Here’s a few tids and bits as you all of a sudden we’re seeing signs of Patriots fever gripping the region:

First, Nashua Silver Knights fans, expect a new field manager to be named by the end of this month. At least that’s the goal, according to general manager Cam Cook. The team received a flood of applicants after former skipper Kyle Jackson stepped down, and are now in step two of the process, which means getting references, going through second interviews after paring down the field.

“We’re starting to zero in on a guy or two,” Cook said, noting that they’ve had applicants from either college head coaches or assistants from all three divsions. Cook says he won’t complete the roster building until a new manager has been hired to get his input, save the holdovers from last year’s team.

“It wouldn’t be fair to hire someone and say ‘Here’s your 30 guys,'” he said.

The one thing that is interesting is this is probably the widest search the organization has done in at least 10 years. “That’s something I hadn’t considered until the applications started coming in,” Cook said.

One thing you probably won’t see is a high profile college head coach, because as Cook noted, they have so much more to deal with in building their own roster year to year with the transfer portal, taking up a lot of the summer. As always, stay tuned.

—-Speaking of the Patriots, what to make of last Sunday’s big win and chances today vs. Seattle? The Patriots won the game at the point of attack on both sides of the ball, that’s where it started. Tackling on the defensive end, blocking on the offensive end, and won the turnover battle hands down. They won’t win with QB Jacoby Brissett throwing 40 times a game; he threw 24 times.

What about today? It gets harder.Now the Seahawks have film, They had a back rush for over 100 yards in their win over Denver (Kenneth Walker, 103 yards). The Patriots controlled the line of scrimmage last week, can they do it again?

— You’d be hard-pressed to find a local high school head coach who over the last two years has loved his group of players more than Scott Knight, whose team is set to face Keene Saturday afternoon at Stellos. “This team works so hard, and they love football,” he said, pointing to a host of players in the weight room earlier this past week. It’s a group of underclassmen that have been pressed into varsity duty, many of them, since they were freshmen. A team to watch locally.

—- OK, there’s no current NFL broadcast analyst more polarizing than Tom Brady, right? Brady’s debut on FOX was less than stellar, and while you might say it was his maiden voyage and to go easy on him, he had 17 practice games with broadcast partner Kevin Burkhardt. ITALICS Seventeen. END

But everyone is missing the point with Brady’s venture into this. The problem is, FOX demoted one of the better analysts in the game in Greg Olsen, who was, in this scribe’s humble opinion, fantastic. Everyone understandably is star struck with Brady, but how about – gasp – having him get his feet wet on the regional broadcasts for a year or two?

It’s a shame, especially for Olsen. The other factor is Brady’s bid to be part owner of the Raiders that forced the NFL to impose so many restrictions on him broadcasting that you have to wonder if either is really worth it. FOX has the Super Bowl, so Brady knows he will have some work to do. For that game alone, we vote for a three-man booth with Burkhardt, Brady and Olsen. But that we’re sure won’t happen.

— What happened in Pelham? John Trisciani abruptly resigned as head football coach on the eve of the season opener, and unfortunately becomes the answer to a trivia quesiton of a coach who was hired by two schools to lead their program in the calendar year and did not coach either team in an official game. Sources say he was not asked to resign, and one hopes it’s not a health issue. Hopefully Trisciani will be back on someone’s sideline at some point.

—- The International Soccer Club of Nashua has revived the soccer field at the now closed Da niel Webster College, the same way Rivier Univeristy has been using the Harvey Woods baseball field. And this is a way to be a home for the ISC pro team that plays in the UPSL Fall League. However, Nashua North boys soccer coach Jeremy Zelanes, who was successful at helping to put two playoff teams together in the UPSL spring league, is no longer the Eagles general manager. He resigned two days after the tough playoff loss to Brockton in early July over philosophical differences. Zelanes now runs a team in Manchester in the UPSL fall league and it will be interesting to see the impact for the ISC Eagles play again in the spring.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on X, formerly known as twitter, @Telegraph _TomK.