ORCHARD PARK - It will be months before we know how damaging the Buffalo Bills’ 29-26 loss to the arch rival New England Patriots will be in the AFC East standings, but Joe Brady, Josh Allen and company better hope that history doesn’t repeat itself.
Last season, the Patriots came to the old stadium across Abbott Road two games behind the Bills in Week 5, knowing a loss might kill any chance they had of ending Buffalo’s five-year reign atop the division. They outplayed the bumbling Bills on Sunday Night Football, and went on to win 10 games in a row and roll to the AFC East title.
This year, the exact same situation - albeit a week earlier on the schedule - was confronting the Patriots. They were two games out and in a highly vulnerable position,
but once again they took advantage of another bumbling Bills performance and just like that, they’re within a game and they own the early tiebreaker advantage.
“It stinks,” Allen said. “I feel like we hurt ourselves tonight. Offense, defense, special teams, everybody. We all feel like we could play better. The division ones sting. Feels like it's a two-game swing, and got to find a way to learn from this and move it to the back of our brain and learn from it and move on.”
Deja vu all over again, right?
Next week, the Bills have a hugely difficult Monday night test against the Rams in Los Angeles, while the Patriots are hosting the Raiders. It’s very possible the Patriots could technically be in first place eight days from now. It’s crazy, but it’s true, because that’s how big these division games are.
“That don't matter, man, it's about how we respond,” linebacker Bradley Chubb said. “You want to be leading the division, doing all this, but at the end of the day, man, it's about how we respond. It happened. And this team, I know the brothers I got, man. I know what type of people we have in this locker room, we're gonna respond, and that's all it's about.”
Here’s how I graded the Bills:
PASS OFFENSE: C-
This is two weeks in a row where Allen did not look sharp. The Patriots put pressure on him not only with their blitz packages but even with four rushers, and they forced him into some poor throws and bad decisions, none worse than the ridiculous interception at the end of the game, a ball a rookie shouldn’t throw, let alone the 2024 NFL MVP.
Without DJ Moore on the field, this is the 2025 pass offense where wide receivers simply don’t get open enough down the field and Allen too often finds himself searching and searching. Keon Coleman did his part, catching six for 116 yards and the go-ahead TD with 4:27 left, and Khalil Shakir caught seven for 82, with 50 coming on one play.
The big whiffs were TE Dalton Kincaid and WR Josh Palmer. After doing basically nothing the week before against the Chargers, well, except lose a fumble, Kincaid was a ghost in this game with one catch on two targets for seven yards. Palmer had to fill in for Moore and did nothing including not finding a way to play defense on Allen’s ill-advised heave at the end.
RUN OFFENSE: C
Against a Patriots run defense that entered the day ranked 19th in yards allowed per attempt at 4.3, the Bills were unable to get James Cook going. Of course, it didn’t help that he only had eight carries in the first three quarters and those went for just 26 yards. He did get rolling in the fourth and finished with 75 yards, but the middle of the Patriots line, even without stud DT Christian Barmore, had its way with Buffalo’s offensive line.
Even Allen was completely neutered. He had five carries for four yards, though he did score one of his patented QB sneak TDs giving him 88 from scrimmage for his career, a new Bills record breaking a tie with Andre Reed and Thurman Thomas.
PASS DEFENSE: F
The Bills played without CB Christian Benford and that proved fatal. Maxwell Hairston and Davison Igbinosun got roasted time and time again, and according to Pro Football Focus charting, each gave up four receptions on seven targets and combined to allow three TDs. Drake Maye knew he could attack them at will, and he did, and the question is, where were the safeties helping these kids out?
Dee Alford made one of the luckiest interceptions you’ll ever see. Romeo Doubs made a catch but when he hit the ground he bobbled the ball into the air and it landed in Alford’s surprised arms and he returned it 37 yards to the 9 to set up Tyler Bass’ end-of-first-half gift field goal.
Before that, Doubs hung on to a pass in the end zone after he beat Maxwell Hairston clean with a route to the post for a 14-yard TD that opened the scoring, and he beat him again in the third quarter, right after Hairston was nailed for a hold in the end zone on third-and-goal from the 2.
As for the pass rush, pretty meek. PFF gave the Bills 24 individual pressures, seven to Greg Rousseau, but there was only one sack, a share between Ed Oliver and TJ Parker that also forced a Maye fumble on the play. Too often when the rush got there, Maye broke contain and pulled an Allen by running for 54 dagger-in-the-heart yards.
RUN DEFENSE: C-
When Maye wasn’t ripping the secondary apart, he either ran himself or handed the ball to Rhamondre Stevenson (47 yards) and TreVeyon Henderson (42) to pile up a total of 143 yards and 4.1 per attempt. Yes, those numbers are skewed by Maye, but there were too many times where the Patriots ran the ball and got into at least semi-decent down and distance.
Deone Walker held up pretty well and he had a big tackle for loss in the fourth quarter, but Ed Oliver once again got hurt and his absence was noticeable. Greg Gaines and DeWayne Carter simply aren’t at Oliver’s level, and neither is Landon Jackson who looked like he suffered a serious leg injury, but was able to return. The Patriots finished with 405 total yards of offense and 26 first downs.
SPECIAL TEAMS: D
Tyler Bass made a stupid mistake after the first Bills’ TD when he didn’t get the ball to the landing zone inside the 20, so Patriots got a drive start at the 40. That was inexcusable, though the Patriots blew that chance thanks to a Maye fumble deep in Bills’ territory.
Early in the second quarter, Tommy Doman did not hit a great punt, 43 yards to the 20, and the coverage team made things worse by missing two tackles which allowed Marcus Jones a 17-yard return, giving the Patriots another nice drive start at the 37, and that led to a TD drive.
Sam Franklin, who is supposed to be a special teams ace, seems to commit more penalties than he makes tackles. Doman punted to the Pats 10 in the third and the Bills had Jones stopped there, but Franklin got nailed for a killer facemask, moving the ball to the 25. The kickoff coverage team allowed Kyle Williams a 27-yard average, so that was pretty good.
In the return game, Greg Dortch managed just 16 yards on two punts, and he averaged a poor 22.8 on four kickoff returns while Ray Davis had a 29-yarder. Kaleb Elarms-Orr led the tacklers with two.
COACHING: D-
This was without question the worst play-calling day Joe Brady has had this year. I thought several of his decisions were bonkers, especially those ridiculous WR screens that came back into his mind. None of them worked.
He wasn’t helped much by Allen who made some poor decisions with the ball and misfired on a couple plays that seemed open. Brady admitted there was no excuse not getting Kincaid more involved.
On defense, Jim Leonhard is a former DB, and he has to start using that expertise to fix the secondary because right now it’s terrible. The Bills lose coverage far too often, whether it’s man or zone, and there were far too many chunk plays - eight passes gained at least 14 yards and two of those went for TDs.
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: Bills report card: Josh Allen falters, secondary gets torched by Patriots
