FOXBORO — With the salvos fired from Florham Park, N.J. by Antonio Cromartie and Shaun Ellis, there’s been a lot of talk about trash-talking this week.

But defensive captain Vince Wilfork spent a great deal of time Thursday talking about a former Patriot he considers the best leader he’s ever been around – Rodney Harrison.

Harrison certainly was opinionated but – unlike Cromartie and Ellis – didn’t make a habit of talking all the time. He chose his words carefully when he called someone out. But more often that not, he would call out his own teammates on the field before calling out an opponent. Harrison wanted his teammates to do the right thing at the right time when it counted.

When Wilfork was a rookie on the 2004 Super Bowl champs, Harrison showed him the ropes. Later on – Asante Samuel and Ellis Hobbs – that leadership is defined by what you do in planning and execution more than what you say. To Wilfork, that was the best kind of leadership.

“I think the one guy that stands out in my mind is Rodney Harrison,” Wilfork said. “He played this game to a whole other level. I’ve never seen a guy who played this many years in the league and he goes out on the scout team for offense or he goes out on the scout team for a special teams period, just to give a look. It was easy when I saw that guy doing it.

“It was like, ‘You know what? He didn’t talk much, he came to work.’ He came to work and you know what? He’s probably one of the best safeties to ever play the game and it’s because of that, not from his playing. His playing speaks for itself, but the person that he was in this locker room and on the practice field means a lot to me.”

A safety himself, Patrick Chung never had the chance to play with Harrison but he has spoken with him and those conversations certainly made an impression.

“He’s intense, he’s intense,” Chung said Thursday. “He’s flying around full speed and he’s not going to stop. Every single play, he’s going hard. Every single time. You have to give a guy like that credit. To go hard for so many years, every practice, every game, a lot of guys can’t do that.”

Wilfork and the other young Patriots of the mid-2000s also benefited greatly from the likes of Tedy Bruschi, Richard Seymour and Mike Vrabel, to name a few.

“When I came here it was Seymour of course on the defensive line, Willie McGinest, [Mike] Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Ted Johnson, Ty Law, Tyrone Poole, the list goes on and on, Rodney Harrison. It goes on and on. So, it was easy for me to come in and pick those guys’ brains. I was never the shy type. I always wanted to know why we were doing that and where did I need to be and what can I do to get better.

“All those guys taught me how to be a profession. They taught me what it takes to be a leader. A lot of people may think that you have to talk all the time to be a leader. That’s not what it’s all about. If you come to work every day and everybody sees you working your tail off, you have no choice but to lead by example.”

Words to live and lead by. So naturally, with rookies Jermaine Cunningham, Brandon Spikes and Devin McCourty on the team, Wilfork was asked if he is now the leader that every young player comes up to for advice on how to handle the pressure of the playoffs.

“I don’t know if I’m a player, I’m a coach, I’m a mentor – you name it. Being a leader and being around this team for seven years, I kind of understand it to a point where if a guy has a question and Bill [Belichick], your coaches and staff are in meetings, they can easily turn around and ask any of these guys who have been around. It’s been kind of fun, though, because a lot of years you don’t this.”

Wilfork says he’s seen cases in the locker room where young Patriots players have been almost scared to ask questions of the big-time leaders on their side of the ball. But Wilfork says thankfully, that’s not the case with his group.

“People will be shy to come up and ask a Tom Brady, Deion Branch or Matt Light who have been playing this game for so long, to ask them questions. But, I don’t think these guys are shy at all. They come up and they ask questions because they want to get it right because they know how important it is to us. So, they ask questions. I’m always talking, and teaching, and coaching and mentoring, watching film, we do it. I’m proud to be someone like that that they can actually look up and ask me for questions and I can give them the right advice. It’s been kind of fun.”

And – as Wilfork knows from his rookie season – winning in the playoffs is best kind of fun and losing can be a painful, humbling teacher.