--Even in the aftermath of a disastrous defensive meltdown in New Orleans, coach Bill Belichick isn't throwing in the towel just yet. Asked if what he saw was correctable, Belichick said, "I would like to think most all of it is correctable. "The majority of the yardage that we gave up was on a handful of plays. I think they had eight players for over 300 yards or something like that, not saying all the rest of them were great, but anytime you give up that much yardage on a handful of plays it's bad. If you can find a way to correct those plays and not give them up all at once, you would be a lot more competitive out there." --CB Jonathan Wilhite deemed Monday's loss a humbling experience after he got benched following a series of horrific plays on defense in which he ended up the victim.
"Me, personally, I like winning," Wilhite said, "so if I'm not on the field and we're winning, I'm fine. Obviously, I wasn't playing good. But if we win, I'm fine. This is the NFL, you're not gonna win every play. But our goal is to try and compete, and they did better doing that than us."
On his last play of the game, Wilhite got beat by Marques Colston for a 68-yard completion.
--The Patriots failed on another controversial fourth-down attempt Monday, failing to convert on a fourth-and-4 from the Saints' 10-yard line trailing by 14 points with 4:12 to go in the third quarter.
Belichick's rationale for not kicking the field goal?
"No doubt, we needed some points at that point," he said. "I thought we were running the game well at that point offensively. I thought we needed more than a field goal, the way the game was going."
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