Bill Belichick has said that the New England Patriots receivers had a good amount of playing time during their pre-season win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The AFC East champions have been using inexperienced receivers during the pre-season, having lost wide receivers Wes Welker and Brandon Lloyd during free agency, while tight end Rob Gronkowski is continuing to recover from back surgery and Aaron Hernandez was released after being charged with murder.

The Patriots' head coach told reporters: "We got a lot of snaps in the first half and we also got a lot of snaps in the second half. I think we got pretty good, everybody got a pretty good amount of playing time.

"You can't control what's going to happen on those plays, how many opportunities guys are going to get, where the ball's going to go and so forth. But we had a lot of guys with a lot of playing time at that position and that's good.

"They got it this week in practice, got it the week before against the Eagles, so we'll just keep evaluating the whole group. I think they all got a pretty decent amount of playing time, I mean the guys who played a lot, it was fairly evenly split up."

The Patriots play the Detroit Lions next week.