LONDON — Welcome to the Friday Five, England edition!

Each week during the NFL regular season, I will drop five Patriots-related thoughts on Friday to recap the week that was in Foxboro and look ahead to kickoff.

Ready, set, football.

1. Killer first quarters

The Patriots opened practice this week with an unusual period.

The starting offense faced the starting defense down in the red zone. Full speed, full contact, full go.

The idea, Jerod Mayo explained Wednesday morning, was to jump-start one of the slowest starting teams in the NFL and address another area where the Pats have struggled. Offensively, they are scoring touchdowns on a league-lowest 35.7% of their trips inside opponents’ 20-yard line. Defensively, life isn’t much better, tied for the 10th-worst touchdown percentage allowed in the red zone.

As for their slow starts, the Patriots trailed 14-0 after the first quarter last weekend to Houston, and dug double-digit halftime holes versus the Jets and 49ers. Overall, they’re allowing almost as many points in the first half (11.3 points per game) as they’re scoring per game (13.8).

It’s hard to win like that generally in the NFL, but especially as a run-first offense with pass protection issues.

2. Maye-king time

Drake Maye’s off-schedule plays were some of the most impressive he made last weekend in his starting debut. Maye gained 30 yards on an unplanned pitch-and-catch with tight end Hunter Henry and scrambled for 11 yards on another extended play. On dropbacks where he held the ball for longer than 2.5 seconds, Maye gained a first down 42% of the time compared to 28% when he got rid of it within 2.5 seconds.

Most of all, Maye’s ability to escape and keep plays alive figures to help a receiving corps that struggles to separate.

Because, as Patriots defensive back Jonathan Jones put it to me this week: “You know, if you can give (receivers) six seconds, at some point even grandma’s going to get open. They don’t need much space, the way these quarterbacks can throw the ball. The quarterbacks get outside the pocket, and as a defensive back, I know the whole world’s mad, but I’m like, you can’t even cover grandma forever.”

3. Play-action attack

Under offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt, the Patriots’ offense is designed to generate explosive plays off deep play-action shots.

So far, thanks to problems at quarterback, receiver and in pass protections, the Pats haven’t completed a single deep pass off play-action. While Maye’s arm has given the offense new life, play-action dropbacks are still relatively new for the former college quarterback who worked exclusively out of the shotgun. Maye said this week he feels more comfortable making those drops — his footwork has shown marked improvement the last few months — but the ability to read a defense a second time after turning his back on a play fake is a different challenge.

Callahan: The Patriots are making more changes after Drake Maye, so who’s up next?

“Our defense does a good job of flipping up the coverages and changing the picture post-snap, and that’s something that I’ve really started to kind of understand and learn,” Maye said this week. “The picture I’m seeing when I first get the snap versus when I turn my back and look at it may be different. So, just trying to find my checkdowns or find an outlet, that’ll be something that I’ll kind of build towards. Then, other than that, try to exploit them with matchups.”

Last year with Van Pelt, the Browns passed for the fourth-most yards in the league off play-action. This season, the Patriots have the fewest completions and second-fewest passing yards off play-action. Expect to see more bombs on Sunday, due to Maye’s comfort and Jacksonville allowing more completions and yards than versus play-action than any defense in the NFL, per Sports Info. Solutions.

4. Underdog history

The Jaguars are slated as 5.5-point favorites for Sunday’s game, the first time they’ve been favored to beat the Pats since 2006.

Back then, the Patriots held on for a 24-21 win at Jacksonville on Christmas Eve and clinched the AFC East title. Tom Brady’s leading receiver was rookie tight end David Thomas, who had 83 yards and a touchdown. Meanwhile, Mayo was a young college linebacker at Tennessee and Maye was barely four years old.

Before that regular-season win, the Jags were last favored over the Patriots in a 1999 Wild Card playoff game. At kickoff, more than half of the Patriots’ current players hadn’t been born.

5. English extra points

The Patriots will practice Friday at the Harrow School, an all-boys boarding school in greater London that Winston Churchill attended. Mayo and Maye are scheduled to hold press conferences before practice at 9 a.m. ET, while other players will meet the media after practice around 11 a.m. ET. …  This weekend will mark Maye’s second trip to London, after he said he visited family and attended the Summer Olympics in 2012. … The Patriots will kick off in Wembley Stadium for the first time since 2012, when they trashed the Rams 45-7. Mayo finished second in tackles that game with seven, while Rob Gronkowski caught two touchdowns from Tom Brady and finished with a game-high 146 receiving yards. … The Patriots could return to Europe next season for a third international game in as many years, should they play a “home game” in Germany again or are selected to kick off in Madrid against the Dolphins, who are expected to play in Spain next year.

