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Tom Brady: I Have To Do A Better Job Of Spreading The Ball Around

FOXBORO (CBS) -- The New England Patriots may have won Sunday's game by 23 points, but Tom Brady certainly wasn't happy about the performance of the offense. The ground game was effective, but Brady threw for just 149 yards, completing 80 percent of his passes to just three players -- wide receiver Julian Edelman (6), tight end Rob Gronkowski (4) and fullback James Develin (2).

The 48 hours following the game were spent by many questioning whether the Patriots offense can function properly and if Brady trusts his receiving corps.

Brady spoke on Wednesday and said that there's no shortage of trust -- he simply needs to do a better job of distributing the football.

"Absolutely. I think that's definitely a big part of what we're trying to do offensively," Brady said. "To make us hard to defend is to be able to throw the ball to everybody. Those guys [Edelman and Gronkowski] have seen the majority of the throws, and I've got to do a better job of finding the other guys. There's a lot of good routes, they're big targets, guys are working really hard to get open, so hopefully it shows up this week in our pass game. We're going to work hard on it this week to see if we can all be on the same page more often."

Specifically regarding Danny Amendola, who caught 10 passes for 104 yards in last year's season opener but has just three receptions for 16 yards through two games this year, Brady said the lack of targets for Amendola is a product of a passing game that isn't yet functioning at the right level.

"I have a lot of trust in Danny," Brady said. "He battled through some injuries last year and has had a great spring, great training camp, and he's been out there quite a bit. It's my responsibility to get him the ball. He had a few catches that got turned back [due to penalties], some big plays that would have helped extend drives. But I don't think our passing game has been really stellar to this point, so it's hard to sustain much over the course of the game and get those guys the ball when we're not doing as good of a job as we're capable of.

"We've got to keep going after it, and guys get more opportunities to get balls, and I need to do a better job of finding those guys when they're open."

The 15-year veteran said that when it comes to building trust, it's a weekly exercise, and it all takes place on the practice field and in the meeting rooms.

"It goes back to a lot of practice execution and anticipation, confidence in one another that I'm going to throw the ball where they need the ball, and they're gonna run where I expect them to run," Brady said. "That's why we practice so much, we meet, we talk about different situations, and every week it changes. You start the week, you've got a different defense, they have different players, we're running different routes, and really, the process to build starts all over again."

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