It sure doesn’t look like the Bills are ready for prime time
Tom Brady has won against the Bills 28 out of 31 times in his career.
Welcome to Season 7, Episode 8 of the Unconventional Preview, a serious-yet-lighthearted, nostalgia-tinted look at the Patriots’ weekly matchup.
After their puzzling 1-2 start (that loss to the self-destructive Jaguars seems less important by the week), the Patriots are rolling, having won four straight while averaging 39.3 points per game in the wins. They are who they usually are in the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady era – a legitimate Super Bowl contender, even if the roster could use an addition or two here or there before the trade deadline.
The Patriots’ schedule does get a little more daunting over the next several weeks, with five of their seven games coming on the road, and their next two – Monday’s matchup with the Bills and next week’s Sunday night game against the Packers – in prime time.
But that gauntlet starts out with what should be a gimme. The Patriots take on the 2-4 Bills, who have beaten the Vikings and Titans but who have scored just 81 points all season. The Patriots have 81 points over the last two games. Buffalo’s defense has been tough – it’s ranked fourth in the league – but Brady has tormented better ones, and that D is the only cause for optimism for a team that is not ready for prime time.
Kick it off, Gostkowski, and let’s get this one started …
Three players I’ll be watching not named Tom Brady
Patrick Chung: If this game gets out of hand like it should, maybe it’s the one where I finally focus on what Chung is doing from play-to-play on the Patriots defense. Pats fans recognize him as versatile player, and a good one, but he’s not one of those electrifying playmakers who ends up in a commercial for the Pro Bowl at the end of the season. Yet Belichick, for a couple of seasons now, speaks of him in the same breath that he does Rodney Harrison and Mike Vrabel. Remember this quote from Belichick before Super Bowl LII? “The guy is a really good football player. He’s one of the best players in the league, one of the best players on our team. He does a lot of things very well and has done them that way for a long time. We’re lucky we have him.’’ Even if there’s a hint of hyperbole in that statement, Belichick wouldn’t speak so admiringly of him if he didn’t mean it.
Derek Anderson: Anderson, the Bills starter this week because Josh Allen is hurt and Nathan Peterman is Nathan Peterman, entered the NFL as a sixth-round pick of the Ravens in 2005. He was decent once upon a time, throwing for 3,787 yards and 29 touchdowns for the 2007 Cleveland Browns, who went 10-5 in his starts that year. But he wasn’t decent for long, and hasn’t thrown for as many as 800 yards in a season since 2010, when he was with the Cardinals. Meanwhile, in the time that he has been in the league, the Bills have spent relatively high draft picks on quarterbacks Trent Edwards (third round, 2007), E.J. Manuel (first round, 2013), Cardale Jones (fourth round, 2016), and Allen (seventh overall this year). And they selected J.P. Losman in the first round the year before Anderson entered the league. I’m still not completely sure how an NFL team ends up with Derek Anderson starting at this point in time, but this is at least a partial blueprint of misery.
Josh Gordon: Gordon, coming off his first 100-yard game as a Patriot (and one in which two of his four receptions were pretty close to spectacular), got some high praise from his very exacting quarterback this week.
“I just think it’s so impressive, in my view, what he’s done in a short period of time,’’ said Brady. “The receiver position in our offense takes years for most guys to understand and learn nuances and intricacies of not only our plays, but how to get open within the scheme, how to gain my trust, and he’s done it in such a short period of time. I don’t think we’re where we necessarily can be in the future if we just keep working hard at it.
“… For him to play the role that he’s played is a credit to him, what he’s been doing and what his routine here has been. I know he’s got a lot of great support and everyone wants to see him do as well as he possibly can.’’
Couple of thoughts about this: It’s extremely encouraging to hear Brady talk this way. It’s both a confirmation that Gordon is doing everything he can to acclimate to what the Patriots need from him. It’s also a reminder that he needs to keep doing those things. Reading this, it almost sounds like Brady isn’t talking to the media so much as he is talking to Gordon through the media. Telling us that Gordon is impressing him with his work ethic is a fine way for Brady to make him feel good about the job he is doing, and to inspire him to keep doing it.
Entirely subjective ranking of the best third-down backs of the Brady era
1. Kevin Faulk. He has the red jacket to show for it. He had many great attributes – patience, intelligence, shiftiness, stick-‘em hands – but my favorite was how he became so adept at converting direct snaps. How in the world did opposing defenses ever overlook this play? They always seemed to, just as they seemed to have amnesia about Mike Vrabel being an actual receiving threat when he lined up on the goal line. One more thing to like about Faulk: He was the rare draft pick from the Pete Carroll/Bobby Grier era that panned out.
2. James White: A wonderful player, with smarts and instincts to find open space that rival … well, Faulk’s. He also excels in comebacks from 25-point deficits in Super Bowls. And he seems to just keep improving. He might be the most valuable player on the Patriots offense now other than the quarterback. Probably is, actually.
3. Shane Vereen: He was injury plagued during his four seasons here and never had 500 yards rushing or receiving in a single season. But he gets the No. 3 spot in the order for one performance – his 11-catch, 64-yard gem in Super Bowl XLIX. You could say it was Faulkian. Or Whiteian.
4. Danny Woodhead. Might be the most popular player on this list other than Faulk, partly because he looks like your neighbor’s nephew who was once a pretty good kick returner for UMass-Dartmouth. Bonus points: They got him as a Jets discard in the ’10 season, and he went on to average 5.6 yards per carry that year.
5. J.R. Redmond. He played just 36 games over three seasons as a Patriot, but you know why he’s on this list. He was nearly as responsible as Brady for proving John Madden wrong on the winning drive in Super Bowl XXXVI. Had his moments in the Snow Bowl too, as you may recall.
Grievance of the week
This isn’t so much a grievance as it is a slight but bemusing offense. In its promos for Monday night’s game, ESPN has been touting how the Patriots will be “renewing their rivalry’’ with the Bills. I sympathize with the marketing people who had to come up with an angle for the game (“Brady! Anderson! Aw, dammit, it’s a mismatch!’’), but other than their proximity and shared status as AFC East franchises, there’s about as much of a rivalry here as Bo Jackson’s shoulder had with Brian Bosworth’s sternum. Brady has played against the Bills 31 times in his career. The Patriots have won 28 of them. There’s a long way to go to even suggest this rivalry could be resurrected, let alone renewed.
Prediction, or what was so bad about having Tyrod Taylor at quarterback?
There are some things to like about the Bills, who, should you forget, actually were a playoff team last season. LeSean McCoy was once one of the better backs in the league. Receiver Zay Jones is feisty. Chris Ivory used to occasionally run like the Tasmanian Devil against the Patriots during his Jets days. But the reality is that the Bills don’t have a quarterback, and because the Bills don’t have a quarterback, this is going to be a fine day for the Patriots’ 19th-ranked defense.
Patriots 41, Bills 10.
