FOXBORO — Wind whipping. Snow falling.
A scene fit for December football in Foxboro.
What more could you have asked for Sunday?
Uh, how about a fourth-down stop?
One fewer flag, maybe.
A win instead of a frozen nightmare.
By failing to kill off Buffalo when they had the chance, the Patriots committed the cardinal sin of surviving any horror movie, which is exactly what Sunday’s game became once they staked a 21-0 lead. The Bills first clawed on Josh Allen’s touchdown pass late in the second quarter, a score the Pats could only answer with a field goal; dirt thrown on a coffin that hadn’t been lowered deep enough.
Because a 17-point halftime deficit might be enough to bury most teams. But not the Bills. Not Allen.
“That’s his superpower. That’s who Josh Allen is,” Christian Gonzalez said post-game. “We talked about it all week.”
Allen and the zombie Bills scored five straight touchdowns to clinch their fourth fourth-quarter comeback of the season. The Patriots suddenly became equal parts participants in and witnesses to their own demise.
“We knew what kind of game this was going to be. I don’t think we could have been more prepared for it,” Pats captain Harold Landry said. “They just came out and executed better than we did in the second half, and that’s pretty much what happened.”
The simplest explanation for why the Patriots endured this type of football horror, allowing a 21-point comeback to a division rival, is the right one: they got overpowered.
Buffalo’s bruising offensive line handled them at the line of scrimmage. The Bills rushed for 167 yards, including the 10 they covered on their last three hand-offs to finish the Pats off before Allen knelt the clock out. Mike Vrabel’s defense knew Buffalo would run and couldn’t do a damn thing.
“We missed tackles. We didn’t build a good enough wall, didn’t get off on third down, weren’t able to create any turnovers. And (we) weren’t getting any stops in the red zone,” Vrabel said. “It’s no secret, you know what I mean? (We) called the same stuff, they called the same stuff.”
The case against the Patriots making a Super Bowl run starts there. Vrabel brought players like Cory Durden and Joshua Farmer to a gun fight with the league’s MVP. That’s all the ammunition the Pats have behind stud defensive tackle Milton Williams, who, yes, will return, but whose absence alone doesn’t explain the Patriots’ run defense ranking second-to-last by success rate allowed since early November.
Come playoff time, the Pats’ defensive depth might be too brittle to absorb blows like the ones Buffalo delivered Sunday. Their pass rush loses its edge whenever it’s without Williams, Christian Barmore, Harold Landry or K’Lavon Chaisson. In the first 20 minutes, Landry got to Allen on a coverage sack and backup linebacker Jack Gibbens dropped him on a clever blitz.
Allen was hardly bothered the rest of the day.
Their only solution against playoff teams may be to ask more of their offense. Beating the Bills requires plays like the two passes Drake Maye slung under pressure to jump-start a game-winning drive at Buffalo in Week 5, and failed to make Sunday. Maye might still win the MVP award — and rightfully so — but he won’t win playoff games playing like he did Sunday.
Like Drake Meh.
Maye’s accuracy has waxed and waned over his last five games, and defenses have gotten wise to his scrambling. He had a bad miss on the Patriots’ last third down, then literally ran into trouble on their final offensive play and fired incomplete.
Turnover on downs. Ballgame.
Here’s the good news: Maye is still great and will be fine.
And more good news: this loss may serve the Patriots in the long-term. It’s better to learn hard lessons now than in January. The Pats now know exactly how close they are to the Bills — splitting one-possession games in their regular-season series that easily could have been a sweep in either direction — and what’s required to beat them.
So if there was any sense internally that they might simply float to a division title as a team of destiny, let alone a conference championship or then Super Bowl, Sunday stripped them of that fantasy. Work harder, study longer, play better.
Collect the calluses teams need to survive the postseason. Treat your scars as reminders of what led to losses. A win is a win, but a loss can be a lesson if you treat it as such.
Ask Stefon Diggs.
“We probably needed (the loss). Going on a little streak — I’m not going to say it’s a lot of pressure — but you expect to win, as you should, each and every week. … So it’s good for us,” Diggs said. “I kind of said it at the beginning of the year: lessons. (Losing) is a lesson, for sure, that you’re going to have to keep your foot on the gas.”
Or, in the case of undead division rivals, on their throats.