The message from Vince Wilfork was clear and to the point.

The Pro Bowl nose tackle, one of a dwindling group of individuals in the Patriots locker room who can still remember what it feels like to win a Super Bowl, said Wednesday that the actions of the last couple of seasons will not be tolerated any more.

Point blank? It’s time to get back to playing Patriots football.

“We won around here for a long time, and a lot of teams sat back and watched us beat up on people. From the last year or two, teams wanted to play us because they thought we weren’t the same,” said Wilfork in a conference call with the media that ranged from lighthearted to serious to emotional (click here for the transcript). “We’ve got to do something to change that.

“Everybody’s not happy with how we ended the season last year. But you know what? Last year is last year. What we’ve done in the past we’ve done in the past,” he added. “Moving forward, this is how we’ve got to handle it. We’ve got to be accountable for one another.”

In his six previous seasons with the Patriots, Wilfork — who signed a reported five-year, $40 million deal earlier this week — has never been a rah-rah type of guy, preferring to let his play do the talking. As a result, he was always held in the highest esteem by his teammates — two Pro Bowls, a Super Bowl ring and a 51-game consecutive start streak that stretched over four full seasons will give you plenty of cred in the locker room.

But with his contract done, Wednesday’s statements could signal a new era for the Miami product. Wilfork has never been one to mince words, but he’s clearly more comfortable with his position with the franchise after putting pen to paper earlier this week. Wednesday’s statements signal the full evolution of a player who started in the NFL willing to defer to veterans. Now, he’s the type of guy who is telling people they need to get on board or get out of the locker room.

“As players, we’re going to have to start in the offseason training, and basically, everybody is going to have to be accountable,” Wilfork said. “If you’re on the field, you have to give me 100. You have to give me 100 percent. Always. We have to weed out the bad seeds, point blank.

“If you can’t give me what I’m giving you on the field, I don’t need you on the field with me. Point blank.

“You got to build trust. Show me that I can trust you. I have no problem, if a guy’s not giving me that, I have no problem telling that guy I don’t need him on the field, and I have no problem going to tell Bill (Belichick) I don’t want him on the field. That’s point blank.”

Wilfork’s new attitude is also likely borne out of the fact that the Patriots do not have many defensive veterans around anymore: After the offseason loss of leaders like Richard Seymour, Mike Vrabel, Rodney Harrison and Richard Seymour, the Patriots were a team that appeared rudderless defensively for large stretches of 2009.

Now, Wilfork believes that he and some of the younger players are ready to seize the leadership mantle and create a new generation of leaders in the New England locker room.

“We have a bunch of [leaders] on this team,” he said. “A lot of guys aren’t used to seeing young leaders. The leaders we had were older guys like Rodney [Harrison], [Richard] Seymour, [Tedy] Bruschi, [Mike] Vrabel – you name it. They were older guys and they’re not here anymore.

“But now you start to see younger guys becoming leaders early because they don’t take seven, eight, nine years, because we’re such a young ball club. But these young players we have — [Jerod] Mayo, [Brandon] Meriweather, we’ve got [Leigh] Bodden, [Ty] Warren, myself, Tom [Brady]. We have Randy [Moss], we’ve got Dan [Koppen] — we have guys in this locker room that know what it takes to win and you’ve just got to trust to it. We as players and as leaders on the team, we have to ask more of ourselves and we have to ask more out of our players, point blank.”

Wilfork said the changes that have to be made don’t necessarily by the front office or the coaches. It begins and ends with the guys in the locker room. And that process starts now.

“I think the leaders in this locker room, we’re going to have to approach each other and approach the team and let it know this is how we’ve got to do the things if we want to be successful and go from there,” Wilfork said. “But there’s no question in my mind that we have the guys to do that. We’ve got the guys to compete, but we’ve just got to get that out of them. And that’s no problem.”

It remains to be seen what sort of effect Wilfork’s words have. But with offseason workouts starting later this month, his teammates are clearly on notice: Going forward, you are either rolling with Vince, or you need to find a new zip code.

“We have to address it and get it better and people have to realize that we’re trying to get somewhere,” Wilfork said. “It’s nothing personal. If you don’t want to win, you don’t have to be here. Point blank.”

“So if you want to win, this is how we’re going to have to do it. You’ve got to be the believer and you’ve got to go forward and you might have to do a little something extra. That’s fine. By me doing something extra or by us doing something extra, [if that] gets us to the point we need to be, I’ll do it 100 out of 100 times. Point blank.”