When Mike Vrabel took over as Patriots head coach, he admitted he wasn’t sure his team was prepared “to take advantage of bad football.”

He got an emphatic answer Sunday in New England’s 42-13 rout of the Panthers.

Poor tackling on a punt return? Took advantage.

Unable to set an edge in the red zone? Took advantage.

Tripping penalty on a second-and-26 snap? Took advantage. 

More screwed up punt coverage? Took advantage again.

It was 28-6 by halftime, and the Panthers had bad-footballed themselves right out of the game. The Patriots, meanwhile, showed themselves to be the kind of team Vrabel wasn’t sure he had back in January. 

Whether they can maintain their status as beneficiaries of bad football remains to be seen. They generated enough bad ball of their own in Weeks 1 and 3 that taking advantage of the bad ball generated by their opponents was kind of an afterthought.

Vrabel’s hope now is that the Patriots can play the kind of football — as clean as it was opportunistic — they showcased in Week 4.

“When we don’t beat ourselves,” Vrabel said, “and we take care of the football, and we play complementary football, and we get stops on third down, the return, the special teams are a factor, and we score touchdowns in the red zone, it can look like something. 

“Again, that’s not guaranteed every week, but certainly we can see the difference in how critical those phases are and putting them all together.”

Plenty of takeaways from this one. Let’s get to them in this week’s What We Learned…

Drake Maye is making the Year 2 leap

One month into the season, there’s enough in the way of sample size to say that Drake Maye is a better player than he was a year ago. After completing 14 of his 17 attempts for 203 yards, two touchdown passes and one touchdown run, he’s statistically one of the best quarterbacks in football.

He’s fifth in quarterback rating (109.4), behind only Lamar Jackson, Jordan Love, Jared Goff and Josh Allen. He’s sixth in completion percentage over expected (6.0). He’s leading the league in pass EPA and dropback success rate.

Further evidence of Maye’s impressive start to his sophomore season? He’s one of just three players in NFL history to have a 135.0 passer rating, a rushing touchdown and a passing touchdown in multiple games in a season. The other two: Jackson (2023-24) and Allen (2024). And he’s just four games in.

Additionally, Maye has put together three straight games with a completion percentage of 75.0 or better and two touchdown passes. That’s tied for the second-best such streak in NFL history, trailing only Tom Brady, who had four of those games consecutively in his 2007 MVP campaign.

Long way to go, but it certainly seems like Maye’s “Year 2 leap” is underway in New England.

Stefon Diggs picks up the pace

Through three games, Stefon Diggs had caught just about everything thrown his way, but he wasn’t hurting opposing defenses with explosive gains.

Different story in Week 4. 

He caught six of seven targets for 101 yards, making it his first 100-yard game since Week 6 of 2023. 

Diggs came into the game with 12 catches for 112 yards and nearly doubled his season total against the Panthers.

“I feel like it’s been a slow buildup throughout the past couple weeks,” Diggs said. “I had to keep my eyes in the front of me, not what’s behind me.”

Diggs’ penchant for coming through in third-down (and fourth-down) situations continued on Sunday — he reeled in a 30-yarder to end the third quarter on fourth-and-3 — but he added a down-the-field element that had been missing. Whether it was a subtle shove to help him create separation on a back-shoulder throw or settling in a soft spot in zone coverage, his savvy at the position allowed him to find chunk plays more than once against Carolina.

Coming off an ACL injury that cut his season short last year, Diggs looked comfortable Sunday.

“He looked a little faster than I thought,” Maye said. “He looked pretty fast. I think he’s just going to keep getting more comfortable. Shoot, he’s a great player with the ball in his hands.

“He’s a great leader on this team. He’s great with the energy, being positive, and glad he’s a Patriot.”

Josh McDaniels schemes up explosives

Vrabel openly lamented last week that his offense hasn’t been more explosive. Against Carolina, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels tried to come up with a few different remedies.

