Hey all --

Hope you had a good weekend and enjoyed watching New England's performance against the Bengals. I have to say, that wasn't exactly how I thought things would play out, especially after we discovered that Eugene Wilson and Ellis Hobbs didn't even make the trip to Ohio.

Anyway, I'm listening to Rodney Harrison on WEEI right now, and two things he's said have struck me:

First, he mentioned the team's practice on Friday. Joe and I both noted that the players seemed pretty upbeat Friday afternoon in the locker room, and Rodney said alluded to the fact that the team executed well during Friday's practice and they hadn't in the previous two Fridays. So clearly they knew they had the right plan and they knew how to do it.

He also took a swipe at sportswriters, many of whom were predicting gloom for the Pats. After losing to Denver last week, Peter King put New England 15th on his Fine 15 list -- with the NY Jets 14th -- saying, "I trust (New York) a lot more than I trust the Patriots right now."

New England used their underdog status to their advantage yesterday, and Harrison said writers sit on their "big, fat behinds" and get paid a lot of money to do so, but basically had no idea what they were talking about.

Asked for his impressions of the Titans Albert Hayneworth's face-stomp of Dallas' Andre Gurode, Rodney said "It was pretty gross what happened." Gurode needed 30 stitches after the act. Haynesworth was ejected from the game; he has not yet been punished by the NFL.

shalise