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FOXBORO - If you feel as if you've had enough of the NFL's preseason schedule, you're not alone.

Across the nation, there is growing disenchantment with the NFL's four-game schedule of meaningless exhibition games that precede the start of the regular season. Fans hate them because they have to pay full fare to watch them and have to buy them as part of the season-ticket packages, and they're no fun to watch because coaches are beginning to keep more and more of their marquee players out of them to keep them healthy for the long run.

There has been growing momentum in NFL circles - beginning with Commissioner Roger Goodell - to consider increasing the regular-season schedule to 17 or 18 games and reducing the number of preseason games accordingly.

But Patriots' coach Bill Belichick - who often speaks with fond remembrance of the days when the NFL had a six-game preseason slate, and isn't bashful about keeping starters out of his preseason games - said Thursday that he doesn't see a good alternative for developing younger players.

"The fewer preseason games there are, the fewer opportunities there are for younger players," Belichick said during his daily press conference at Gillette Stadium. "It doesn't matter what position they play. We had the Europe League or the World League (called NFL Europa before it folded after the 2007 season), and that was supposedly to develop young players, and now that's not in place any more. If you have young players on your roster and you don't have preseason games, I don't know where you get them experience, and I think it makes it a lot harder for them to make the team. "If you're not going to play preseason games, and you're going to shorten the preseason and all that, then I don't know how you're going to develop young players," he continued. "I mean, how do you do it? Do you have 14 OTA (organized team activity) days? You're not going to develop them then."

Belichick said that the preseason's length has benefits and detriments. For veterans, four games may be more than they need because of the offseason conditioning programs and the ever-growing OTA schedule. Rookies don't get the same sort of opportunity, but he stopped short of endorsing some sort of minor-league system or partnership with another league for developmental purposes.

"Right now, I'm just really trying to coach one football team," he said, "and I'd like to see us perform a little better than we have. I've got a full-time job. So as far as trying to conquer the world and save the sport and all that, I'll leave that to somebody else."

Brady's back

Patriot Nation can breathe a sigh of relief. Quarterback Tom Brady returned to the practice field Wednesday, at least for the portion of practice that the media is allowed to see. There's still no word, however, whether Belichick intends to use his star QB in Friday night's game at Gillette against the Philadelphia Eagles (7:30 p.m.; Ch. 5, 64).

With four of his offensive linemen (Matt Light, Ryan O'Callaghan, Russ Hochstein, Billy Yates) still shelved and Stephen Neal looking more every day as if he's going to open the season on the physically unable to perform list, it's still possible that Brady might be a game-day scratch for self-preservation reasons.