Bill Belichick let his team have it late in Monday's blowout. (AP)

The five most important things you need to know about the Patriots today.

1. On Monday night, it was late in the second half, and the Patriots weren’t letting up on the throttle. New England had scored yet another touchdown, and were set to kick off to the Jets when Patriots coach Bill Belichick gathered the entire team around him on the sideline for one very distinct message: “Listen, this game isn’t over — we’re playing for 60 minutes,” Belichick said. “I don’t give a [expletive] what the score is. We’re playing for 60 minutes.”

It was a clear message to a team that had suffered some defensive letdowns in the second half of recent wins against the Colts and Steelers.

“That’s something that we’ve been talking about all season,” quarterback Tom Brady told WEEI on Tuesday morning. “We played — like the Steelers, for example, we had a great three quarters and then didn’t play well in the fourth quarter. The Colts — we had a great three quarters, didn’t play well in the fourth quarter. So, even though we’re playing well through three quarters in this game, it’s like, ‘OK, guys, this is what we’ve been talking about. We’re not playing a great 48 minutes, 52 minutes, 59 minutes. We’re playing a great 60 minutes.’ That’s what he was talking about.”

The “60 minute” mantra isn’t new for the Patriots. It’s something they preached throughout the 2007 season — they even had t-shirts made up with the motto on them. Of course, if you do go hard for 60 minutes, you run the risk of saying you are running up the score (as we all saw on an almost weekly basis throughout the 2007 season). Jets coach Rex Ryan hinted darkly at it in his postgame press conference, saying, “Trust me, we will remember this.” Meanwhile Belichick said he never really thought about the idea of yanking his starters down the stretch.

“I think about trying to win the game,” Belichick said on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon. “I think about a team like the Jets that’s come back several times this year when it looks like they were out of the game and [they] came back to tie it or win it or win it in overtime. I don’t think that any game is really won until you’re absolutely certain that the number of possessions the team has is fewer than the amount of scores that they need.

“When you see those leads diminish in the fourth quarter – which, unfortunately, we’ve seen a few times; so has everybody else – then you look at it a little bit differently. When they don’t diminish, then you want to go on and talk about what the final score was, but that’s not the score while the game is still going on. They still have a number of possessions left in the game. Turnovers, a lot of things like that, can happen. You play to win.”

2. As much grief as he took for the job the offense did last season, Patriots quarterbacks coach Bill O’Brien — who holds great sway when it comes to offensive play-calling because of a lack of an offensive coordinator — deserves to take some credit for the performance of the offense, particularly over the last four weeks when the Patriots have posted wins over Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Detroit and the Jets, and have averaged 40 points in the process.

O’Brien was asked if there was a time since he’s been doing the play calling that this offense has been more efficient and productive.

“It’s a process of a week-to-week. It’s like 16 one-game seasons. So week-to-week we look at the opponent and it’s been a collaborative effort between a lot of guys starting with Bill and then Dante [Scarnecchia], Ivan [Fears], myself, Brian Ferentz, Chad O’Shea, and the players have some input, too. We’ve got a lot of experienced players that have played a lot of football.

“As far as how efficient we’ve been and all those things, that’s good, but again, we’re going into a game this week that this is a team that’s third in the league in points allowed and fourth in yards allowed,” he added. “We’ve got to put together a plan that’s going to be good for Chicago, and let’s see how efficient we are against them. Last night, we executed the game plan the way we wanted to for the most part. I’d say the last two drives of the first half weren’t real good. But for the most part, we executed it pretty well.”

O’Brien and the New England offense are in rarified air: With the 45 points against the Jets, the Patriots have now scored 30 or more points in seven games in 2010 and lead the NFL with 379 points this season (31.6 points per game). In addition, the Patriots are on pace to score 505 points this season, a total that would rank second in franchise history to the Patriots’ NFL record-setting 2007 total of 589 points.

3. While we’ve talked a lot about the connection between Brady and his veteran receivers, the highest quarterback-to-receiver rating in the league this season belongs to Brady and rookie tight end Rob Gronkowski. The rookie out of Arizona has 26 catches for 322 yards and six touchdowns, second on the team.

“If you get it in his area, he’s going to catch it,” Brady said of Gronkowski, who drew a key 36-yard pass interference call on New York safety Eric Smith in the first quarter Monday that set up the Patriots’ first touchdown. “He’s so tall, he’s got long arms, he’s got huge hands. Wherever you put it with him, he’s able to come down with it. So, he’s got a great what they call catch radius. That is, he’s got a huge wingspan, he’s able to snatch that ball wherever you put it. So, really, every guy that’s on him is smaller than him. So, if you put the ball in a particular area, where maybe the DB can’t reach for it, then he’s going to be able to make the catch. He’s really shown incredible consistency this year, both as a blocker and as a receiver. He’s a huge reason why I think we’ve been successful this season. Not only him, but the play of Alge [Crumpler], and the play of Aaron. That group has been a huge lift for us.”

“It’s hard to overthrow the guy,” said Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio. “He’s 6-foot-7, whatever he is, and has a large wingspan. It’s kind of hard to miss him, so you can’t throw it over him and Rob can go down low and catch the ball.

“He’s got a good skill set. He’s big, he’s fast, he’s strong, and he’s a good blocker. He has inordinately large hands as well. Hopefully he doesn’t miss too many of those and it’s hard to throw it around him. He’s made some plays in tough situations. The catch last night [Drew] Coleman was draped all over him and he managed to make the catch. It was a big play. It was a third down conversion that kept the drive going and continued the momentum offensively in the second half.”

4. After Monday’s humbling loss, Ryan faced the New York media with a dour look and bloodshot eyes, according to reporters who were there. He confessed to not really knowing how to act in the face of such a shocking and decisive loss like the one the Jets suffered at the hands of the Patriots, particularly on defense.

“I’m not used to it, quite honestly,” he told reporters after spending much of the night reviewing tape of the game. “So I don’t really know how to act. The only thing I know we’re going to do is roll our sleeves up and go and come out fighting. That’s the only thing I know how to do. We’ve got to tackle better. We’ve got to look at what we’re doing, come up with a great game plan for our guys to be successful.”

Less than a week after saying he was brought to New York to “kick [Bill Belichick’s] ass,” he was thoroughly outcoached by his counterpart. There were several questionable personnel decisions — including an overmatched collection of defensive backs and linebackers trying to slow down the fleet New England pass catchers — as well as an ill-advised early challenge that left the Jets hamstrung.

On Tuesday, he said that the loss wasn’t just on the players, but the coaches as well.

“Your job as a coach is to put your players in a situation where they can be successful,” he said. “(New England) did a better job of that than we did — than I did.”

5. Belichick said he was “disappointed” to hear about what happened to former assistant Josh McDaniels. McDaniels, who was appointed head coach of the Broncos before the start of the 2009 season, was fired on Monday after an 11-17 mark in almost two seasons at the helm in Denver.

“Yeah, of course I was disappointed to see that for Josh. Unfortunately, I know what that feels like,” said Belichick, who was fired from his first head coaching gig in Cleveland before finding success in New England. “I was disappointed for him and his family, but at the same time, that’s the third one of those we’ve seen this year, so it’s certainly not uncommon.

“It’s kind of the way it is in the NFL these days. Things can turn around in a hurry. Minnesota, one year they’re playing in the NFC Championship and halfway through the next year, they’ve got a new coach. You see a lot of that in the National Football League these days. I’m not sure that I fully support all that, but those aren’t my decisions. So, I don’t know.”