AP photo New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, right, speaks to quarterback Cam Newton on the sideline in the first half Sunday against Miami.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Welcome to Old Time Football.

You kind of had the feeling on Sunday that the New England Patriots should have been wearing leather helmets.

Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels kept things simple for his team and it worked in the form of a 21-11 win over the Miami Dolphins.

Can we expect more of this? Perhaps. It all depends on the matchups, and the Patriots have always been very good about that. The Dolphins were one of the worst teams against the run a year ago and New England does what it always does, and what any NFL team should do – attack a weakness. The result: 42 rushes for a whopping 217 yards. Very un-Patriot like over the last few years,especially with a guy named Brady as the quarterback. But he’s no longer the QB, and your leading rusher Sunday was the new QB, Cam Newton.

Teams can always be afraid to change. The Patriots weren’t.

“We always try to do what’s best for the team to win,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said Monday. “Everything we’ve done for the last 20 years, and rightfully so, has been for Tom Brady. Everything was dedicated to him, other than the games he didn’t play in…So there were times when we had to play differently (during the suspension and when Brady hurt his knee in 2008).

“But when your starting quarterback has things that he’s good at or things that you can take advantage of, then I think you try to take advantage of them.”

It made sense also to simplify things, given the fact there was no preseason and the Patriots had a quarterback that was new to them, and vice-versa.

Newton evidently has the abitlity to use the option. In other words, keep the ball or let the running back take it. You could see that old time, college type style used on several of his 15 runs.

“Some of those runs were option-type runs, so we don’t knew who’s going to get the ball,” Belichick said. “It all depends on how the defense plays. It’s not like handing the ball off to the halfback and running up the middle.

“When you run plays that have some type of an option to them, you don’t know for sure who’s going to get the ball. That’s just an unpredictable part of that play.”

Belichick said it’s just like a pass play. The quarterback has to make a decision on where to throw it based on the defense.

“It depends on the coverage and the matchup that you get,” he said. “It’s the same thing on an option type run. The quarterback could keep it or the quarterback could hand off. It really depends on how the defense defends the play.”

Thus, we are led to believe the plan was not to have Newton carry the ball a lot – it was to have him make the decision.

Sunday he often appeared to make the right one. That shows a lot of trust in a quarterback, albeit a veteran, who is running your offense in a game for the first time. But heck, it worked, right?

Rex Burkhead, Sony Michel, James White, rookie J.J. Taylor, and even wideout Julian Edelman took turns carrying the ball along with Newton.

Will this continue? As usual – and as it should be – it depends on the matchup. Obviously Belichick surprised his old friend Dolphins coach Brian Flores, whose team really had no answer for the option and the rest of the rushing attack.

“We’ll see how teams play us going forward on those type of plays,” Belichick said. “If we urn those again – I don’t know – we’ll do what’s best each week based on the team that we’re playing and how we feel we can attack them.”

And Belichick knows that McDaniels will figure that out, the same way he knew that he could surprise Miami with Edelman’s end-around.

“Josh totally understands defenses,” Belichick said. “He’s coached on defense. He knows how defenses operate and what their choices are, and if they choose one, they’re vulnerable having not chosen the other one in certain areas.”

The Patriots seemingly have chosen their strength for now. Perhaps they’ll try to control the clock, pound away and also rely on what still looks like a very good defense to allow them to control the tempo on the other side of the ball. In other words, not have to play from behind.

Remember the words of legendary Londonderry High School football coach Tom Sawyer: “Football,” he said, “always comes down to blocking and tackling.”

Right now, that is the Patriot Way.