While most of the Patriots’ skill position players have already settled into a routine two games into the preseason, coach Bill Belichick has approached the running back position the same way a confident music-lover approaches his iPod: just hit shuffle — you’re bound to get a winner.

Through two games, Belichick has steadily rotated his running backs, breaking up their work mostly by halves: In the preseason opener against the Saints, it was BenJarvus Green-Ellis in the first half, with Chris Taylor and Laurence Maroney in the second half. And against the Falcons, it was heavy doses of Fred Taylor in the first half, followed up by Sammy Morris and BenJarvus Green Ellis in the second half.

The results have been good: a total of 30 carries for 120 yards against Atlanta, and 35 carries for 125 yards versus New Orleans. (As a group, they had two runs of 20 yards or more against the Falcons.) It adds up to 65 rushing attempts for 245 yards, or 3.8 yards per carry. Taylor has done the most with his chances so far, going for a preseason-high 54 yards against the Falcons.

As a team, it’s short of the magic four yards per carry mark, which most offenses like to shoot for. But when you have an offensive balance like the Patriots have displayed for the first two games (65 carries, 62 passing attempts), it’s clear the running game is doing its part to keep defenses honest.

While backs have been shifted in and out of the feature role, one thing that has stayed constant over the two preseason games is the number of rushing attempts each starter has seen. The magic number is 11: Green-Ellis (against New Orleans) and Taylor (against Atlanta) each got 11 carries each in the first half.

With no traditional “feature” back (not one who will exceed 200 carries this season, anyway) on the roster, Belichick said the idea is to get all of the backs into a consistent situation so they can get into a rhythm.

“So that we can evaluate his conditioning and his stamina and his running on a continuous basis,” Belichick said, “rather than letting everybody carry three plays a game or four plays a game and coming out of it with 20 or 20-some rushes and everybody gets to touch the ball three or four times. We try to give it to a few guys and let then take it and change the rotation and do it a little bit differently in another game.”

With four preseason games, and four different backs — excluding Kevin Faulk, who is a different type of runner and should therefore be in a separate class — it stands to reason Morris and Maroney will get the bulk of the first-half touches in the two final preseason games.

Belichick said fans shouldn’t read too much into the notion that Maroney — who received the bulk of the carries last year (a team-high 194) but struggled with red-zone fumbles at the end of the season — hasn’t gotten a start yet.

“I think he got plenty of opportunities in the first game. His role in this game against Atlanta was similar to Fred [Taylor’s] role last week against New Orleans,” Belichick said of Maroney, who had eight carries for 30 yards against the Saints but none against the Falcons.

“But again, those guys got a lot of carries in practice, too. Practicing against Atlanta, Laurence got a lot of carries down there and Fred got a lot of carries in practice against New Orleans, so it wasn’t like they didn’t get the teaching on how to run and read certain plays. They didn’t have all the contact and the tackling part of it, but as far as the recognition and timing and running and all of that, they did that.”