FOXBORO — Kevin Faulk has played alongside Tom Brady longer anyone else in the Patriots locker room. So when he saw Brady acting differently than he had in the past earlier this season, he decided to confront the quarterback.

“You doing all right?” Faulk asked Brady two days before the Sept. 27 game against the Falcons. “I’ve played with you for a long time, and there’s just something that’s a little different now.”

Faulk has a unique ability to be able to read Brady — he’s the only other player still here who was on the roster in 2000 when the quarterback first arrived as a rookie — and the running back saw that Brady’s usual intensity wasn’t there.

“When you’re around someone for such a long period of time, you tend to take notice — you want to know,” Faulk said Wednesday when asked about the conversation. “You’re concerned about it because you’ve been around him for so long. You’ve been friends for so long. You’re more than teammates in this locker room.

“Whenever I saw it, I just wanted to tell him what I saw,” Faulk added. “That’s not the Tom that I know.”

As a result, Faulk believes he’s seen the quarterback rachet up his intensity the last few months. Faulk says he’s been more vocal about demanding accountability, and in the wake of Sunday’s loss to Miami, Brady called out his teammates publicly by saying, “at times we do and at other times, I don’t think we fight very hard.”

Brady clarified that statement on Wednesday, and in the process, appeared to take a veiled shot at the four players — Randy Moss, Derrick Burgess, Adalius Thomas and Gary Guyton — who were sent home for reportedly arriving late to an 8 a.m. team meeting Wednesday.

“It’s not about playing hard on Sundays. I mean, we do that,” Brady said Wednesday. “I think what coach tells us and what I was alluding to was probably more of just the other six days of the week. We’ve got to make the commitment to each other.

“And if it’s Monday and it’s Tuesday and coach wants us to come in on Monday and work or stay for a 2-1/2-hour practice on Wednesday and Thursday, then with no bitching and complaining, just doing the job.”

Brady was present for his weekly press conference the day after his wife, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, gave birth to a son. He did not practice.

Moss, Burgess, Thomas and Guyton all were reportedly sent home after showing up late for a Wednesday morning meeting, reportedly because of the weather. When asked about it, Patriots coach Bill Belichick said, “Anything that happens with discipline on the team stays between me and the players on the team.”

However, the four were listed on the injury report as not participating (not injury-related), and none of them were present in the New England locker room during media availability.

“That’s coach’s decision,” explained Brady. “The guys that are here, I have to do my job. I have plenty of things to do. Like I said, I have show up every day and bring whatever I have — the energy and leadership that I have to this team. That’s what I owe those guys. That’s what my job is.”

But Wednesday, it was evident his recent messages have been received loud and clear in the New England locker room.

“It’s dead-on. We need to respond to adversity better,” running back Sammy Morris said. “I think we all either know it or felt it, and I think him just saying it kind of just put a little more emphasis on it.”

“We’ve got a lot of guys who work hard and set a good example,” said wide receiver Wes Welker, who was asked about Brady’s statements in the wake of the Miami game,  “and we need to continue to have those guys do that and bring some of these other guys along and make sure everybody’s pulling on the same rope.

“I think we have a lot of guys who are fighters, and we’re going to continue to battle and do what we can to get better on a daily basis. That’s what it comes down to.”

“He’s our leader,” Faulk said of Brady. “Obviously, you don’t want to believe it, but at the same time, there has to be some truth to it. So you just look at the film and take it for what it’s worth and move on and try to fix the problem.

“It shows,” Faulk said of the lack of fight. “When you look at it on TV or look at it on the game film, it’s showing. So there is some truth to that.”