The Boston Bruins are celebrating their centennial game in style, unveiling special uniforms Thursday. The limited-edition sweater will be worn against the Montreal Canadiens on Dec. 1.

That date marks the 100th anniversary of the Bruins’ first game against the Montreal Maroons on Dec. 1, 1924.

The look combines multiple elements of the past with a vision for the future. An example is the anniversary crest, which fuses the vintage spokes worn by legends Bobby Orr and Ray Bourque with the varsity “B” the franchise has worn since 2007.

A historic jersey for a historic celebration. pic.twitter.com/MzUjwxFoAZ

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) October 17, 2024

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A few more frames of the fits 🔥

📸 ➡️ https://t.co/WhdesPv7PT pic.twitter.com/cV2w45brVT

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) October 17, 2024

The jersey draws inspiration from the 1980s, a decade in which the Bruins had four 100-win seasons and embodies the franchises’ core values, according to a news release. The sleeves and socks are gold with a modern take on traditional striping, a nod to previous players who donned the Spoked-B.

A new centennial patch is featured with a nod to Dec. 1 and brings back the metallic gold as an accent around the Bruins bear.

“The Centennial Game will be a special moment for our organization and more importantly, our fans, so the jersey design had to be fit for the occasion,” Boston Bruins president Cam Neely said. “There are so many elements for both fans and the players to enjoy.”

An element that Neely highlighted appears on the bottom hemline. The team’s core values — tradition, grit, passion and heart — are embedded there, alongside the score of their first game displayed on the collar.

Prosecutors have called on the state’s highest court to allow them to retry Karen Read for murder in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend, arguing against defense claims that jurors had reached a verdict against some of her charges before the judge declared a mistrial.

Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm in January 2022. Read’s attorneys argue she is being framed and that other law enforcement officers are responsible for O’Keefe’s death. A judge declared a mistrial in June after finding that jurors could not reach agreement. A retrial on the same charges is set to begin in January.

In a brief filed late on Wednesday to the Massachusetts supreme judicial court, prosecutors wrote that there was no basis for dismissing the charges of second degree murder and leaving the scene of the accident.

There was “no viable alternative to a mistrial”, they argued in the brief, noting that the jury said three times that it was deadlocked before a mistrial was declared. Prosecutors said the “defendant was afforded a meaningful opportunity to be heard on any purported alternative.

“The defendant was not acquitted of any charge because the jury did not return, announce, and affirm any open and public verdicts of acquittal,” they wrote. “That requirement is not a mere formalism, ministerial act, or empty technicality. It is a fundamental safeguard that ensures no juror’s position is mistaken, misrepresented, or coerced by other jurors.”

In the defense brief filed in September, Read’s lawyers said five of the 12 jurors came forward after her mistrial saying they were deadlocked only on a manslaughter count, and they had agreed unanimously – without telling the judge – that she was not guilty on the other counts. They argued that it would be unconstitutional double jeopardy to try her again on the counts of murder and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death.

Oral arguments will be heard from both sides on 6 November.

In August, the trial judge ruled that Read could be retried on all three counts. “Where there was no verdict announced in open court here, retrial of the defendant does not violate the principle of double jeopardy,” the judge Beverly Cannone wrote.

Read’s attorney, Martin Weinberg, argued that under Cannone’s reasoning, even if all 12 jurors were to swear in affidavits that they reached a final and unanimous decision to acquit, this would not be sufficient for a double jeopardy challenge. “Surely, that cannot be the law. Indeed, it must not be the law,” Weinberg wrote.

The American Civil Liberties Union supported the defense in an amicus brief. If the justices do not dismiss the charges, the ACLU said the court should at least “prevent the potential for injustice by ordering the trial court to conduct an evidentiary hearing and determine whether the jury in her first trial agreed to acquit her on any count”.

“The trial court had a clear path to avoid an erroneous mistrial: simply ask the jurors to confirm whether a verdict had been reached on any count,” the ACLU wrote in its brief. “Asking those questions before declaring a mistrial is permitted – even encouraged – by Massachusetts rules. Such polling serves to ensure a jury’s views are accurately conveyed to the court, the parties, and the community – and that defendants’ related trial rights are secure.”

Prosecutors said Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police, had been drinking heavily before she dropped him off at a party at the home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston officer. They said she hit him with her SUV before driving away. An autopsy found O’Keefe had died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.

The defense portrayed Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside Albert’s home and then dragged outside. They argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

The lead investigator, the state trooper Michael Proctor, was relieved of duty after the trial revealed he had sent vulgar texts to colleagues and family, calling Read a “whack job” and telling his sister he wished Read would “kill herself”. He said his emotions had got the better of him.