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FOXBORO - When Gillette Stadium was built, the Kraft family took great pains to make sure that the design contained an ample number of bathrooms - something that should be a measure of comfort (figurative and literal) to newcomer Andy Walter.

"I'm just trying to figure out where the meeting rooms are, where my locker is and where the bathroom is," the former Oakland Raiders' quarterback said Wednesday at the Patriots' training camp. "But there's a great atmosphere here. You can just sense that in the drills we finished practice with a competitive drill there at the end. So it's pretty fun to be a part of."

If there's anyone who should be thanking his lucky stars today, it's Walter. He has career totals of three touchdown passes and 16 interceptions after four seasons with the moribund Raiders, but Bill Belichick saw a few things he liked - tall, drop-back quarterback in the Tom Brady mode - that made him fit better in Foxboro than former Dolphins' starter Cleo Lemon or (gasp!) ex-Falcon Michael Vick.

"We felt like he would be a good player to add on our team based on his skills and what we do. I'm glad we have him," Belichick said Wednesday.

No doubt, the 27-year-old product of Arizona State, a strapping 6-foot-6 and 230 pounds, is glad to have traded in the Raiders' storied silver and black for colors that have actually won something lately. "We're talking about Super Bowl champions and one of the best quarterbacks in the game, if not the best," Walter said of new teammate Tom Brady. "He plays my position, so it's a chance to learn from him and everyone else. It's a great opportunity."

Belichick said he was impressed by how Walter has immersed himself in the playbook in an effort to get caught up in a short amount of time.

"He's spent a lot of extra time trying to learn the offensive playbook, terminology and those things," Belichick said. "He's going to get an opportunity to play in practice and hopefully in the preseason games after he's shown us he can be efficient out there in running the team, and we will evaluate him based on that."

Walter got a good idea of what the expectations are for him in a conversation with Belichick on Sunday.

"We just talked about how he sees the game, the expectations for this team coming in here, and about being a pro things like that," Walter said.

Throw the flag

A crew of officials worked the practices Wednesday, throwing flags and updating the Patriots on the tweaking to the rules done over the offseason.

"The biggest thing is that the officials see the game through their eyes and that's really all that matters," Belichick said. "It doesn't really matter whether I think it's a foul or not. What matters is whether the officials think it's a foul and those are the rules we've got to play by.

"So when they're not here, we officiate the game as we see it and coach the players on what's permissible, what isn't, what's a foul, what we feel would be called. What's a good play and what isn't a good play? When we have the officials here, it takes it out of our hands," he said.

In the meeting with media members after practice, the officials said that the same hit made by Bernard Pollard on Tom Brady's knee last September would be called a 15-yard penalty today small consolation as that may be. Quick kicks

The Patriots moved their afternoon practice to 4 p.m. in anticipation of bad weather, but the showers never materialized Gillette Stadium's football field is lined and ready for tonight's practice that will be open only to season-ticket holders and Foxboro residents. The morning session (starting at 9:30 a.m.) is still open to the general public, but the "Patriots Experience" will run from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Patriots' long-time radio "voice," Gil Santos of WBZ-FM, is the subject of an interview on The Sun Chronicle's training camp Audio Blog, which can be found at thesunchronicle.ning.com/video/audio-blog-6.