New England won in Buffalo for first time since 2021, knocking Bills from ranks of unbeaten.
Despite being conjoined since 1960, Pats and Bills have never really been good simulataneously.
Next question: Are Pats ready to reclaim divisional throne and end Buffalo’s five-year rule?
For decades now, it’s seemed like the Buffalo Bills and New England Patriots have been ships passing in the void – which is typically what the AFC East is otherwise. But the Pats’ 23-20 upset win Sunday night in Orchard Park in front of a prime-time television audience offers fresh promise that these two franchises might finally be headed for a potentially entertaining collision course – particularly at a time when New England has some fresh protagonists.
Second-year quarterback Drake Maye was nearly perfect after halftime, connecting on 13 of his 14 passes for 184 yards and putting New England in position for Andy Borregales’ game-winning field goal with 15 seconds to go – a 52-yarder that staked Buffalo, the league’s final unbeaten team.
Seems Maye, who passed for 273 yards in sum Sunday, has learned a few things amid his growing personal relationship with Bills counterpart and reigning league MVP Josh Allen.
“He’s just the ultimate,” Maye said of Allen last week. “He wants the ball in his hands to win the game. With the game on the line, the ball is in Josh’s hand a lot, and he ends up making the play. That’s what I’ve learned.”
Apparently.
And if the former divisional rulers toppling the current ones wasn’t enough – though Buffalo (4-1) remains a game up on New England in the divisional table – there was also the return of expatriated (and now re-Patriot-ed) wideout Stefon Diggs, the former Bills star playing in Western New York for the first time as a visitor … while catching 10 balls for 146 yards.
“It was lit, prime time,” Diggs said. “I’ve played here before, playing on the other side. It was electrifying. I knew it was going to be a test for us. It speaks volumes that we are taking steps in the right direction.”
There could be a lot more tests and steps ahead for a pair of organizations that have rarely been in serious conflict despite being birthed together as divisional rivals in the American Football League in 1960. The Patriots’ social media team even attempted to light 65 years’ worth of kindling by doctoring an image of Diggs side-eyeing Allen 18 months after their divorce.
Maye himself took a playful shot at the Bills and their mantra, simply distilled years ago by Hall of Fame Buffalo coach Marv Levy.
“(G)reat environment, playing the Buffalo Bills. Where else would you rather be?” Maye said after his team’s win.
Good.
As you Maye or Maye not recall, the Bills ruled the roost – and the AFC at large – in the first half of the 1990s, qualifying for a record four consecutive Super Bowls between the 1990 and ’93 seasons. Then the Patriots emerged under coach Bill Parcells, reaching the Super Bowl themselves to end the 1996 campaign, before blossoming into perhaps the league’s greatest-ever dynasty with Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady during the first two decades of the 21st century. Then TB12 left for Tampa, and Allen’s Bills awoke from their long, cold winter – claiming New England’s erstwhile throne and now in pursuit of a sixth consecutive AFC East crown.
Unless they’re unexpectedly usurped.
With little evidence that the New York Jets or Miami Dolphins are anywhere close to their occasional spasms of relevance, it appears the Patriots are approaching a resurrection led by Maye and first-year coach Mike Vrabel − as a player, the former linebacker, along with Brady, Belichick, et al., helped keep the Bills basically dead and buried for the 17 seasons preceding head coach Sean McDermott’s arrival in 2017. Allen was drafted a year later.
Sunday night was the Patriots’ first win at Buffalo since a quirky, windswept game in 2021, when then-New England quarterback Mac Jones attempted three passes in a 14-10 victory – and following it, McDermott wanted no part of hearing what a brilliant tactician Belichick was. And by that point the Patriots had largely abdicated anyway – which was quite evident when the brief Jones-Belichick edition was dismissed 47-17 in their playoff return to Highmark Stadium a month later.
What could be different moving forward is that the prime years of Allen and his quasi-football clone, Maye, could actually overlap when both are at or near their peaks. That was never really the case for Jim Kelly and Drew Bledsoe or Brady and Allen. Or even Bledsoe and Brady, originally teammates in Foxborough and briefly adversaries later − though Bledsoe ultimately finished 1-5 against New England, which chose him atop the 1993 draft … and paid him exorbitantly until Belichick (correctly and unceremoniously) kicked the injured QB to the curb in 2001, when Brady went on to lead the Patriots to the first of their six Lombardi Trophies. Bledsoe was exiled to Buffalo months later.
But it’s New England that’s morphed into a football version of Siberia in recent years, and now it’s the Patriots who want to come in from the cold.
“What Coach Vrabel says is that’s where we want to go, where we want to be at is where the Bills have been the past couple years: contenders, winning the division and playing well at home,” Maye said last week.
“So, it’s a tough environment, and, like I said, they’re a great football team with some great players. So, we’ve got our hands full, but we’re excited.”
The rest of the football universe should be, too – especially during a season when rivalries like Ravens versus Steelers or Chiefs versus the universe might not have quite the same juice. The stakes should be a lot higher when the Patriots and Bills − both currently projected as playoff teams at this very early juncture − next meet Dec. 14 at Gillette Stadium.
“(I) think it’s important that we can take the next step, show that we are ready and that maybe some of our identity has a chance to let itself out,” Vrabel last week.
Mission accomplished. Maye it be the first of many.
This post appeared first on USA TODAY
