The Buffalo Bills have an opportunity to take a three-game lead — and hold the initial head-to-head tiebreaker — over the New England Patriots in the AFC East this afternoon, but the real value in a win for Joe Brady’s team today will be found far beyond the division standings.
It’s early October — significantly too early to crown any team a division champ in the long, arduous regular-season voyage in the NFL that features ebbs and flows for every team. Sure, with a Bills win, headlines will arise
regarding Buffalo’s stranglehold on the AFC East. And they’d be in prime position, sure.
A victory today over Mike Vrabel, Drake Maye and Co. would be drastically more damaging to the Patriots psyche than anything having to do with their win-loss record.
Teams rebound from slow starts or mid-season lulls all the time in the NFL.
Heck, in 2023, the Bills trailed the Dolphins by three games… entering Week 14 and chased them down to win the division.
But the Patriots feel on the verge of implosion.
And the essence of a team is probably the better indicator of its resiliency than anything else.
It starts at the top with any organization, with the head coach and quarterback, and that’s precisely where the Patriots feel exceptionally fragile entering this game in Orchard Park.
A tumultuous offseason for Vrabel halted any momentum he had after leading the Patriots to the Super Bowl in his first season running the show in New England.
Maye was runner-up to NFL MVP last season.
Now the third-year quarterback has one touchdown to six interceptions through three games. This past week after a ghastly performance in a blowout loss to the Jaguars, all everyone could talk and write about in New England is what feels like a rapidly expanding rift between Vrabel and his young quarterback.
Vrabel didn’t hold back in postgame pressers, or interviews during the week, almost jumping at the opportunity to criticize some decisions and throws from Maye against Jacksonville. Maye’s hinted at a shoulder injury as the culprit of his disastrous start to the season. Vrabel wants to hear nothing about it.
Patriots insiders are going on Boston-area radio claiming there’s nothing wrong with Maye.
Maye was listed on the Patriots injury report all week as “full” with a shoulder injury for the first time all season.
This New England team is incredibly vulnerable right now.
Not necessarily because they’ll be without Christian Gonzalez and Christian Barmore, two of the team’s three best defensive players. Don’t get me wrong, their collective absence is major. I’ve long been an advocate of the players on the field actually mattering more than the coaches or the status of the culture of a team.
But I can’t imagine the media and fan firestorm for the Patriots if Maye has another poor performance, and the Bills are clearly the better team on the field today inside the new Highmark Stadium.
And the psychological toll on this New England team would likely be massive. I still believe in the quality of players being more important than anything else in the NFL. But I’ve started to realize the human element of those players, in this game, or any professional sport, really, is more crucial than any analyst, report, or fan believes.
And maybe that realization has hit me now because I’ve gotten to know Mitch Morse really well over the past two months while I’m watching Ted Lasso. Quite the combination, right?
This all means the Bills need to come out with one of their finest efforts of the season to destroy the Patriots from a mental perspective. Doing so will mean more than sending New England to 1-3 through four weeks.
