FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- It may have been among the duller football games Patriots fans will watch this season, but coach Bill Belichick was pleased with his players' effort in their 7-6 win over the Saints on Thursday night.

"We competed for 60 minutes," Belichick said. "I thought we worked hard."

The preseason opener came on the heels of two days of joint practices with the Saints. Belichick seemed to be happy with what the Patriots got out of their week of work.

"It was a good week in terms of working with the Saints both in practice and then tonight," he said. "I think there are a lot of things we can learn from all three of those days and certainly a lot of things we can learn from tonight."

Other bits from Belichick:

On play of rookies: "You know, I think really all the players that I saw – especially the rookies – some of them did some good things. There’s a long way to go. We have a lot of work to do. I don’t want to get too up or too down on anything. We just want to keep working and getting better."

On offensive line personnel: "We’ve played a lot of people at each position. I don’t think there was any position we didn’t play a lot of people. That’s what these games are for: to evaluate the players."

On QB Brian Hoyer and his touchdown drive: "I wouldn’t say we lit it up offensively at any point in any aspect of the game. But I thought each of them had their – we had some good things and we had some other things that weren’t so good that we need to improve on, some corrections we need to make, timing things we need to work on. It’s like that at every position."