After Stevan Ridley’s hard and successful running empowered Josh McDaniels to orchestrate an offense that ran the ball more often than it threw it last Sunday, some leaped to the conclusion that the Patriots were in the process of changing their style of attack, and that this season would be more about establishing balance instead of trusting Tom Brady’s aerial assault every week.

It’s an idea that, based on last season, seemingly has merit. Including the playoffs, New England’s four losses came in the five contests in which they threw the ball on more than 63 percent of their offensive snaps. In fact, the two times the Pats scored fewer than 20 points were the two times they passed on more than 70 percent of their downs.

But the idea that the importance of balance is a new focus for New England is as overblown as the assertion that Ridley’s breakout performance suddenly suggests he’s about to become a full-blown feature back.

Twice last season the Patriots ran the ball at least as often as threw it in consecutive weeks, and — despite the persistent turf toe issues of BenJarvus Green-Ellis and the inconsistency of rookies Ridley and Shane Vereen — it happened five times over the course of the regular season.

“When you have a decent balance offensively, your running game can help your play action, your play action can help your running game, and then you mix in all the other things you want to try to do,” McDaniels, the offensive coordinator said this week. “I think it becomes a complementary part of our game. Certainly our goal will always be to try to go in and maintain our balance unless we decide that the best thing to do would be to do something other than that.”

In those games, the Patriots averaged 34.8 points, which was four points higher than the 30.8 they posted in their 11 other contests during the regular campaign. So clearly New England’s coaches and quarterbacks understand the value of balance.

But the Patriots are first and foremost a game-plan team, meaning that they tailor their approach to exploiting the weaknesses of a particular opponent and apply whichever of their own strengths best help them in meeting that mission. And, thus, just because Ridley ran wild last week doesn’t necessarily mean anything about how they’ll attack the Cardinals today or any other team the rest of the season.

Again, look at the team’s track record. Before leaving for the Bengals in free agency, Green-Ellis posted four games with at least 100 yards rushing. In the weeks that followed those performances, he managed games of 9, 14, 80 and 58 yards. Even last year, Ridley gained 97 yards against Oakland, then proceeded to gain a grand total of 83 rushing yards over the next eight weeks.

In the home opener today, Ridley may well be given the chance to replicate last week’s showing. Arizona’s defense is built around a decent pass rush and good secondary, though it allowed Seahawks runner Marshawn Lynch to gain better than 4 yards per haul in going for 85 yards in 21 attempts last week. Given that, it won’t be surprising if that’s the facet of the game in which New England attempts to take advantage.

But it won’t necessarily mean that a feature back, or balance, is any more important to the Patriots than they’ve been in the recent past.

“You can’t really settle into one thing and get comfortable with that,” McDaniels said. “I know we’ve done that in certain games in the past, to make a conscious effort or a decision to do it some other way. Right now, we did a decent job in Week 1 and hopefully we can continue to do that by being productive in both the throwing game and the running game.”

- - - - - - -

OVERRATED: Arizona being forced to its backup quarterback. Kevin Kolb will start for the injured John Skelton, but the two were in competition for the starting role for most of camp, and Kolb is a player who was valued enough that the Cardinals sent starting cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and a second-round draft pick to Philadelphia in order to acquire him 14 months ago. He’s no less a threat to the Pats than Skelton would’ve been.

- - - - - - -

KEEP AN EYE ON...: The Patriots’ run defense. After limiting Chris Johnson and the Titans to just 20 rushing yards last week, New England now faces a Cardinal attack that itself gained only 43 yards on the ground in the opener. Fifteen of those came on a reverse to receiver Andre Roberts, while Kolb took a kneeldown, so otherwise Arizona picked up 29 yards on 17 carries. The Pats could again be in a position to make its opponent’s offense become quite one-dimensional.

- - - - - - -

KEY MATCHUP: Patriots special teams vs. Cardinals special teams. Arizona was vulnerable in the return game a week ago, allowing Seattle’s Leon Washington to return a kickoff for 83 yards,and a punt for 52 yards. That suggests there could be opportunities for the Patriots to tilt the field in those situations — but they’ve also got to be careful on the other side. Last year Patrick Peterson tied the NFL record by returning four punts for touchdowns, including a 99-yard effort, and was named an All-Pro as a kick returner. Failing to contain him could mean the Patriots keep the Cardinals in the game.

- - - - - - -

STAT OF THE WEEK: Last season, with Brady at quarterback, the Patriots passed the ball on 58.3 percent of offensive snaps. Meanwhile, with McDaniels as their offensive coordinator, the Rams threw the ball on 59.2 percent of plays — despite having Sam Bradford under center and Steven Jackson in the backfield.

- - - - - - - -

Dave D’Onofrio covers Boston sports for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. His e-mail address is ddonof13@gmail.com. Twitter: @davedonofrio