Ponderous thoughts I was pondering on a very short week:

**I'm getting the feeling that the loss of Adalius Thomas may be the point at which the Patriots' magic in finding replacements may run out.

Thomas was the man who was always on the field, and while his tackle numbers may not have been eye-popping stuff, he was tied for the team lead in sacks at the halfway point with five (and 10 would have been a good number to get out of him, given his past productivity in Baltimore). And, so much of what the Patriots attempted to do out of their many formations had their basis in where Thomas was lined up.

In any event, now's the time when Pierre Woods gets a chance to prove that the solid play he displayed in training camp was not just what could be expected against inferior preseason competition.

As for those who think this might be the time when Junior Seau gets a call on his waterproof cellular phone while surfing the waves off La Jolla, remember that Junior was primarily an inside 'backer in his most recent incarnation, and would only serve the Patriots as depth if, say, they tried to experiment with Jerod Mayo and send him to the outside. From the way Mayo has excelled in his rookie season, that's not going to happen. **One of the metro papers wrote that Dartmouth's recovery from a 14-0 deficit to Attleboro and eventual 35-21 victory was proof that Attleboro didn't belong among the elite teams in the region. I beg to differ.

The Bombardiers didn't win the game, but I saw nothing to indicate that their effort or intensity was unworthy of comparison to any of the other eight teams Dartmouth has defeated to this point in the season.

I certainly don't believe the OCL, or the rest of Division 1, has heard the last of the Bombardiers ...

**The pending move of Martha's Vineyard to the Eastern Athletic Conference mirrors the birth of that league many years ago. When the Southeastern Massachusetts Conference blew up and schools started gravitating toward other leagues or forming their own contiguous affiliations, the schools that were left behind - Attleboro, Bishop Feehan, Somerset, Coyle-Cassidy, Bishop Stang, Dartmouth and Bishop Connolly - were the ones that nobody wanted in their midst for one reason or another.

Now, with the EAC down to four members, it was time for another "orphan" to join the fold. The Vineyard has been growing by leaps and bounds and now has a total student population of 749 students (a number projected for steady growth), which far outstrips the rest of the smaller former Cape and Islands League schools that are now either in the Mayflower League or the Lighthouse Conference.

For a while, the South Coast Conference entertained the notion of adding Martha's Vineyard to its mix, but backed off after a one-year "provisional" experiment. Given that there are more public schools in the SCC, and that school sizes were comparable for the most part, it made sense despite the inconvenience of travel to and from the island.

That inconvenience will still be in place in the EAC, but it is mitigated some by the school's willingness to pick up the tab for ferry travel.

**Speaking of league changes, there's a new football alignment plan out there that would increase the number of Eastern Mass. football divisions to eight (currently seven) and would accommodate the many leagues that are splitting into large-school and small-school divisions.

Currently, 31 of the 32 available playoff berths are "spoken for" in the new plan. The guess here is that if the Tri-Valley League accepts Dedham from the Bay State Conference and Canton from the Hockomock League, it will split into two six-team divisions and take the 32nd and final playoff spot.

That could result in the first change in Hockomock League membership (in all sports) since 1968 - and it will leave the folks in Foxboro wondering what to do as its enrollment hovers around 800 students and the next-closest school has more than 200 more. **True story: A week ago Sunday, I stopped at a Shell station in Carmel, Ind., north of Indianapolis, to fill the tank of the rental car, and had to go inside the Circle K convenience store to get the receipt. The girl behind the counter asked for my name, I said it (and spelled it, as is my usual practice), and she looked at me and said, "That's unusual."

What, they don't have Italians in central Indiana?

**True story, Part 2: During that pit stop, regular gasoline sold for $2.17 per gallon. The next morning, when I returned to top off the tank before heading to the airport, regular sold for $2.09. More than a week has passed, and my guess is that station is probably well under $2 by now, given that our local stations are creeping under the $2.20 mark.

Now that the election's over, and the lowering of gas prices didn't help the Republicans any, how long before we start seeing those twos replaced by threes?

**Big week this week on the girls' basketball front, as Bishop Feehan's Amy Lepley and Dighton-Rehoboth's Mary Nwachukwu sign letters of intent to play NCAA Division 1 basketball. Heartiest congrats to both (your Blue Ribbon Daily will cover both signings), and we'll see you both on the hardcourt in a month!

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com. Read Farinella's blog, "Blogging Fearlessly," at thesunchronicle.com/farinella.