5 takeaways from the Patriots’ dominant win over the Bills

Based on the numbers in the box score at the end of the day, the Bills appeared to be a worthy adversary of the Patriots on Sunday afternoon. Buffalo actually finished with more first downs (25-23), more total yards (376-357), and rushed for 167 yards with an average of 6.4 per try.

But Rex Ryan might argue that the most important number in the box score – the one showing the Patriots as 41-25 winners – might’ve been the most misleading of them all. Because, if anything, it doesn’t reflect the degree to which New England dominated.

The Bills coach said he’s not sure if he has ever seen Tom Brady and the Patriots hotter than they are right now, with New England having now won four straight since its quarterback returned, and since the Bills took advantage of third-stringer Jacoby Brissett in dealing the Pats their lone defeat on Oct. 2. Here are five takeaways as the Patriots exacted a measure of revenge.

 

How good has Tom Brady been to this point? On a day he hits 22 of 33 throws, and finishes with a passer rating of 137.0, his completion percentage for the season actually went down. Last Wednesday, the online gambling site Bovada listed Brady with 3/2 odds to win the NFL’s MVP award this season – despite missing the first four games due to a suspension – and then Sunday he connected with four different targets for touchdown passes, and threw for 315 yards without an interception.

That brings Brady to 1,319 yards and 12 scores for the season. He’s yet to be picked while completing 98 of 134 tosses (73.1 percent), and gaining an average of 9.8 yards per attempt. If Brady keeps up that pace he’d finish with 3,957 passing yards despite missing a quarter of the season, and is projected to fire 36 touchdowns. That’s as many as Brady threw over 16 games last season, when he led the league.

As for the team, the Patriots have scored 34 points per game with their Hall of Famer behind center, as opposed to the 20.3 points they were averaging when he returned. After the QB led a 41-point explosion against the team that shut it out earlier in the month, It’s probably safe to say at this point that anybody who was labeling Brady a “system quarterback” three weeks into the season is at this point apologizing for their foolishness.

 

As the Patriots’ offense has evolved this season, there have been weeks where different players were featured or deemphasized, based on the defense and the gameplan. Sunday at Buffalo, part of the impressiveness of New England’s attack was its balance.

Brady threw the ball to six pass-catchers, targeting each of them four times, but nobody more than the eight times he threw to Julian Edelman. Edelman was one of three players (joining Chris Hogan and Martellus Bennett) with four catches, while Rob Gronkowski led the way with five. Gronkowski’s team-record 69^th career touchdown was a 53-yarder, as was Hogan’s first TD grab from Brady, with Edelman and Danny Amendola also joining them in the end zone.

LeGarrette Blount was limited to 2.4 yards per carry, but when the Patriots are using their passing weapons as diversely as they were Sunday, offensive balance doesn’t apply to run-pass ratio as much as it does Brady’s ability to keep defenses off kilter by spreading the ball around.

 

The Bills began the day as the best red-zone defense in the NFL, limiting opponents to touchdowns on just 36 percent of its tries this season, and producing results even better than that over the three previous weeks. The Pats met that challenge by getting to the end zone on three of the four possessions it took the ball inside the opponents’ 20 on Sunday.

On the other side, the Patriots entered ranked 21^st in red-zone defense. For the year, foes were converting 61.1 percent of chances – but Buffalo went 2-for-4, and in conjunction with wins over Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, New England opponents have scored touchdowns on just four of their last 12 red-zone visits. That pace would be good enough to be the league’s best.

 

As the break approached, the Bills were moving the ball effectively with a chance to trim New England’s 11-point lead before halftime when the Patriots stunted that drive at the 31-yard line. And over the next 46 seconds of action, the game pivoted in the Pats’ favor with a sequence of special teams plays.

First, Bills kicker Dan Carpenter banged a 49-yard field goal try off the right upright, after which the Patriots moved 28 yards in 27 ticks, and gave Stephen Gostkowski a chance to beat the buzzer with a kick of his own. The kicker seized that opportunity by zigging and zagging a 51-yard boot between the posts and sending New England to intermission with a 24-10 advantage.

Danny Amendola took the subsequent kickoff 73 yards, and two plays later that field position fostered Edelman’s first touchdown of the season, putting the Pats ahead, 31-10. So what could’ve been a one-score game was suddenly a three-score advantage, New England found itself in firm control – and along the way saw its beleaguered kicker earn himself a big boost of confidence.

 

There were no hats and T-shirts handed out in the visiting locker room at Ralph Wilson Stadium after Sunday’s game – though, practically if not officially, there could’ve been. With the Patriots now 7-1, if New England merely goes 5-3 over the second half of the season, either the Bills (4-4) or Dolphins (3-4) would need to go undefeated the rest of the way just to force the division title to be decided by a tiebreaker.

That’s highly unlikely given the flaws both Buffalo and Miami have shown. And because of the schedule that awaits the Patriots after their bye week. That slate begins with a home game against the Seahawks, which figures to be the toughest test even if Seattle has scored one offensive touchdown in the past two weeks, then it’s four games against teams currently with losing records before the Pats travel to Denver in Week 15. It’s hard to even identify three games among the final eight where the Pats won’t be favored by a touchdown or more. Given that only one other AFC division (the West) has a leader with less than three losses, New England looks like a good bet for a first-round bye, too, but that remains less certain than an East race that’s all but over.

“That team’s three games up on us,” Ryan told the media afterward. “And No. 12 is back.”

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