Before playing their roles in the next episode of network television’s longest-running sports series seven weeks into its 53rd season, several Patriots recalled their earliest, fondest memories of Monday nights.

More than one mentioned music.

“It’s exciting, the world’s watching, so it’s pretty cool. Under the lights,” a smiling Deatrich Wise said. “Being a kid watching Monday Night games and any type of night football, it was always cool to hear that theme song played.

“Don-don-don-DA!,” Wise continued to laughter, sounding the opening notes of “Heavy Action,” the iconic score composed by Brit Johnny Pearson and first used to tease ABC’s Monday Night Football in 1975.

“I won’t personally hear it on the field,” he said, gesturing and widening his smile. “But I’ll know it’s being played.”

First among David Andrews’ recollections was an entirely different song.

“Hank Williams Jr. for me, growing up,” said Andrews, referring to “All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night,” which ran as the series’ main theme from 1989 to 2011.

Personally, I’ll take Willie Nelson over Williams any day of the week, and twice on Mondays. And being nearly twice as old as both Deatrich and David, I remember the late-game sound of “Dandy” Don Meredith crooning Nelson’s “The Party Is Over.”

So for me, Monday Nights of my long-ago youth began with the brass fanfare that still evokes excitement in Wise and ended, officially, when Meredith, serenaded the audience in his Texas drawl, “Turn out the lights…”

If I was lucky to last that long.

Most Mondays, my primary goal as a kid was to make it to halftime highlights. In that sense, while I hear ear-to-ear with Wise, I see eye-to-eye with his head coach.

“Monday night highlights, that was big,” Bill Belichick recalled on Friday, alluding to the unmistakably unique delivery of Howard Cosell recapping the previous day’s games. “That was kind of your only chance to see what the highlights from the weekend were.

“It was always kind of a thing to be home Monday night by halftime. Which was like, the game started at nine, that seemed like that was like 10:30, 11 o’clock at night. Usually you waited up till halftime, watched the highlights and then went to bed. At least that was my routine, if you could make it that long. Great part of the development of the National Football League and football. Certainly, put a lot of excitement into Monday night, that probably wasn’t there before.”

Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Howard Cosell narrated the first and most extensive package of NFL highlights each week during halftime of Monday Night Football. Here’s a sample from Dec. 12, 1977. 

Whether or not Belichick made it home in time by the mid-1970s depended on when he left the Colts or Lions coaches’ offices. Whether or not I got to hear Cosell’s multi-syllabic narration was solely contingent on the leniency of my mom.

Still vivid, always, is a living room scene, as kid of about 10 or 11 years old. Kneeling on our couch, holding a curtain aside and looking out the front window as snow fell, I pleaded with her to let me stay up through the halftime show. 

No way will there be school tomorrow, I reasoned. They’ve got to give us a ‘snow day,’ I told her.

Please allow a later bedtime tonight. Just this once!

I can’t tell you if we ended up out of school the next day. No idea, honestly.

But I am quite certain, I got to stay up. Mom was the best.

Naturally, I grew old enough to stay tuned for all four quarters. The most vivid memories became those of the live games I watched.

Lawrence Taylor ending Joe Theismann’s career in 1985. Dan Marino’s Dolphins handing the Bears their lone loss a couple of weeks later. Antonio Freeman’s non-, no-make-that-a-game-winning catch against the Vikings in 2000. The night the Saints came back to the Superdome post-Katrina with Steve Gleason’s blocked punt in 2006.

And most recently, given my view from the visitor’s radio booth last December, the windy, snowy night in Western New York when the Pats beat the Bills and we were treated to bizarre yet chilling football theatre.

Thankfully, there’s no snow in tonight’s Foxborough forecast, just a possibility of rain. After all, I no longer need the probability of a Tuesday ‘snow day’ to make it through Monday Night Football.

My pre-game playlist is set. Heavy Action is first in the cue. I’ll talk to you around 8 p.m. Our Jim Louth will have the halftime highlights.

As for end-of-game songs, I’ll leave that to our own ex-quarterback in the booth.