This hurts the Bills in a few different ways:
- They are game and half behind the Patriots in the AFC East. The Bills play the Bucs this week while the Patriots get a rest. - The Patriots record within the conference makes teams chasing them be a game up because they have at least a two game lead in the tie breaker against every team in the AFC. - The Bills knew what was coming and still took it in the face. This will sit in the minds of the defense as the weather when they meet next time will change the dynamic. Yes, the Bills offense will be able to open up more but it also will include the Patriots actually throwing the ball. If the Bills couldn't stop them with 11 in the box, what happens when their is only 6 or 7 in the box? - Bills HC Sean McDermott has a tendency to throw hissy fits and act like a dick when it doesn't go his way and it was on display last night, especially during his post game comments. - The Bills are soft, which is an odd thing to say when you remember how tough the Jim Kelley era Bills were. The Bills are designed to beat the Chiefs, not 4 yards and cloud of dust teams like the Patriots or the Colts. Who makes a warm weather team in Buffalo? - The Bills have to heart about this until the next game with the Patriots and it could cause them to lose focus. Windy conditions plus rookie quarterback plus strong pass defense equals throwback football. That’s the equation the New England Patriots’ coaching staff decided on ahead of its primetime matchup with the Buffalo Bills in Week 13, and it worked. The Patriots beat the Bills 14-10, thanks in large part due to their commitment to running the football: offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels called a run on 44 of 47 non-kneel-down plays; New England ended the day with 230 rushing yards on those 44 carries for an average of 5.2 yards per attempt. It was no secret that the Patriots would rely on their running game to beat the Bills in the two teams’ pivotal AFC East matchup. Not only would it allow New England to move some pressure away from quarterback Mac Jones, Buffalo also showed some weaknesses versus the run two weeks earlier against the Indianapolis Colts. All of that in combination with the weather created a perfect yet utterly predictable storm. The rookie gained 78 yards on a team-high 24 carries. He was joined by fellow backs Damien Harris and Brandon Bolden, who added 111 and 28 yards to the equation. Harris also scored a 64-yard touchdown, with Bolden adding a two-point try on the very next snap. All three of them had productive games on a day that saw Mac Jones drop back to pass just three times. “Those guys were productive,” said head coach Bill Belichick on Monday. “They ran hard. They ran with good pad level. They got some extra yards after contact. That’s important, too. That’s what a back needs to do. We need to block the play for however many yards we block it for and, hopefully, the player with the ball can add onto that. I thought they did a good job of that. They made some tough yards. The Patriots were not perfect on the ground or dominating quite the way the final stat-line made it look like. They did see nine of their runs result in a loss of yardage. They had more effective games running the ball this season. However, they did not care: they stuck to the plan. All of that did not come as a surprise for the Bills’ defense. The problem, from their perspective, was that they simply could not do anything against the Patriots’ power running game — at least consistently enough. “Once they got the run game going, we knew they were going to be running the ball a lot. And then from there, it was just getting into negative situations,” Buffalo safety Micah Hyde said. “They’ve got good backs. They were running downhill, mixing up a little bit on us and whatever was working for them they were going right back to it. Five yards here and there, broke a few for some first downs. In the second half we were able to get off the field and make some stops. It was just unfortunate.” Even though they made their stops, the Patriots’ continued willingness to run the ball created opportunities. The Bills were unable to make positive plays consistently enough, and also had to play a game they were not used to playing: New England using big personnel — they used a sixth offensive lineman on 61 percent of their snaps, easily the highest number this season — forced Buffalo away from its standard nickel look. The Bills faced a tough decision, therefore. Keep nickel cornerback Taron Johnson on the field, or insert an inexperienced backup linebacker to add some size. With nominal LB3, A.J. Klein, on the Covid-19 reserve list, Tyrel Dodson took the field whenever Johnson came out. The Patriots took advantage of his presence, and of Johnson being outmatched against a player like offensive lineman Michael Onwenu or fullback Jakob Johnson. As a result, New England was able to assert its will in the running game. The Bills won their battles, and at the end of the day held the Patriots to their lowest output since Week 3. However, they still lost the war.
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