FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- If there has been one theme that has resonated with the New England Patriots' approach regarding running back Dion Lewis, it has been patience.

Lewis is coming back from a torn left ACL, and while the club activated him to the 53-man roster on Saturday, he wasn't part of the 46-man game-day roster in Sunday night's loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

Perhaps that changes for Sunday's road game against the San Francisco 49ers, but even if it does, it sure sounds like the Patriots aren't planning on any type of major workload for him.

"I think any time a player is coming back from missing a significant amount of time, there’s a certain buildup process," coach Bill Belichick said Wednesday morning. "Sometimes that accelerates, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it just stays on a straight-line course. It’s hard to predict how that’s going to go.

"There’s a big difference between training and playing football. You can run around a track, run up and down a hill, do 10,000 pushups and all of that. I mean, that’s great, but that’s not being out there with 21 other guys playing football. Football is football. Training is an important part and component of being ready to play football, but playing football is playing football. Especially at this time of year where you’re halfway through the season and teams have quite a bit of scheme in, both us and our opponents, we’re not just looking at kind of some basic stuff like in the beginning or the year or in preseason, which is what preseason is. It’s very basic. We’re at a whole different point, so how does that get acclimated, what’s the right time, what’s the right ... it’s a little bit of a feel situation. We just keep going. We’ll see."

Last week, Belichick had also noted that "passing back" James White has played at a level that will make it challenging for anyone to overtake him.