FOXBORO — Author Henry David Thoreau once implored his readers to, “Simplify, simplify.” Thoreau wasn’t much for football, but the New England native surely would have appreciated what the Patriots’ defense did against Carolina on Sunday.

According to many New England defenders, there were fewer intricacies in the defensive game plan for the Panthers. Instead, things were simplified. The move allowed the Patriots to cut down on the communication issues that had dogged them in the losses to Miami and New Orleans over the previous two games.

As a result, it allowed the New England defense, in the words of defensive end Ty Warren, to “just play ball.”

“In previous weeks, we had a lot of checks, a lot of moving parts to what we were trying to look for and what the offense was doing,” said Warren. “So we just simplified it so it wouldn’t be too brain-wrackin’ at times.”

The result? The Panthers’ offense wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire heading into the game — they were playing with a backup quarterback — but New England did enough to come away with the win in a game where the Patriots’ defense was focused on making plays and not worried about thinking too much. New England had a pair of sacks in a game for just the second time in a month, and held Carolina quarterback Matt Moore to 179 yards passing, the second time in the last six games the Patriots have held an opposing signal-caller under 200 passing yards.

“You can just play ball instead of just looking at every little thing that they’re trying to do to you,” Warren said of the scheme, which yielded only a single touchdown against Carolina.

“The coaches did an excellent job coming in with an easier game plan than usual,” said linebacker Jerod Mayo. “The previous two games, we had a couple of communication problems. We didn’t want that to happen [Sunday], and it didn’t, so job well done for the coaches.”

According to many players, the simplified game plan allowed players to cut down on many of the defensive breakdowns in their previous two games, particularly in the secondary where defensive backs have appeared to occasionally struggle in coverage.

“We felt like the last couple of games that maybe some of the execution may have been the result of not practicing things enough or not reacting quite quickly enough. We tried to simplify it a little bit so it would be a little less decision-making,” said Patriots coach Bill Belichick. “Maybe we weren’t always in the best defense we could be in, but at least we all knew what we were doing and be aggressive and just take our chances on weaknesses.

“We think the players did a good job of that. Not everything was perfect, but they played hard, we tackled better. And I think for the most part we were not on everything, but we were on it pretty good.”

One of the upshots to the simplified game plan was superior third-down defense. New England had struggled to get off the field on third down in previous weeks (Miami was 10-for-19 on third down the week before), but managed to hold the Panthers to just 3-of-13 on third down, a rate of 23 percent.

“When you play good on third down then that really takes care of a lot of issues,” Belichick said. “And really, that was the big difference between the Miami game and the Carolina game, our third-down defense.

“We played better on third down against Miami and statistically that probably looked better than the Carolina game did, honestly, but we played good on third down against Carolina and that led to a lot fewer points, a lot fewer plays, and a lot better field position for the offense.”

Another thing that was different about the New England defense on Sunday was the re-emergence of linebackers Pierre Woods and Rob Ninkovich at outside linebacker, replacing an inactive Adalius Thomas. In addition, there was safety James Sanders and cornerback Shawn Springs, both of whom got the start and saw extensive playing time — Sanders played 47 of the 61 defensive snaps, while Springs was in for 35 snaps, the most time either defensive back has seen in many weeks.

And they did have some breakdowns — the lone Carolina touchdown was the result of a lack of communication between Springs and safety Brandon Meriweather — the presence of the two veterans added a sense of stability to the secondary.

“I think Shawn and James have always prepared well in the weeks when they weren’t playing or weren’t as big a part of the game plan, just as they did this week when they were part of the game plan,” said defensive coordinator Dean Pees. “That’s a credit to them.”