ORCHARD PARK - If there’s one thing I’ve learned through four decades of covering the NFL, the injury report usually means far less than we think when it comes to wins and losses, unless a team has to play without its starting quarterback.
You look around the league and there are good, even great players, out every week and in some cases, multiple players. Does it really matter? So often, it really doesn’t, as long as the starting QB is on the field, and the New England Patriots proved that Sunday afternoon.
Playing without three of their best players — star players in wide receiver AJ Brown, defensive tackle Christian Barmore, and cornerback Christian Gonzalez — they strutted into Orchard Park for the second year in a row in danger of slipping
into oblivion in the AFC East race, and beat the Buffalo Bills 29-26.
The Patriots were missing key players, the Bills were, too, and then each team lost a few more during the game. But both teams still had their quarterbacks, and in an occurrence that no one could have seen coming, Drake Maye completely outplayed Josh Allen.
It had been a disastrous start to 2026 for Maye, the 2025 NFL MVP runner-up, but he sliced and diced a terrible Buffalo secondary for 269 yards and three touchdowns, and the interception that goes on his record was a pure fluke, a goofy bounce when Romeo Doubs lost control of a ball he’d caught and it floated right into the arms of Dee Alford.
On the other side, Allen threw for 253 yards, rushed for a TD and threw another, but there was nothing fluky in the interception he threw. It was flat out stupid, veritable Hail Mary ball he never should have thrown on second-and-6 at the Bills 40 with 1:05 remaining.
MASSIVE INT@Patriots turn Josh Allen over in the clutch pic.twitter.com/Li24JeV9ws
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) October 4, 2026
“Just a flood concept, they went man, made a guy miss (he was nearly sacked), threw one up, and I should throw that one out of bounds and live another day. That’s what I should have done,” Allen said.
Yeah, no kidding. For all his greatness, and he is undeniably great, some of the decisions Allen still makes nine years into his career can be baffling. There’s no guarantee that if he had chucked the ball into the first row of seats that the Bills could have gone on to drive for a winning TD or a tying field goal, but he killed any chance of either happening.
“We obviously have plenty of time right there,” coach Joe Brady said. “I'm going to start by saying I've got to have a better play call in that situation. We've got to protect and put him in a better position to have success.”
Fine, say that if you want, but your superstar QB can’t throw you under the bus with that decision. It can’t happen.
“Everybody on the field has to be better in that situation,” Brady said. “There wasn't a second during that drive I didn't think we were going to go down, and much less kick a field goal, than to score a touchdown. We obviously didn't get it done.”
Here are a few observations:
Bills have a crisis at cornerback
Doubs with a one-handed TD catch@NEvsBUF on CBS/Paramount+
— NFL (@NFL) October 4, 2026
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/mEInd29XY7
It’s bad enough that their best CB, Christian Benford missed the game, so you knew that was going to be problematic. Then offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels figured out pretty quickly that second-year man and 2025 first-round pick Maxwell Hairston is not very good, and he had Maye attack him.
Hairston killed the Bills over and over in this game. Let’s start with the two TDs he gave up to Romeo Doubs, the first one providing the first score of the game, the second that made it 21-17 Patriots in the third.
On that drive before that second TD, Hairston was playing 10 yards off the line of scrimmage in front of Doubs on fourth-and-2 at the 17, an easy pitch and catch conversion. Then Hairston committed a holding penalty in the end zone on third-and-goal from the 2, assuring the Patriots the TD he promptly allowed.
On New England’s game-winning drive, Hairston got worked by Efton Chism for a 19-yard gain to the Bills 28 just before the two-minute warning. Then it was time for Maye to pick on rookie Davison Igbinosun who gave up Efton Chism game-winning 23-yard TD. He actually had decent coverage but Chism made a great catch.
I asked Hairston for an interview and he declined and exited the locker room, leaving it for the rookie, Igbinosun, to handle the reporters.
“It's the NFL, so you're gonna win some, you're gonna lose some,” Igbinosun said. “That's just how it goes when you're playing football at the highest level. I hate to lose, I hate to lose reps, I hate to lose games. Definitely frustrated. It's a humbling experience, but I'm a rookie, my first career start. I'm just going to take this and learn from it. I'm just going to use this to fuel me and motivate me. It's only Week 4 so it's a long season.”
