Brady keeps ’em running

Fair to say it’s not often that Patriots fans want to see Tom Brady come out of a football game. But Sunday’s rout of the Dolphins might have been one of those times.

Brady, save for a brief, planned substitution by backup Brian Hoyer on one second-quarter drive, played through the first series of the second half despite the Patriots building a 24-0 first-half advantage . . . and despite playing without his three top receivers in terms of catches in Wes Welker, Deion Branch, and Aaron Hernandez . . . and despite having nothing at stake since a first-round bye and home-field advantage were secured last week . . . and despite the lingering memory of Welker suffering a devastating knee injury in a meaningless regular-season finale last year at Houston . . . and . . . well, you can exhale now.

“The decisions we made were the same as they always are: What’s best for the football team,” said coach Bill Belichick on the decision to play Brady. “We did what we felt was best for the football team. Everybody else may not see it that way. But that’s what we try to do. We try to do what’s best for the team.”

Playing Brady — no matter the circumstances — certainly qualifies as what’s best for the team. And that was again the case Sunday. Brady completed 10 of 16 passes for 199 yards and two touchdowns and — it sort of goes without saying at this point — no interceptions. It is Brady’s ninth consecutive game with at least two TD passes without a pick. He also extended his NFL record of passes without an interceptions to 335, and he became the sixth quarterback in league history to throw at least one TD pass in all 16 games.

“It’s good, man,” Brady said of the statistic that matters most to the Patriots — their 14-2 record. “We talked about [getting this win] all week. We’d hate to come out here and not finish the season the way we expected to . . . A lot of guys really stepped up and made some big plays: Taylor Price and Brandon [Tate] and [Julian Edelman], with Wes and Deion and Aaron not playing. All those other guys really stepped up. It was great to see.”

Brady said he knew that he would return to the game when Hoyer briefly replaced him in the first half.

“Yeah, coach had told me that last night that we were going to substitute like that for situations,” Brady said. “I’d rather it not be third-and-12 when I go back in, but it was just the way it ended up being.”

With Brady and eventually Hoyer at the helm today, the Patriots’ offense finished with some staggering accomplishments. The short list:

Their quarterbacks tied the NFL record for the fewest interceptions in a season (5); their point total (518) is seventh-best in NFL history; their turnover differential of plus-28 is a franchise record; they scored 31 or more points in eight straight games; Brady finished with the fifth-best passer rating in league history (111.0).

And on it goes. Of course, they’re just regular-season feats, which is probably why Belichick took the understated approach when talking about his offense’s achievements.

“He’s playing well. He’s done a good job for us,” Belichick said of Brady. “The guys who are catching, they’re doing a good job of it, too. The guys who are blocking, they’ve done a pretty good job. The guys who are running. When you have a good offense, it’s usually because the whole team is playing well and not just one guy. I think that’s the case on offense for us. We get good play out of multiple players. That’s what makes it run.”

Sunday, Brady made it run a lot longer than anyone outside of the Patriots’ locker room expected.

And now it all begins again in two weeks.

“We’ve put ourselves in a real good position,” Brady said. “Really, none of it matters at this point other than I think . . . the greatest advantage we have is that we don’t have to play next week and we’re at home the following week. So, that’s really what we’ve earned to this point. I don’t think we’ve earned anything more than that. Hopefully we’ll go out here in a couple weeks and play well. I think that’s what we’d love to do.”