The Patriots figure to be much improved defensively in 2012.

Chandler Jones, Dont’a Hightower and Steve Gregory are new additions that will start for New England.

Vince Wilfork believes the Patriots' defense is showing signs of that promise in the preseason.

“We're going into the third game now and everything has to be gelling,” he said. “This third game, I think everyone treats as a regular season game and you approach your preparation and everything like that. We’re going to have a lot of quality reps out there and see what we can put together as a team. We definitely need it.” 

Wilfork has expressed optimism about the New England pass rush.

“I’m happy with where we're at, but we can get better. We definitely can get better,” Wilfork said. “That’s what we strive for every week: to get better. But it's starting to come together, guys are starting to understand how we need to rush. Now that we're way deep into camp, we should have a good, good idea of what we have, the moves that we like, some things we don't like, what we need to work on and what we're pretty good at. So we should have a good sense of where we're at with that, but I’m pretty happy with where we're at.”