Fred Taylor

Taylor had plenty of positive things to say about fellow running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis. “Benny, he’s always here asking questions,” Taylor said. “He follows Kevin [Faulk] like he’s his baby brother — in at 6 [a.m.], doing all the things, conditioning early in the morning, weights throughout the season, conditioning after practice. He hits the hole extremely hard. He’s like me, always working on his pass-receiving. He’s improved in that area. He’s a guy that’s waiting on his opportunity. I think he deserves it. He sticks his head in there, he doesn’t spend a lot of time laterally, east and west. He’s always downhill when he’s running the ball. You’ll see him improve more the more opportunities, the more reps he gets in the game situations. He’s being patient, waiting for it.”

Asked how that compares to former Patriot Laurence Maroney’s work ethic, Taylor said: “Laurence, he had his — not quite the same. And this isn’t me throwing him under the bus. But he would work. It would take him a few snaps to kind of get him going. He would work when he felt there was a sense of urgency and a need to, as opposed to, ‘Let me make these deposits and then later I can go in and make a withdrawal and still have more.’ That wasn’t necessarily his mindset, like Kevin and Benny and Sammy [Morris] and a few other guys on the team, not just our position. That light switch, you have to turn it on and start getting the picture and grasping that concept, and that’s what we’ve been trying to instill in him. Hopefully, that switch comes on, and he won’t need anybody to push him that extra step. He can do it when the doors are closed and nobody’s watching. That’s what it takes to be special in this league.”

WEEI