Patriots vs. Saints: Highlights, game tracker and more

The New England Patriots faced the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, Sept. 17 in NFL Week 2. Here are the highlights from the game.

The New England Patriots and New Orleans Saints are both coming off loses in front of national audiences and will try to avoid the dreaded 0-2 start against one another. Each team features a Super Bowl winning coach and a quarterback considered to be one of the greats in the game, but neither were happy with their start to the 2017 NFL season.

Most of tension about the Patriots after losing to the Chiefs last week was concerning their defense. However, there should’ve been plenty of talk about their offense too. Tom Brady looked pedestrian at best. Even more concerning was how out-of-sync everyone looked, in addition to Rob Gronkowski not looking great physically as he returned to the game.

Brady and the Pats put those concerns to rest quickly. Just toying with the Saints defense, New England drove down the field early for a Rex Burkhead score. Then came a beautiful score for Rob Gronkowski, who was able to fight through defenders and get into the end zone. They then finished a three-score first quarter with a touchdown to Chris Hogan.

Admittedly, Drew Brees and the Saints offense had some success against the still-concerning Patriots defense. Having said that, it was clear that the defending champs were in control and ready to rock moving forward. Mike Gillislee furthered that with another Pats touchdown to go into half up 27-13.

In the second half, the action died down considerably. The Patriots essentially just turned on the cruise control on offense, not really trying to push the ball quite in the same way that they were in the first 30 minutes.

Most impressive, though, was the fact that the defense stepped up big down the stretch. They were able to hold the Saints to just one second-half score before running out the clock for the big rebound victory.

Highlights

Next: NFL 2017: The 50 most untradeable players

Payton and Patriots head coach Bill Belichick will bring out all the stops in this one as each tries to avoid a huge deficit in their respective division races.