Bills have been the Patriot punch bags for the past two decades, but by 2020 the Tomato Cans are on the other shelf. The Bills are tied to the playoff and the sub-.500 Patriots are playing the straight. Bill Belichick came for the night with a 35-6 record against Buffalo as head coach in New England.
Tom Brady has anchored most of the Patriot’s victories and Brady this year is playing in Tampa. In their absence, Bills is the best team in AFC Leste and Patriots is the team with the controversial quarterback.
Buffalo’s Josh Allen replaced Brady as the division’s best defender and pushed Bills to a 10-3 lead early in the second quarter. The Pats, however, were not getting any more of the pleasant air, but fighting, Cam Newton. His legs still work well, however, as he showed by scoring 9 yards in the middle of the second quarter to reduce the deficit to 10-9.
Belichick’s petulance on issues related to his quarterback’s situation was off the charts for seven full days after the Miami stink show. And there was no excuse for that.
Land for Bill: You have big fans who support and care deeply about all aspects of your football team. When you allow Brady to go for a walk and then replace him with the Patriot’s worst defender since Marc Wilson, you will receive questions about that. And when your team is eliminated mathematically from the playoff contest, people will wonder if you can try the kid you chose a few years ago.
It is important for your fans and their reluctance to answer a question on the subject is immature, deaf, arrogant and obtuse. It flies when you go to the Super Bowl every two years, but in 2020 you are Rex Ryan, not Vince Lombardi. The promise of “training better” requires some consideration of how lucky you are to work in a market that tolerates unnecessary rudeness.
Now that we’ve solved that, let’s update on Bill vs. Tom, 2020. Belichick took the lead in this competition right after Labor Day, but now it’s Christmas and Brady is looking like the Belmont Secretariat. The Patriots entered Monday Night with a 6-8 record, out of the playoffs for the first time since 2008 (when Brady was injured), unable to score a touchdown (zero TDs in nine quarters), featuring a quarterback who had five touchdowns passes in the first 14 games of the season. Brady is leading Tampa to the playoffs for the first time in 14 years and has launched six touchdown passes (668 yards!) In his last four football quarters.
I will probably never subscribe to this narrative, but until proven otherwise, Belichick will have to live with the fact that he never won without Brady. In eight years without Brady as his quarterback, Belichick is 61-71 with a playoff appearance. With Brady, he was 219-64, went to nine Super Bowls and won AFC East 17 times. In his three seasons of the Patriot without Tom, he’s 22-24 with no playoffs.
Oh, and not to stack, but Brady took all the Patriot’s good fortune with him to Tampa. The talented-but-fuel Bucs manages to play against NFC winner Least in the first round of the playoffs. In other words, as he always did here, Brady gets the Tomato Cans in the first round of the playoffs.
I was there the last time an under-0.500 Pats team coached by Belichick played Bills in a meaningless game at the end of a season. It was December 17, 2000, and the 4-10 Patriots defeated the Bills 13-10, in the snow in overtime in Adam Vinatieri’s 24-yard field goal. Pats franchise quarterback Drew Bledsoe, a man with a sense of history, helped clear the ground for Vinatieri’s kick and told reporters, “We couldn’t find a convict.” Nick Cafardo wrote the story of the Globe game.
Monday’s game got off to a sad start for the Pats when Damiere Byrd passed a touchdown pass (hit him in the mask) on a trick play that worked perfectly. The Pats settled for a 45-yard field goal to gain a 3-0 lead in the third minute. After Bills tied with a chip-shot field goal, the Pats went three and left (Newton taking a sack on the third run), then he was sucked in by a fake punt that led to a Bills touchdown. It was a nightmare for Belichick’s special teams.
After Allen patiently watched his receivers drop two passes into the end zone (imagine Brady’s attacks if the Bucs’ wideouts did that), the Bills quarterback passed to Zack Moss, who ran 5 yards into the end zone to give the Bills a shot. advantage of 10-3 moments in the second quarter. Adam Butler crushed New England with a pair of offside links in the red zone.
Newton (nine consecutive quarters without a touchdown pass) was still Belichick’s quarterback as the Pats and Bills approached the break.
Dan Shaughnessy is a columnist for the Globe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @dan_shaughnessy.