The press box at Gillette Stadium gets smaller and smaller each Sunday.

Or maybe not. Perhaps the number of reporters showing up for Patriots games is getting bigger and bigger.

The latter is the more likely, as evidenced by the range of news outlets running stories on the 15-0 Pats this Christmas Eve.

Take The New York Times, for instance.

"Records come along, recognition comes along," Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi said in that newspaper's coverage of the Pats 28-7 win over Miami.

"We're not shooting for anything. We have to focus on who is in front of us. A small piece has to be in our mind what we can achieve. We want our fans to have fun and you can talk about it. Now that we’re 15-0, yes, we want to be 16-0."

The author of the piece goes on to say, "Coach Bill Belichick was so unhappy with the Patriots' performance in the freezing rain last Sunday against the Jets that he practiced the Patriots in full pads, probably the only team to take such a pounding this late in the season."

And out in Arizona, where this year's Super Bowl champion will be crowned, the Pats are top-of-mind.

"It's going to happen," an Arizona Republic columnist begins his feature today. "History is less than a week away. And nobody, especially the New York Giants, will prevent it.

"Is there any doubt that the New England Patriots will finish 16-0? There really can't be any longer. Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, Randy Moss and Company are going to go down in the record books as the only NFL team to finish a regular season 16-0 and, if the Patriots do what we expect in the playoffs, it will put them in a whole new category ... It will make the Patriots the best NFL team we have seen."

Even the Los Angeles Times gets in the act. Their NFL writer notes how the Patriots hosted some prominent members of the World Series Champion Boston Red Sox prior to the game, who brought along their two most recent trophies to show the fans ... and Pats owner Robert Kraft, who hosted the Sox in a pregame gathering.

"Prominently displayed on a table in the room were five trophies -- three from the Super Bowl and two from the World Series," the LA Times piece notes.

"This is something historic," Kraft said, motioning to the shiny cluster. "We've never had all five of them together before."

Then the writer makes this prediction about the Pats winning the Super Bowl this season:

And that Fab Five might never be together again -- because there will be six.

Six, that is, in Kraft's perfect world.

QUICK HITS

Once again, the question is posed by the media: will Belichick rest his players against the Giants this Saturday? USA ToDAY tackles that possibility in a story today.

Pats players acknowledge they're aware of all the records they're breaking and setting this season.

"Right now, we're starting to pay attention to it," Gaffney said in a Boston Herald column today. "But during the game, we don't pay attention to it. We have a job to do."

A similar account can be found on ESPN.com, where DL Jarvis Green is quoted as saying about the chances of a perfect season, "We're football players, but we're also human beings, so how could we not think about it?

"It's out there for us now. We've done everything asked of us to get to this point, to put ourselves in a position to do what no other team has ever done in this league, so it's got to be on our minds."

"We'll take two days off for Christmas, enjoy the holiday, and then get back to work shooting for the undefeated season."