Patriots rookie linebacker Jerod Mayo, separating the Ravens’ Ray Rice from his helmet during preseason, is sporting a cast.

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

FOXBORO –– New England Patriots returned to work yesterday after getting a three-day weekend to relax and enjoy their bye week.

Richard Seymour spent part of Sunday in New York City, as a guest host on CBS’ The NFL Today. The defensive lineman showed he’s not quite cut out for the bombast that sometimes comes from the pregame shows when he was asked which team is the best in the AFC East.

Co-host Shannon Sharpe said Buffalo, but Seymour wasn’t making any decisions yet: “It still remains to be seen for us at this point; it’s still early in the football season. Everybody is talking about who is going to the playoffs, who is the best quarterback in the league, but it’s still early. How do we know all these things? It’s Week Four.”

Yesterday, Seymour said it was “good to get away and recharge the batteries” during the long weekend.

Rodney Harrison went to Atlanta, and got to watch some football on Sunday in the airport. He was stuck there trying to get back to New England, and saw the Falcons play the Panthers, as well as the Cowboys-Redskins game.

The home loss by Dallas, considered by many as a probable Super Bowl team, should serve as a reminder for him and his teammates, Harrison said.

“There’s a lot of parity in this game. It speaks volumes to us (that) we can’t get too caught up in our record,” he said. “Each and every week you have to bring your ‘A’ game.”

Laurence Maroney went back home to St. Louis for the weekend, where a family wedding was among the events, but others, such as Wesley Britt, stayed in Massachusetts. Britt was happy to see his Alabama squad beat top SEC foe Georgia on Saturday.

Though Bill Belichick and his staff were in the office on Sunday, getting started on the Pats’ game plan for San Francisco, he said the break offered everyone a “chance to get away and come back refreshed.”

Belichick sees improvement

Last week, Belichick gave a pretty lengthy list of things his team would work on during its two days of practice before breaking for last weekend. Yesterday, he said some progress was made, but the proof will be in the on-field results.

“We saw some improvement on the practice field,” he said of the team’s work, which included third-down offense and defense, run offense and run defense, and red-zone offense and defense. “We need to transfer that into game situations. We won’t be able to evaluate that until we do it on the game field. (But) we made some progress in practice.”

Life lesson

The Patriots will host more than 100 schoolchildren for a special screening of The Express this afternoon. Before the showing at the Cinema de Lux at Patriot Place, Belichick will address the students on the positive messages in the film, which is based on the life of former Syracuse star Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy. The first overall pick in the 1962 draft, Davis would never play a game in the NFL because he contracted leukemia and died in May 1963 at just 23 years old.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of East Providence and Woonsocket and the San Miguel School in Providence are among the six groups invited to the event.

smanza@projo.com