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FOXBORO - The easiest "fall-back" question of the year for reporters covering the Patriots has been the most obvious one: "How much has Matt Cassel progressed from the start of the season?"

Each week, it seems, the Patriots' former backup quarterback establishes a new plateau for the answer.

In Sunday's 48-28 victory over the Miami Dolphins, Cassel threw for more than 400 yards for the second straight week (and got a win out of this one), and there are few left who still believe that he's not a worthy replacement for Tom Brady, if not successor.

Patriots' coach Bill Belichick dutifully notes Cassel's progress, week after week, even though it's clear that he believes it's a natural progression that comes from more playing time.

"I don't think it's oversimplifying that a player that has played 11 games, like Matt has, is further along this year than he was when he played his third, fourth of fifth game or whatever it was earlier in the season," Belichick said Monday at Gillette Stadium. "It doesn't matter what it is - spread offense, red area, third down, play action, blitz, max coverage, max blitz, all the stuff in-between. I think there is progress in every area, more experience, more comfort, better decision-making and better timing by the quarterback and all the other players on the field." What's clear is that a synergy has developed between Cassel and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels that has enabled Cassel to take best advantage of what the defense gives him.

Sunday, that was a heaping helping of single coverage on Randy Moss - enough for the veteran wide receiver to claim he was being "disrespected" by the Miami coaching staff on the way to eight catches for 125 yards and three touchdowns.

"Miami does that," Belichick said. "That's really the way they have played all year. They play a lot of post-safety coverage, single safety, a little bit of split safety coverage, but a lot more single high safety."

Belichick said it was still the responsibility of his team to recognize what the Dolphins were doing and to execute against it. Single

coverage doesn't always look that way at the line of scrimmage, he said.

"I don't think you can go to the line too many times and say, 'OK, this is what it is,'" he said. "As soon as you do that, you start guessing and they give you one look and roll into something else or drop somebody underneath and that's when you get in trouble.

"When the ball is snapped you confirm, you take a look at the pre-snap and can eliminate certain coverages by pre-snap reads and then when the ball is snapped you can confirm and identify what the coverage is and go through your progression of reads," he said. "As soon as you go to the line and start guessing, that's when you get into a lot of trouble. We don't ever try to do that. I'm not saying it never

happens, but that's not what we try to do."

The Patriots also specifically game-plan for each opponent, and Sunday was the day to employ the "spread" offense.

"That was a good way to play Miami yesterday," Belichick said. "I think Josh and the offensive coaches had a great game plan and I think that Matt did a good job with it as did the receivers, pass protection, backs and their roles of pickup. We ended up getting blitzed quite a bit in the second half and running routes. So, that was good for yesterday. Whether that will be good for next week or some other week, I don't know. As Belichick said, it hasn't always worked as well.

"It wasn't so good against San Diego," he said. "I guess my point would be that it is team offense. So, whenever the quarterback has a lot of yards passing then everybody wants to put the quarterback in the Hall of Fame. And whenever the team doesn't have a lot of yards passing, then everybody wants to change quarterbacks.

"The fact of the matter is you have at least five people involved in pass protection, and usually more, you have at least five people involved in the passing game and pass patterns to some degree in terms of getting open and having good distribution," he said. "So, when 11 people are doing a good job on that then you are probably going to have good offensive production. When you don't have 11 people doing a good job on that or if it's poorly coached, you're probably not going to have a lot of production on that."

Game changed

The NFL announced Monday that the Patriots' Dec. 7 game in Seattle, originally scheduled for an 8:15 p.m. start locally as the weekly NBC Sunday Night Football telecast, has been switched to a 4:05 p.m. starting time and will be televised on CBS (Ch. 4, 12).

Moving into that game's place is the Redskins-Ravens matchup. Apparently, the league's bigwigs didn't think a game against the 2-9 Seahawks had the same appeal and used the flex-scheduling provision to take it out of the national spotlight. It's the first time the Patriots have been "flexed" out of a prime-time spot.