving up a lot more big plays defensively than we’d given up this year, prior to last night.

“Look, after a game like last night, are there problems? Well, it sure looked like it last night. There were a lot of problems. You could probably start anywhere you want. But over the course of year I wouldn’t say that’s been a continual problem. We’ve got to do a better job than we did last night, try to correct those things.”

Belichick said that he hopes the Patriots will learn from the multiple and repetitive mistakes that they made against the Saints Monday night and not make them this Sunday against Miami.

“You’ve got to be able to learn from them, put them behind you and move on – good or bad,” Belichick said. “I would say I probably would agree that we didn’t do a great job of that last night, that there might have been a residual effect on some of the plays that happened earlier in the game affecting, more than they probably should have, of how we played plays later in the game.”

Even with the Saints explosive game Monday night, the Patriots still rank seventh in points allowed per game (18.4) and 12th in yards allowed per game (313.4).

“I give them credit for the production and the way they played [Monday] night,” Belichick said of New Orleans. “I’m not taking anything away from them. I still know and feel that we’re a better defensive football team than the way we played [Monday] night and we have to do a better job than that.”

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As poorly as the Patriots played on defense, their offense wasn’t much better.

That is surprising considering the Pats director of player personnel Nick Caserio said that the Patriots were prepared for almost everything that the Saints threw at them.

The Saints just executed their game plan better than the Patriots did, he said.

“Some of the things New Orleans did, they did a couple things we hadn’t seen before, but for the most part the basic premise of what they were doing defensively was the same.”

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Patriots running back Sammy Morris played in his first game Monday night since injuring his right knee against Tennessee on Oct. 18.

He finished with 18 yards on 5 carries, and he also made several key blocks for Laurence Maroney while lining up as a fullback.

“I guess I did a decent job,” Morris told WEEI on Monday.

When asked how he felt lining up as a fullback, Morris said: “I like getting on the field and I like being able to compete whether that’s catching a split-screen spread out wide or playing running back, playing fullback, I just want to contribute and do my part to help the team win.”

Maroney had 64 yards and 2 touchdowns on 15 carries.

“He ran the ball hard,” Morris said. “His two touchdowns were big helping us try to get back into the game. I think he ran hard and even on his unfortunate fumble he was able to cause another fumble and get the ball back for us...I think overall he did do a good job.”

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As expected, Notre Dame fired Charlie Weis, who was the Pats offensive coordinator from 2000-2004.

“I’m disappointed for Charlie, and his family and all the people they took out there with them,” Belichick said. “Of course, I go back a long way with Charlie and we have a good friendship. I talk to him on a pretty regular basis, so I’m disappointed for him on that level.”

roblee@projo.com