Stan Grossfeld of the Boston Globe writes about a lighter side of Andre Carter. While Carter might be a fierce competitor on the field, he is an avid piano player off the field. "Piano is more at peace, D-lineman is more violent,'' he says. "If you don't have good hands, you won't get to the quarterback.''

Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald writes about the success of Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. This year Gronkowski has seven of his eight total touchdowns inside the red zone after having nine of his 10 touchdowns come in the red zone last year. "Yeah, definitely, I take pride in that, but you got to keep it going," Gronkowski said. "You can't be satisfied with what's already happened. You gotta keep on working hard and keep on going forward."

Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com writes about the process of Sebastian Vollmer returning from a back injury. After a shaky performance against Pittsburgh where Vollmer and rookie Nate Solder rotated most of the game, Vollmer has returned to his second-team All-Pro form of last year. In the past two games against the Giants and Jets Vollmer has played 148 snaps and allowed zero sacks. "I think Sebastian has done a good job for us," said coach Bill Belichick. "He's gotten a lot of reps since the bye week. It seems like he kind of turned the corner. I mean he was improving steadily, but it looked like he was finally able to turn the corner there around the bye week and after the bye week. It's good to have him out there. He's certainly a good player, one of our best players. He's a physical player, he's long, he really does most everything well on the field."

Monique Walker of the Boston Globe writes about the recent activation of rookie offensive lineman Marcus Cannon to the 53-man roster. Cannon is a 5th round draft pick out of TCU who has received a great deal of press due to his battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of cancer. "There's a lot of people that had their hand in getting him ready between the trainers and the doctors and really Marcus himself,'' Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio said. "He's done everything that he's been asked to do; he's controlled the things that he's controlled."

Danny Picard of CSNNE.com writes about Brian Waters as he prepares to face his former team, the Kansas City Chiefs, on Monday. Waters spent his first 12 years with the Chiefs before signing with the Patriots after training camp. Since joining the Patriots, Waters has worked into the Patriots offense as one of their most consistent players. "Brian's come in and has really done an outstanding job for us," said coach Bill Belichick. "We got him right at the beginning of the season, and he certainly had to make a big adjustment, from not being here in training camp. Fortunately, I think with a lot of the terminology and things like that, there was definitely some carryover for him."

Mike Reiss of ESPNBoston.com takes his weekly look at the Patriots tackle chart. Patrick Chung stays atop the list with 60 tackles even though he was inactive on Sunday. James Ihedigbo (36 tackles) and Kyle Love (29 tackles) make their first appearance on the list. Matthew Slater took the lead in special teams tackles with 11. Andre Carter leads the team with quarterback hits with 16 with Mark Anderson in second with seven. Kyle Arrington extended his team lead in pass deflection picking up his eight on Sunday.