FOXBORO — The Buffalo Bills proved to be too much for the New England Patriots Thursday night at Gillette Stadium, winning their one-sided AFC East showdown, 24-10.
The Patriots struggled all night to get their offense going, but saw a brief flash of offensive brilliance on a 48-yard screen pass from Mac Jones to Marcus Jones, a defensive back and special teams player, to give New England its lone lead of the night at 7-3 in the first quarter.
The score answered a 40-yard Bills field goal from Tyler Bass on a drive where the Bills fell victim to penalties that led to a third-and-20 situation, resulting in the early field goal.
From then on, the Patriots couldn’t do anything of substance on offense, much to the chagrin of fans at Gillette Stadium while local cable television viewers in several communities — including North Attleboro, Norton and Mansfield —were left in the dark, with viewers there reporting not being able to watch the game live. It was, however, available on Amazon Prime Video with a subscription, except it was the Patriots who paid the price on this night.
The Bills took the lead for good on the first play of the second quarter, with Stefon Diggs burning Jonathan Jones on an out route for an 8-yard receiving score to make it 10-7.
The Bills then added another touchdown on a 14 play, 56-yard drive that ended with an 8-yard reception by Gabe Davis. The drive following that for Buffalo ended in a punt, the first time the Bills had punted in 11 quarters against New England. The Bills had gone 23 straight drives without a punt against New England before doing so with 2:55 left in the first half.
Following another Patriots punt, the Bills made a rare miscue, fumbling away a potential scoring drive to the Patriots and giving them the ball on the plus side of the field right before halftime.
With a chance to cut into their deficit, and holding two timeouts with just over a minute left in the half, the Patriots could not convert for any points on the drive. A first down gain to put the Patriots on the 35-yard line led to the Patriots using their final timeouts of the half. The Patriots only gained four yards over the next three plays before lining up for a 48-yard field goal attempt by Nick Folk.
Folk’s attempt hit the crossbar and bounced out to turn the ball over to the Bills, an embodiment of nothing quite going right for New England. Entering halftime down 17-7, it was the last chance the Patriots had to score in the game until late in the fourth when Folk hit a 39-yard field goal with 1:53 remaining in the game — making it the eventual final score of 24-10.
The Bills added their only touchdown in the second half off a Devin Singletary 1 yard run to cap a drive that went 15 plays for 94 yards while chewing up 8:55 off the clock to make it 24-7 with 14:31 left in the game.
Folk added a too little, too late field goal with 1:53 left to play in the game.
Allen led the Bills in passing with 233 yards on 22 completions while running back James Cook had 64 yards rushing on 14 carries and Stefon Diggs had seven catches for 92 yards and a touchdown.
Rhamondre Stevenson paced the backfield for the Patriots with 54 yards on 10 carries while Marcus Jones led all Patriots receivers with 54 yards on two catches. Mac Jones had 195 yards passing on one score. In total, the Bills had over 38 minutes on offense, well over double the Patriots’ total.
Defensively for New England, Matthew Judon recovered a fumble, which came on a Josh Uche strip sack near midfield where the Patriots were unable to make anything of it. Davon Godchaux led the Patriots in tackles with 10, and Uche had the only two sacks for the Patriots. For the Bills, Tremaine Edmonds had six tackles, a team-high, and AJ Epenesa had one sack.
The loss dropped the Patriots to 6-6 on the season, leaving them needing to do major work over their next five games in order to sniff a playoff chance. Next up for the Patriots is the Arizona Cardinals on Dec. 12, a Monday night game, at 8:15. The Bills notched their first AFC East win after starting 0-2 in the division to improve to 9-3. They will play the Patriots again to close out the season on Jan. 8.
Quotables
Shortly after the conclusion of the game on Thursday, a video of Mac Jones yelling on the sideline went viral on the football side of Twitter showing his frustration with playcalling. When asked about it, Mac said it wasn't directed at anyone directly as much as it was emotions of the game getting ahead of him: "Just kind of let my emotions get to me but we're kind of playing from behind. What I said was about throwing it deeper in the short game. I got to execute that part better. But it's the short game we kept going to, which is working. But I felt like we needed chunk plays. I shouted that out to kind of get everyone going. That's emotional. That's football. I'm passionate about this game. Obviously, you don't want to let your emotions get the best of you," Jones said. The video in question looked like Jones said "Throw the f----- ball, f------ quick game sucks."
Devin McCourty was quick to mention the obvious - a tough game where the Patriots fell short of a crucial win in the AFC Division race. The Patriots have some time left to right the ship, but McCourty pointed to the games getting bigger as each week goes by: “Tough game. I think obviously did some things well, but not enough things well. So yeah, I mean, we’ve been talking about it I think the last two weeks, these games get bigger and bigger, so when you fall short it’s disappointing. We’ve got some time, we need to try to regroup, reset, figure some things out and decide what the rest of our season is going to be," McCourty said.
Rhamondre Stevenson also expressed some frustration when asked if there is any. When it comes to it, they know what they're doing wrong, but some things just aren't coming together: “We know what we're doing wrong and we know what we need to do to start winning and progress in the right direction. It's a little frustrating but we all know what we've got to do. So we've just got another week of working on it and trying to be better next game," Stevenson said.
The aforementioned two minute drill where the Patriots failed to score before half, leading to a missed Folk field goal, Mac said it comes down to situational awareness and capitalizing on what the play calls were - which was to get the first down. He calls it a learning experience: "I think the two-minute stuff, it's all situational awareness and time management. There's communication that comes from the side to me, to the players. We just need to improve that. For what it's worth, we were trying to get the first down. Got the first down. Obviously, you got to take the timeout or spike the ball. ... Just got to learn from it and try and score points. Whatever we can do better, we will. Good learning experience, but it's going to be tough to watch, for sure," Jones said.
With the Patriots now 6-6, Matthew Judon said the Patriots aren't dead yet, despite the speculation entering Thursday that a loss could effectively snuff playoff chances for New England. With games to be played, including the Bills to close the season, he feels there's plenty time to get things correct: “It's not over yet. Right? We're 6-6. We have more games to play. That's what we're going to do. We're going to go out there and we're going to play. We have to put this one behind us. We see this team again. We have to play this team again. We have two more division games. As hard as this is we have some tough games ahead of us. We have a little west coast trip coming up. We have to focus. We have to come back. We have to be ready," Judon said.