COMMENTARY
Five takeaways from the Patriots’ 27-20 season-opening victory, in which they overcame some uncharacteristic mistakes to topple the Texans:
Turnovers make it tougher
It ultimately ended as a one-score game, and the final statistics don’t show much disparity between the two sides – New England’s advantage in first downs was just 23-21, while it held an edge of 389-325 in yards gained from scrimmage – but that doesn’t reflect how much the Patriots outplayed their opponents over the course of the afternoon. On both sides of scrimmage, the Pats asserted themselves as the better team, marking a welcomed departure for a team that’s recently spent the initial weeks of the regular season suffering through growing pains or pulling early September wins out of the fire.