His tight end screen to Austin Hooper — a short throw — went for an explosive 24-yard gain. Two plays later, his jet-motion end-around run for Antonio Gibson went for 21 yards. On the next play, McDaniels called for jet motion again but handed to Rhamondre Stevenson going in the opposite direction and he picked up 22 yards. 

McDaniels also asked Maye to get out of the pocket and make smart decisions, which the QB did. Maye scrambled for a touchdown when he saw his potential targets were covered. He rolled left and found Hunter Henry for another short-throw explosive that covered 31 yards and ended in the end zone. Late in the game, on another moving-pocket play near the goal line, Maye had nothing and wisely threw it away.

They’re still in the honeymoon period, but to this point, the McDaniels-Maye marriage has yielded results.

Marcus Jones is a ruthless, record-setting returner

With his whopping 167 yards as a punt returner Sunday, Marcus Jones broke Mike Haynes’ previous franchise record of 156 punt-return yards in a game.

After the Patriots defense let the Panthers glide down the field on their first drive of the game, Jones’ 87-yard touchdown was a momentum-shifter and a game-changer. He juked three would-be tacklers to get himself started and then was off to the races.

“I think a lot of that was just his own individual will, skill, and effort,” Vrabel said.

When Jones fielded the ball at the 13-yard line, he might have juked out his own teammates. It looked like Brenden Schooler wasn’t expecting a return, allowing a Panthers coverage player to spring right past him.

Asked after the game why he didn’t call for a fair catch, Jones smiled.

“I’m pretty ruthless back there,” he said. “I had a little bit of space, and I was just like, ‘Man, those guys trust me a lot and I trust them to make the right blocks.’ It kind of went from there.”

No punishment for Rhamondre Stevenson, really

Vrabel said it plainly on Friday: Rhamondre Stevenson wouldn’t be punished for fumbling twice in Week 3 against the Steelers. 

He wasn’t kidding. 

Stevenson led all Patriots backs in touches Sunday with 10, which also happened to be his average through the season’s first three games. He led the team in rushing with 38 yards on nine carries, and he started the game, taking the hand-off on the very first snap of the first drive.

It felt like Vrabel and his coaching staff trying to make a point. Despite hinting at some potential adjustment to Stevenson’s reps early last week, he was still their guy.

TreVeyon Henderson led the running back group in yards per touch (5.1), rushing seven times for 32 yards and a score, and catching two Maye targets for 14 yards. Antonio Gibson carried six times for 27 yards and a touchdown. 

The one way in which Stevenson might have seen his workload dialed back? He wasn’t given goal-line carries. Henderson and Gibson each punched theirs in from in close. 

DeMario Douglas not as fortunate

Douglas didn’t fumble in Week 3, but he wasn’t able to “knife” the way Vrabel wanted him to on a critical end-of-game, gotta-have-it, fourth-down completion against the Steelers. A week later, he played just eight snaps and didn’t touch the football. 

Through four weeks, Douglas has just five catches for 13 yards.

While Douglas was, for the most part, out of the rotation on Sunday, Vrabel did sing his praises for throwing a block that helped spring Henry on his 31-yard touchdown.

“Pop Douglas would have liked to have a couple extra catches today, but he also turned and blocked and Hunter Henry ran down the sidelines,” Vrabel said.

“Nobody’s going to say it unless I say it. So those are the things that matter, not the guy catching the touchdown. That’s the easy part. The hard part’s the guy that didn’t get the ball thrown to him that turns immediately and blocks his guy and we score from the 25 yard line.”

Christian Gonzalez back in full

There wasn’t much easing Gonzalez back into the lineup. He played 49 snaps, and he saw plenty of time on Carolina’s first-round rookie Tetairoa McMillan.

According to Pro Football Focus, McMillan ran 11 routes on Gonzalez and saw three targets with Gonzalez on him in coverage. Two of the passes were completed for 31 yards.

“Tet’s a great young player… We had a good battle,” Gonzalez said. “It was fun.”