And many fans here will call that turtling. Not me.... I was using the term tongue in cheek.
As far as both teams feeding off other teams mistakes, they average 40 pts/game thanks to their turnover ratio. Us, not so much. Take last Sunday for example, 6 turnovers, 3 points.
We can force them to turnover the ball, like we did against Chicago & score 13 points. If we turn it over, they are likely to score 49, or 59, or 37
Patriots are leading the league in scoring and turnovers differential, at 35.8 and 24
Texans are second in the league, with 29.3 and 14
So essentially, they score a touchdown more and get one more turnover per game, which seems fairly appropriate.
Since statistics will tell you what you want to hear, in this case it is that the Pats are a high scoring offense capable of dropping 50 points on a team, sometimes we have to look at the number a bit more deeply:
The first seven weeks of the season the Pats averaged 31 points a game. Their season average is being severely tweaked by a four week run where they averaged 48 points a game against teams in the bottom half in points allowed.
These same teams also are a combined -30 on turnover differential, which is indicative of ball control issues against all opponents, not just NE.
And finally, all four teams are ranked in the bottom half of the league for scoring offenses, averaging as a group 21 points per game.
Last week against Miami, which is currently #11 in scoring defense, the Pats managed 23 points.
All this to point out that the Pats simply took advantage of low scoring teams with porous defenses that were prone to turnovers to rack up a whole heck of a lot of points that were not needed to win the game, considering their average margin of victory was 27 points.
The Texans score almost 30 points a game, are third in the league in giveaways with only 12 and have the 4th best points allowed on defense.
Incidentally, the three losses for the Pats? All to teams in the Top 10 in points allowed: Arizona, Baltimore and Seattle. And none of those teams have a scoring offense like the Texans.