FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Put the ball in Tom Brady’s hands and there’s a good chance the New England Patriots will score — a lot.

More, in fact, than any other team.

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Tom Brady has been stretching opponents’ defenses to the limit recently. He leads the NFL with 27 TD passes and has led the Patriots to a league-best average of 31.6 points a game. The Associated Press

Ball at their own 13-yard line? Three plays later they score a touchdown. Even farther back, at the 6? That touchdown drive took all of eight plays. And that was just a small amount of the 45 points they scored in each of their last two games.

“We’re just trying to get the ball in the end zone. That’s what our job is,” Brady said Wednesday. “We don’t go out there to punt.”

With Brady throwing an NFL-leading 27 scoring passes, the Patriots are averaging 31.6 points per game, nearly three more than the second highest-scoring team, the Philadelphia Eagles, with 28.7.

They’ve done it with two rookie tight ends and two free-agent running backs all making the first contributions of their pro careers. At wide receiver, Deion Branch was obtained after the fourth game and Brandon Tate played just two games as a rookie last season.

They’ve done it against two of the NFL’s stingiest defenses, getting 39 points against Pittsburgh when the Steelers were ranked fourth and 45 against New York last Monday night when the Jets were ranked third.

Can the Patriots, tied for the NFL’s best record at 10-2, do it on Sunday at Chicago, which leads the NFC North at 9-3 and is ranked third in defense?

“We’ll see,” Patriots Coach Bill Belichick said. “In the end, it comes down to execution by our players. If they block and throw and catch and run, we’re going to score. If we don’t, then we probably won’t.

“There are no plays that you can put on paper and just say, ‘OK, hey, here are five touchdowns; go out and just line up here.’“

It almost seemed that way the past two games, when the Patriots scored on 14 of their 21 possessions: 12 touchdowns and two field goals.

In a 45-24 win at Detroit, the Patriots got touchdowns on their last five drives, not counting a game-ending possession on which Brady kneeled down twice. Then in a 45-3 rout of the Jets, the Patriots scored three touchdowns and a field goal on their first four drives.

On those nine consecutive drives when they tried to score, and did, Brady completed 19 of 23 passes for 360 yards and six touchdowns. And he hasn’t thrown an interception in seven games.

“You can see him do a lot of miraculous things,” said Branch, who caught three of those touchdowns, “but that comes with the front line doing their job. It takes a lot of guys doing their job in order for Tom to do his. He’s doing a great job. He’s doing what we need him to do.”

Brady was named AFC offensive player of the week for the second straight week and a buzz is growing about his MVP chances. But he doesn’t want to hear about it.

“That,” he said, “is really the last thing on my mind.”

The Patriots have scored on nearly half their possessions this season, 57 of 122, including 42 touchdowns and 15 field goals. They’ve scored in each of the last 14 quarters — a span of 31/2 games.

Different players stepping in and producing is nothing new to running back Kevin Faulk, a 12-year veteran who suffered a season-ending knee injury in the second game.

“I think it’s been that way around here as long as I’ve been here,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what happens, what goes on throughout the course of the year. A guy has to step up, do his job and be ready to go.”

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