When thing get to crunch time in the NFL, or any league or sport, for that matter, the idea is to get the ball in the hands of your best players.

In the New England Patriots’ way of doing things lately, that would be their defense. And the Miami Dolphins obliged in a Patriots’ season-saving 23-21 win at Gillette Stadium.

And thus the Patriots live to fight another day. They’ll head to Buffalo next weekend, with the simple fact that if they win, they’re in. If they lose, there are a few combinations we’d need a scientist to explain but there’s still a chance they can get in.

There’s no doubt that Patriots safety Kyle Dugger saved their season with a pick six of a Miami QB Teddy Bridgewater’s pass, a play that gave the Patriots the lead for good at 16-14 with 2:51 left in the third quarter and also seemingly knocked Bridgewater out of the game trying to make a tackle.

At that point, the Dolphins were toast, their late score and the Patriots needing Hunter Henry’s sure hands to recover an onsides kick to be sure.

Remarkably, Dugger’s jaunt was the New England defense’s seventh touchdown of the season, fourth straight game in which it scored.

As Dugger said, “It just kind of show the mentality is get the ball and go score.”

The Patriots defense is starting to impact opposing coaches’ thinking. Miami coach Mike McDaniel went against the Best Player rule, choosing instead to run the ball at odd times when he had a pair of 1,000-yard receivers in Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill at his disposal vs. a depleted secondary and the caught just a combined seven passes.

His explanation? He didn’t want the Patriots defense to score. Never mind the fact the Dolphins were going up against a depleted secondary.

“That was kind of going into the week, you play certain defenses, and the Patriots, I think, more than anything, have scored a lot of points on defense,” McDaniel said, “and so trying to minimize the amount of time you put yourselves in the situations where it plays to a defense’s strength.”

If you’re a Miami fan, stay away from sharp objects. Now, granted, McDaniel got pantsed by Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who used four safeties on a lot of plays to make up for the fact his best corner, Jalen Mills, was out and his other, Jonathan Jones, was banged up – although, he too, had an interception.

“Next man up mentality,” Patriots safety Jabril Peppers said. “Anybody we put out there we believe can get the job done. … We hold ourselves to a high standard. We want to play our best ball. … Everybody’s interchangable. We all understand the game plan, we all understand what we want to do. … Keep everything in front of you, be physical, come up and make the tackles.”

And when it works like it did Sunday, there’s a pretty good feeling in the Patriots locker room.

“I’ve never been a part of anything like this before,” Peppers said, “just going out there, playing with your brothers, having fun. … We’ve just got to keep it going. We have one more left, we just have to keep it going.”

“Obviously some moving parts that we were dealing with,” Belichick said. “The overall resiliency and determination that the team, as a group and the staff showed I thought was really, really good this week.”

It’s pretty obvious what works for the Patriots. If their defense plays well, they win. If they don’t, they’re toast, because the offense can’t make up for that – despite what it did Sunday with a huge 11-play, 89-yard drive that chewed up 5:06 and made it a two-score game.

But even Jones admitted that “When I first came here, I was really fired up because I knew that we had such a great defense, everyone last year and this year, throughout history.”

And because of it, the Patriots, despite their obvious 8-8 flaws, aren’t history for the 2022-23 season.

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