Posted by Mike Petraglia

Before doing his self-titled two-minute drill with reporters on Thursday at Gillette Stadium, Mike Vrabel had a different type of tete-a-tete. Defensive coordinator Dean Pees, cheeseburger in hand, sat down with the veteran Patriots linebacker at his locker.

This was unique for one main reason. Usually, these quick gab sessions are held in a closed office or classroom somewhere else in the stadium. Now while we will probably never know the details, you couldn’t be criticized too much for assuming that certain assignments handling the upcoming Miami offense were probably being discussed.

After several minutes at his locker, Pees left and the media stepped in. Vrabel acknowledged he and his Patriots teammates were guinea pigs on Sept. 21 and they didn’t like it one bit, referring, of course, to how the Miami Dolphins used and abused the Patriot defense to unveil and unleash the ‘Wildcat’ spread formation on the NFL.

“I think we were certainly the guinea pigs for it,” Vrabel said. “We learned a hard lesson. They have continued to run it and continued to have success with it. We’ve seen all the looks from it to date. There’s other formations they can do but we just need to be sound in what we’re doing and trust that all 11 guys know what they’re doing.”

The Patriots allowed 113 yards and four rushing touchdowns on 17 carries to Ronnie Brown and another 98 yards on 16 carries to Ricky Williams. This opened the door for Chad Pennington to be nearly perfect in the pocket. The Fish quarterback was 17 of 20 for 226 yards.

For his side of the ball, Matt Cassel is hoping not to get pulled from the game again with his team trailing by 25 as was the case back in September.

“There were a little bit of missed plays here and there,” he said on Thursday. “I don’t think we played well as an offensive unit that day and I am sure the team felt that we didn’t put on our best performance that day. We are working hard this week to get that corrected and go down there and put out a better performance on Sunday.”

Cassel was sacked four times and lost a fumble while passing for just 131 yards on 19 of 31 passing.

On Friday, we’ll take a look at the remarkable change of fortune this year among three former USC quarterbacks, two of which won Heisman Trophies and the third is winning the confidence of his teammates in New England.