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Hard to believe that, after a 52-7 victory over the Washington Redskins before 68,756 deliriously happy fans at Gillette Stadium, the undefeated New England Patriots still served only as the appetizer for a local sports feast Sunday.

There was another game of note being played at Denver's Coors Field later Sunday, but Patriots' fans didn't feel the need to exit Gillette early to get to their homes in time to watch the Red Sox play the Colorado Rockies in Game 4 of the World Series. They felt comfortable enough to stay in their Foxboro seats and drink in the sweet taste of success just a little longer than one might expect from a blowout.

The Patriots almost didn't have to work up a sweat in sending the 4-3 Redskins back to our nation's capital in a deep Patriot-blue funk.

Whether it was Tom Brady throwing the ball, Wes Welker catching it, Kevin Faulk contributing in various ways and Mike Vrabel having another monster day on both sides of the ball, there wasn't a single answer in the Redskins' playbook for anything the Patriots showed them.

Brady threw three touchdown passes to bring his season's total to 30, two more than his previous career high. He also had two rushing touchdowns in the same game for the first time in his career. And while he didn't have a receiver go over the 100-yard mark on the way to 306 passing yards, Brady spread the wealth around to eight different pass-catchers - from the nine catches for 89 yards by Welker, to the one catch for 2 yards by Vrabel, a linebacker by trade.

How about Vrabel?

And how about that Vrabel guy? At some point, the rest of the NFL is going to figure out that when he's in the game as a short-yardage or goal-line tight end, Brady is going to throw at him. Ten times in his career, Vrabel has caught touchdown passes. All 10 of his receptions, in fact, have been for touchdowns.

But the Redskins not only couldn't stop him, they didn't even bother to defend him when he went in motion from left to right and slipped into the end zone untouched and unbothered to catch Brady's 2-yard pass for a 14-0 lead with 8:08 left in the second quarter.

Amid all this prodigious productivity, there is some thought that the Patriots may end up the most hated team in America if they continue to go for the jugular in every game.

Some saw Brady's keeper for a first down on a fourth-down play early in the fourth quarter, with the Patriots already in a 38-0 lead, as an indication that they may be consciously running up the scores on their vanquished foes - and lo and behold, Brady threw his third touchdown pass of the game moments later to Welker to make it 45-0.

Similarly, backup quarterback Matt Cassel was facing fourth-and-2 at the Washington 37 and threw the ball for 21 yards to Jabar Gaffney with 7:16 left to play - and two plays later, Cassel ran the ball in from 15 yards out to make it 52-0 with almost six minutes left in the game.

Perhaps in both instances, the Patriots could have settled for field goals and preserved a little bit of the Redskins' dignity as well as their own in the process.

But their coach, Bill Belichick, dismissed questions about the necessity of those scores by simply saying, "What do you want us to do, kick a field goal? It's 38-0, it's fourth down we're just out there playing. Just out there playing."

Belichick's opposite number, Hall of Fame member Joe Gibbs, tried to deflate the issue somewhat by saying that he had "no problem with anything that they did. Nothing, no problems from me." Some Patriots, however, responded a little nervously to the suggestion that averaging 41.4 points per game (while allowing 15.9) might be a little excessive.

"I wouldn't care," wide receiver Donté Stallworth said when asked what he might feel about a 52-7 outcome if he were on the losing side of it. "I'm not, so you know, it is what it is. We're just going, and Bill's making the calls. It's really just a matter of us going out and executing what they want us to execute."

Slaughtering their opponents

"Execute" may be the proper word, in fact, because the Patriots aren't just winning, they're slaughtering their opponents - for their fans, a gleeful adjunct to a Red Sox team that had scored 10 runs or more in two of their three World Series games entering Sunday night.

Apparently, it's not just enough to win these days. Winning big is what it's all about - and worrying about the consequences is something that will be left for later consideration.

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com