FOXBOROUGH, Mass — Julian Edelman is on to the Cam Newton era.

Tom Brady’s two-decade run in New England came to an end earlier this year, and on Tuesday afternoon, Edelman made it clear he’s done talking about his old friend. The wide receiver’s video conference opened with a question about the similarities between Brady – now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – and Newton, and Edelman quickly shot it down.

“I’m not here to talk about players on other teams,” Edelman replied. “I’m enjoying playing with Cam, so we’re going to leave it at that.”

From there Edelman was a bit more open in his responses. The veteran has been given a noticeably lighter workload than usual this summer. There have been days when he is very limited at practice, and one session when he wasn’t on the field at all.
Edelman admitted it’s an adjustment for him.

“Ah, yeah it is,” Edelman said. “I’ve been playing here, this is my 12th year. This is the first time I’ve really done this.”

He declined to say whether there was a specific reason for the way he’s been treated.

“We don’t talk about health here,” Edelman said. “I don’t even know if I can… So, I don’t want to, you know… we don’t talk about that.”

With no preseason games, this August has been unlike any other. Edelman said it will be important to face some live hitting and be tackled before the real games start.

“Definitely,” he said. “Our coaches do a good job of putting us in drills and certain live contact situations to get us best prepared dealing with the situation. But of course, you’d like to go out and get hit and just kind of get the cobwebs cleared a little and kind of get ready for the season and what it’s going to be. You’ve got to callous yourself so… you definitely need to be hit.”

CAM NEWTON returned to practice for the Patriots on Tuesday after missing Monday’s session with a reported excused absence.

It was a good sign for New England that Newton, the projected starter at quarterback, was back at practice and not dealing with an injury as it begins installing some of the Week 1 game plan this week.

But there are some worrisome absences for the Patriots.

Tuesday marked the second day in a row that the Patriots were without Isaiah Wynn, David Andrews and Damien Harris on offense. The team was also missing J.C. Jackson, Michael Jackson, Beau Allen, Nick Thurman and Michael Barnett at practice.