This shouldn’t have happened.

Yes, the New England Patriots should have beaten the Las Vegas Raiders, as they did, 36-20 on Sunday at an empty Gillette Stadium.

Yes, we knew the Raiders would make mistakes, penalties, turnovers, do other dumb things. We knew that defensively they’d be lacking and allow the Patriots to put up points.

But, uh, 250 rushing yards for New England? Sony Michel, 117 yards in nine carries? Rookie J.J. Taylor, 43? And with, very sadly, no James White, home with his family after tragedy struck last week. And, with no David Andrews, the starting center having been put on injured reserve following surgery to fix a reported broken thumb? With veteran Joe Thuney, who you wonder if someday he could play all 11 positions on either side of the ball, filling in at center for the first time? And if Thuney had to play center, you had to start Michigan rookie Michael Onwnu in Thuney’s regular spot at left guard?

Yeah, Raiders coach Jon Gruden could have picked out any of them and used his Monday Night Football line, “This guy….”

“Just coming in with a tough loss last weekend against Seattle, we were just looking to bounce back as a team and establish the run game,” Patriots back Rex Burkhead, who had 49 yards rushing and scored three TDs, two on the ground. “The offensive line did a tremendous job all night of course, and the receivers out wide – N’Keal (Harry), Julian (Edelman), D-Byrd (Damiere Byrd) just really finishing blocks.”

Yikes. We were all ready to put Michel out to pasture, not thinking he’d ever remind us again of the back that was so solid during the Patriots’ Super Bowl run two years ago.

Guess again.

Michel had two long runs of 38 and 48 yards in the second half. Despite not showing blazing speed, he showed enough for the Patriots to likely feel confident in him again.

“Every week is a motivation to our team, to our offense and we want to play the best we can each and every week,” Michel said. “Obviously last week wasn’t how we wanted it to go, but we have to move forward and build our identity, who we want to be as an offense and I think we’re working toward that.”

Who the Patriots want to be is the team that takes advantage of the opposition’s weakness. It was clear, despite all their perceived issues, the Patriots were going to keep running the football against Gruden’s less-than-intimidating defense. Heck, the Raiders needed old friend Richard Seymour back on their line.

And heck, the Patriots didn’t even need Cam Newton (27 rushing, 162 passing) to be Superman.

“You know, when you hand the ball off and there’s nobody there, it’s a lot more than that,” Gruden said. “I give Cam credit, give the Patriots credit.

“We gotta take a good look at what happened on those plays. Obviously we did (miss) some tackles and we had a couple players out of their gap, and not against the New England Patriots, not against anybody (and win).”

“We ran the ball well,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said. “We got some good blocking in there, but our backs and receivers, especially the backs, ran hard. They made a lot of yards on their own. They broke tackles and made a lot of yards with the ball in their hands.”

And Belichick, talking about the re-shuffling of the offensive line with Andrews out, said his offense did the most important thing.

“Generally speaking, we got a hat on a hat,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of negative plays. We didn’t go backwards.”

Newton has nicknames for just about every player, and was giddy after the game. “We want to put defenses in fits knowing that we have so many ways to beat you and a plethora of different type of schemes,” he said. ” …We want to run downhill, we want to run out on the edge. We went to throw it deep. It doesn’t matter. …

“Like I said, Burky (Burkhead) had a day, and who knows who it could be next week?”

Well, seeing as they are at Kansas City, it could be a guy named Mahomes. But that’s for another day.

“Looking forward to getting out of here,” Gruden said, “and going back to Vegas.”

After going backwards in New England.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.

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