The Daily ItemFOXBOROUGH – Even as the rest of the New England Patriots tried, in vain, to come up with a positive – any positive – to last night’s home preseason opening 7-6 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, coach Bill Belichick wasn’t having any of it..”As you can see,” he said, “we have a lot of work to do. We have a long way to go.”He didn’t sugar coat it.”There wasn’t anything good tonight,” he said. “There wasn’t much to like.”Running back Fred Taylor, who saw his first action this season after signing this past winter as a free agent?”He was all right,” said Belichick. “He’s done well this preseason in practice.”How about Tom Brady, who returned to the field to a rousing ovation after missing all but two series of last season due to knee surgery?Nope. Not even Brady passed muster. He only played on the team’s first two possessions, and led them to one of their two field goals, and got pounded into the ground twice. He sprung right up afterward, leading some in the media to assume that was a good thing ? that he’d passed some kind of milestone.Again, Belichick wasn’t as enthused.”It was a play were a lot of things went wrong, and he was a big part of it,” said Belichick. “That’s what happens in the NFL. You blow a play, the other team takes advantage of it.”Give the Bengals credit for taking advantage of it,” he said.Other members of the team weren’t quite as uncompromising.”He got up,” said defensive end Richard Seymour, “so that’s good. You never want to be the guy to get hit. You want to do the hitting. But it’s a difficult game, and in this league you’re definitely going to take some hits.”uBelichick probably wouldn’t have agreed with safety Brandon Merriweather, then. The third-year defensive back preferred to see the glass half full.”You can take some positives from every game,” he said. “Even games you lose 100 to nothing you can take some positives from. You just want to take everything as a stepping stone and get better every day. We still have some things we need to do better. We still have a long way to go.”uEven as preseason games go, this one would have less than ordinary had it not been for Chad Ochocinco – and not necessarily for his pass catching. The erstwhile Chad Johnson was pressed into kicking duty because of injuries ? and his extra point on Cincinnati’s only touchdown proved the difference in the game.”I never thought I’d be talking about his kicking,” Belichick said. “But it was the difference in the game. And his kickoffs were good too. He was the best kicker they had out there.”But Chad’s a tremendous athlete,” Belichick said.Ocochinco – of course – gave himself a new nickname because of his kicking: Estaban Ochochinco.”I’ve been kicking since high school,” he said. “It was easy. It was just like riding a bike. You have not done it in a while, but it is still the same thing. I do not think they need to bring anybody in. I can do the kicking for the preseason.”uIf there’s anything new with the Patriots this season, it’s that they’re using the 4-3 defense more than ever. For most of the Bill Belichick era, the Pats have been a strict 3-4, with Seymour, Vincent Wilfork and Ty Warren the three stalwarts up front.”We started out (that way),” said Seymour, “and then moved to the 4-3 defense (which features four down linemen). We have the versatility and the ability up front to change, not only game-by-game, but series to series. And I think that’s going to be an asset for us.”