FOXBORO -- Bill Belichick and Tom Brady spoke to each other quite a bit in front of reporters' cameras and camera-phones this week.
There was the long conversation they had before Tuesday's walkthrough on the grass field behind Gillette Stadium. There was another discussion during pregame warmups Thursday night that was interrupted just before the footballs started flying.
When reporters asked Belichick about his quarterback following Thursday's win over the Colts, he lobbed the kind of platitudes Brady's way that probably didn't fit into their pre-practice or pre-game chats.
Belichick was asked specifically about Brady having thrown 500 touchdown passes in his career. No. 500 landed in the hands of Josh Gordon, who was the 71st pass-catcher in Brady's career to haul in a score -- an NFL record.
"Yeah, it's tremendous," Belichick said. "That's a lot of touchdown passes to a lot of different guys, too. There's no quarterback I'd rather have than Tom Brady. He does a great job week-in and week-out, year-in and year-out, all of the situations. He does a great job."
Belichick later chuckled when he was told that Brady tied Adam Vinatieri for most wins in NFL history with 226.
"There's a lot of people who have meant a lot to this organization, but certainly nobody more than Tom Brady," Belichick said. "Adam – the time he was here was fabulous. He made some of the biggest kicks in the history of the game. Certainly one of the toughest, but he made a lot of them.
"We wouldn’t have won a lot of the games that we won without great players like that or some of the other guys that have been out here the last couple of weeks. [Matt] Light, [Willie] McGinest, Ty Law, so forth. We've had a lot of the great players back here the last couple of weeks so it's great to see that. But yeah, Vinatieri, I can't imagine a kicker more deserving of whatever the highest accolade you could get than him. And the same is true for Tom."