Taking a look at playing time percentages of Patriots' defensive players from the team's 20-18 loss to the Arizona Cardinals, as charted by NFL Media relations:

Thoughts on the playing time percentages after the jump!

What stands out?

• Sterling Moore took Ras-I Dowling place on the depth chart, playing 48% of the snaps as the team's fifth defensive back. Dowling didn't register a single snap. We'll see if that was a simple week-to-week change, or if Dowling actually has been passed on the depth chart.
• One Patriots player went start-to-finish: cornerback Devin McCourty. Other players to play high snap counts (89%+) included Jerod Mayo, Rob Ninkovich, Kyle Arrington, Patrick Chung, Chandler Jones, and Vince Wilfork. Very interesting to see Jones play such a high snap total as a rookie - after just two games, it's clear that he's going to be the type of player who plays all three downs are rarely comes off the field.
• Brandon Spikes played a particularly high number of snaps, showing up in many of the Patriots' sub-packages. In total, Spikes played 78% of the snaps compared to Hightower's 65% - showing that Spikes has earned an opportunity to be a three down player, despite the fast development of the rookie Hightower.
• No increase in snaps for Jermaine Cunningham - as both Chandler Jones (91%) and Rob Ninkovich (94%) were on the field for the majority of the game. Cunningham played only 15 snap (23%)s, and showed up on the box score with one tackle. Count me as someone who'd like to see Cunningham get that number up to around 50% of the snaps.
• The Patriots only had 16 total players take snaps on defense Sunday. The five back-ups seemingly in the rotation: Sterling Moore, Jermaine Cunningham, Ron Brace, Brandon Deaderick, and Tavon Wilson.