By ROBERT LEE
Journal Sports Writer

FOXBORO - Vince Wilfork is ready and willing to accept his added responsibility next year as one of New England's vocal leaders.

The Patriots two-time Pro Bowler who signed a reported five-year, $40 million deal with the Pats on Tuesday which makes him the highest-paid nose tackle in the NFL said during a telephone conference with the media today that in the past, he led more by example but did speak up when he felt it was warranted. Next season he said he will be more of a vocal leader both on and off the field.

"Everybody has to be accountable," said Wilfork, who was a captain last year. "When you are on the field you have to give it 100 percent. The only way - you've got to weed out the bad seeds, point blank. If you can't give me what I'm giving you on the field, I don't need you on the field with me. That's how you win. You've got to build trust. Show me that I can count on you. I have no problem, if a guy's not giving me that, I have no problem telling that guy that I don't need him on the field and I have no problem telling [coach] Bill [Belichick] that I don't want him on the field. That's point blank."

One of the players Wilfork could be talking about is linebacker Adalius Thomas, who was benched twice last season by Belichick.

"At the end of the day, we're on the field together, we travel together, we play together, we camp together, we room together sometimes, we eat together, we have meetings together, sometimes we're together more than we're with our families," said Wilfork. "Sometimes, overnight we stay at hotels together. We need to build that bond, but in that bond you have to have some accountability. We need to trust one another when we're on the field. We need to compete at a high level every place."

The Patriots have lost a lot of their leaders from their championship teams over the past two seasons, including Richard Seymour, Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Rodney Harrison and Asante Samuel to name a few. In fact, only eight players that are currently under contract were a part of a championship team with the Pats.

It's time for other guys to step up and be leaders, Wilfork said.

"A lot of guys aren't used to seeing young leaders," Wilfork said. "The leaders we had were older guys like Rodney, Seymour, Bruschi, Vrabel - you name it. They were older guys and they're not here anymore, but now you start to see younger guys becoming leaders early because they don't take seven, eight, nine years because we're such a young ball club, but these young players we have - [Jerod] Mayo, [Brandon] Meriweather, we've got [Leigh] Bodden, [Ty] Warren, myself, Tom [Brady], we have Randy [Moss], we've got Dan [Koppen] - we have guys in this locker room that know what it takes to win and you've just got to trust it. We as players and as leaders on the team, we have to ask more of ourselves and we have to ask more out of our players, point blank."

Wilfork said that the Patriots their mystique and that teams were no longer afraid to play them last year like they were in their championship seasons. He said that they want to get that mystique back this year.

"We won around here for a long time and a lot of teams sat back and watched us beat up on people," Wilfork said. "From the last year or two, teams wanted to play us because they thought we weren't the same. We've got to do something to change that because this year, I think it's going to have to start with the players. I think the leaders in this locker room, we're going to have to approach each other and approach the team and let it know this is how we've got to do the things if we want to be successful and go from there, but there's no question in my mind that we have the guys to do that.

"We've got the guys to compete, but we've just got to get that out of them. And that's no problem. Just because we have to work a little extra, that's not a big deal. If working a little extra gets us to where we need to be I'll take that 100 times. I'll take that 100 out of 100. I'm willing. I talked with some players and they feel the same way. Everybody's not happy with how we ended the season last year. But you know what? Last year is last year. What we've done in the past we've done in the past."

Wilfork said that sometimes last season nobody spoke up when things were going wrong. That won't happen again next year, he said.

"We have to raise our level of play," Wilfork said. "If something is wrong, we have to address it. We can't let it go on. We have to address it and get it better and people have to realize that we're trying to get somewhere. It's nothing personal. If you don't want to win, you don't have to be here, point blank. So if you want to win, this is how we're going to have to do it. You've got to be the believer and you've got to go forward and you might have to do a little something extra. That's fine. By me doing something extra or by us doing something extra, [if that] gets us to the point we need to be, I'll do it 100 out of 100 times, point blank."

According to Wilfork, if the Patriots can all get on the same page from the first day of training camp and move forward from there, New England will be tough to beat next year.

"You've got to have faith and you've got to have trust in those guys, man," Wilfork said. "And like I said, the level of leadership, the level of consistency and the level of trust, we have to raise it because we have to start this thing up the right way. I think we can all get off on a good start if we can establish that level of trust from the get go and that starts with competing in the offseason."