Making matters worse, the Bills lost slot corners Dee Alford and Te’Cory Couch to injuries, so they were really in trouble in the back end, having to switch so many things.
But here’s the thing. Cornerback was always the No. 1 concern on the team going into the season, and the Bills not making a move to sign a veteran free agent was, and still is, a massive mistake. That position was screaming for help with Hairston starting and Igbinosun as the primary backup before Benford went down, plus no one else with any experience behind them.
CJ Gardner-Johnson’s mouth roars, as usual
CJ Gardner-Johnson didn't think the Patriots had much confidence.
— Thad Brown (@thadbrown7) October 4, 2026
"The better team lost today"#Bills pic.twitter.com/SKJWtkV6Ip
The Bills safety made quite a stupid statement after the game, especially on a day when he was part of a terrible performance by the secondary.
Of Chism making the game-winning TD, Gardner-Johnson spewed, “A (practice squad) guy made a helluva catch. Probably won’t happen to him again, respectfully. I say that with a lot of confidence because it’s like he didn’t put his confidence in his best player.
“But they won the game, whatever. They ain’t do (crap) better than us. We gotta play better. And they can mark that. We’ll be back, see them again at the end of the year. So, they better have that same energy. They put up, what? 20-something points? They barely scored. They struggled all game.”
Chism is not, and never has been a practice squad player. Obviously he’s not a star, but this was his second NFL touchdown, and it was a great play.
Just what the Bills need is Gardner-Johnson giving a division opponent more food to chew on for the next meeting in December. This is one of the reasons why Gardner-Johnson moves from team to team. He can play, there’s no doubt, and we saw that last week when he made the game-altering interception, but I can guarantee you Brady will cringe when he sees the video of this quote.
DJ Moore was injured again, did not return
Now in his ninth season in the NFL, Moore missed exactly two games in his career before he arrived in Buffalo. He has played in the first four with the Bills, but he has now left two of those before halftime, Sunday against the Patriots and in Week 2 against the Lions.
Moore hurt his shoulder against Detroit and that appears to be a lingering problem because he landed hard on it again on the play where the Patriots called for a defensive hold on third-and-goal from the 16 late in the second quarter.
Keon Coleman and Joshua Palmer had to share the burden of replacing him. Coleman did his part with six catches for 116 yards and a TD, but Palmer was a complete no-show with one catch on four targets for three yards, plus the appalling lack of awareness on the Allen interception to play defense and try to prevent the pick.
“Obviously his stats look really good, made some big catches for us there on third down, the go ball. We need more of that moving forward,” Allen said of Coleman. “We got to find ways to keep going (after Moore went out).”
James Cook, Dalton Kincaid were under-used
Brady did a poor job with the run game as Cook had only eight carries for 26 yards through three quarters. That’s not smart in any way given how much he means to the success rate of the offense and his ability to get the Bills in manageable situations.
“We got to be more efficient on first down runs for sure,” Brady said. “Again, that's sometimes how the game goes.”
Sorry, that’s not acceptable. Cook needed to be far more involved early, though maybe Brady is getting a little gun shy because Cook fumbled again, though he did recover it.
As for Kincaid, this is why it’s tough to consider him one of the elite tight ends in the league. According to Pro Football Focus charting, he was on the field for 26 pass snaps; elite guys don’t get targeted twice and catch one for seven yards.
“It's a divisional opponent, great defense they got over there,” Kincaid said. “We knew they would have a good plan coming in and we just really didn't get flowing like we have been. Obviously last week, we didn't as well so we'll take a look in the mirror, figure some stuff out this week and make corrections from there.”
Allen admitted he needs to be better looking for Kincaid.
“We all know the type of player that he is, so yeah, we got to get him more involved,” he said.
Yes, we know the type of player he is, but he doesn’t play that way at a consistent enough rate.
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for more than four decades including 37 years as the full-time beat writer/columnist for the D&C. He has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: A boneheaded Josh Allen play and 4 other dumb things the Bills did Sunday
