This is a bad team. There are no longer any moral victories to take from close losses to bad teams or scraping out a win against objectively the worst team in the league.
I wouldn't say the Bucs qualify as a "bad" team. Nor are the Saints. I don't even think the Dolphins are truly "bad", but they're not great.
Houston and NYJ are the two legitimately "bad" teams the Pats have played.
They effectively blew out NYJ.
As for today, yeah, it was ugly, but I'll take it for several reasons.
1. The Texans played above their average, especially in the 1st half (they regressed to the mean in the 2nd half, at least offensively).
2. This was a game ripe for a letdown. Road, low energy crowd, coming off an emotional, tough loss in a high visibility game. If you were drawing up a scenario for a letdown, that'd be it.
3. They won despite continuing to make the same costly mistakes that they've been making; penalties, turnovers. -1 turnover differential for the game, and the Harris fumble was effectively the equivalent of a pick-6. It's not often that you win games when you lose the turnover battle and give-up a 7 point swing on a single play, but the Pats managed to do it today.