The New England Patriots kicked off the Jerod Mayo era with a mostly boring first preseason game against the Carolina Panthers on Thursday night. Most of the starters from both teams didn’t play much, if at all, so you would think there may not be much to take away from the game.
Well, you’d be wrong about that. Let’s get into our takeaways from the Patriots’ 17-3 win.
Defense dominates: The Panthers aren’t a good team, and a lot of their starters didn’t play. It was still noticeable how dominant the Patriots were on the defensive side of the ball.