On Sunday, New England defeated Buffalo by the misleading score of 40-32. The Patriots may have won by only one score, but New England held an 11-point lead at halftime and a 24-point lead after three quarters. The Patriots were in control of the game for most of the contest, and held an average lead of 9.8 points during each second of game play (the “Game Script”).

Teams with large leads don’t pass very often; in general, you’d expect a team with a Game Script of +10.0 to pass around 50% of the time. But New England threw on 80% of all snaps! That even includes three Tom Brady kneels, and one run each by wide receivers Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola. Excluding those plays, New England passed on 61 of 71 plays, an astonishing 86% pass rate. Much of that number owes to a stout Buffalo run defense, but that’s a remarkable pass-happy performance regardless of Game Script or opponent; given that it came in a game where New England dominated, it was even more noteworthy. By comparison, Minnesota had a Game Script of +10.4 against Detroit, and passed on just 31.7% of plays. In fact, none of the other 31 teams passed as often as New England in week two.

Below are the week 2 game scripts data. For new readers, here is how to read the table. Pittsburgh beat San Francisco, at home, by the score of 43-18 (a 25-point margin). The Steelers had a Game Script of +15.9, and threw 27 passes against 25 runs, for a Pass Ratio of 51.9%. San Francisco, meanwhile, threw 51 passes and ran 30 times, for a 63.0% pass ratio.

• Other pass-happy teams include the Lions, Raiders, and — of course — Dolphins. The game was never exactly out of reach, but the Lions abandoned the running game — in part because of ineffectiveness. The team’s four backs — Theo Riddick, Ameer Abdullah, Joique Bell, and Michael Burton — combined for 12 carries and just 18 yards. Derek Carr actually won a game and threw it 46 times, something that doesn’t exactly go together for Raiders quarterbacks. Latavius Murray didn’t play poorly, but Carr had more than three times as many dropbacks as Murray had carries. Perhaps this is a sign of trust in Oakland’s young quarterback? As for the Dolphins at least this week there was an excuse for the team pretending that running wasn’t an option: Lamar Miller gained just 14 yards on 10 carries. But it’s getting a little ridiculous to see Miami give Ryan Tannehill 49 plays and the running backs 12 carries.

• Several teams other than Minnesota were run-heavy: Tampa Bay, Cleveland and Tennessee (the latter two in the same game) chose not to rely on their Heisman Trophy-winning (but young) quarterbacks, while the Bears went run-heavy without Jay Cutler. The Bengals also leaned on the running game: Andy Dalton was efficient, but this weekend’s game was like 2013 all over again. Tyler Eifert and Marvin Jones combined for three catches in 2014 due to injuries, but each caught a touchdown against San Diego. And Giovani Bernard, who lost the starting job to Jeremy Hill last year, took advantage of two Hill fumbles by rushing for 126 yards on 20 carries and catching his three targets for 16 yards.

• Only two teams won with negative Game Scripts this week: Atlanta and Denver. Writing about the Giants blowing late-game leads is getting kind of boring, but there was nothing boring about the Broncos/Chiefs game. For all the talk about Peyton Manning and his struggles, the Broncos are still relying on Manning because C.J. Anderson isn’t doing any better. He rushed 12 times for 27 yards (Ronnie Hillman had 9 carries for 34 yards), which is part of the reason Manning wound up dropping back 48 times.

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Oh, and if you missed week 1’s column (posted on Sunday), you can see that here.