(a serving of Humble Pie, sans the inspiration of Russell Colvin)
With the New England preparing for Sunday’s meeting with the surprising Cleveland Browns, The Boston Globe’s Christopher Gasper and Mike Reiss attended Pats practice and learned Thursday is “Dress Like A Dork Day” in Foxboro.
Yesterday, the players wore T-shirts to their meetings that read, “I Eat It” on the front and “Humble Pie” on the back, a reference to Belichick serving them their just desserts for plays that don’t pan out. Adalius Thomas cooked up the idea.“I just came up with the idea of printing the shirt and everybody liked it and we kind of talk about it a lot here,” said Thomas. “It’s just kind of a fun idea, kind of like a camaraderie thing, everybody on the same page, everybody treated equal, everybody is the same. We all get a piece of that pie and as reporters you’ll need it sometime and as players you’ll need it sometime. We all get our share.”
Thomas said he couldn’t take credit for coining the phrase “humble pie.” He said the first person he heard say it was Rosevelt Colvin, who said he got it from another player.
“It’s just a little, fun saying that we use to break the ice,” said Thomas.
Belichick received a sweat shirt from the team that had a twist on the mantra. The coach’s shirt read, “I Serve It” on the front, with the humble pie reference on the back.
“He just laughed because he knows what we mean by that,” said cornerback Ellis Hobbs. “We say that all the time to him. He doesn’t deny that he gives us humble pie. He even told us this morning that he was about to give us a nice dosage of it, so this morning a lot of us got it in there, including me.”