5 takeaways from the Patriots’ stinging, 24-21 setback to the Bills
Cam Newton lets a chance to win slip out of his grasp, and Bill Belichick's team loses its fourth straight.
ANOTHER TURNOVER SPOILS CAM’S BOUNCEBACK DAY
For most of Sunday afternoon in Buffalo, Cam Newton was the quarterback the Patriots need him to be. He hit on 60 percent of his passes, didn’t throw it to the other team, and used his legs effectively. With Josh McDaniels’ offense seeming to play to his strengths as a passer, Newton kept the club in a competitive position throughout and appeared far more comfortable and assertive than he had in more than a month.
It certainly wasn’t perfect or pretty, but for the breadth of the first 59 minutes, it at least appeared to be a positive step forward. In the 60th minute, it appeared it might even be good enough to get the Patriots a win. The Pats were 13 yards from a go-ahead touchdown, and already well within the range required to make a gimme of a game-tying field goal try.
But before New England could save its season, and Newton could fully flex in front of his doubters, the ball was punched out of his hands. Sucker punched, from behind. And with that came a knockout blow that at once flattened Newton’s apparent progress and all but fatally doomed the Patriots’ season in a fashion frustratingly representative of why they’re now pretty much playing out the string with nine weeks still to go.
Losers of four straight, the Patriots are 2-5. They’re three and a half games behind the Bills (6-2) in the AFC East, and trailing the Dolphins (4-3), too. Beyond the division, the conference landscape looks even tougher. Seven teams — as many as make the playoffs — already have five wins. Conversely, only the Jaguars, Texans, and Jets have fewer wins than the Pats among the AFC entries.
To borrow a phrase this election season, for the Patriots there is no viable path forward to the playoffs.
Sunday was their last hope to salvage things, yet ultimately it proved emblematic of where the club and its quarterback have spent most of the season. They were relatively close — but close doesn’t count because there’s a price to be paid for players who are unable to protect the football.
Too often over the past month, turnovers have cost the Patriots prime opportunities. They entered Week 8 with the second-worst turnover rate in football, and Sunday’s fumble was the squad’s 15th giveaway on the season. Newton alone has now accounted for eight of them.
So, yes, Sunday he might’ve been mostly the quarterback the Patriots need him to be. But, fair or unfair, the Patriots still need him to be better than that.
SIGNS OF ENCOURAGEMENT …
Their 10-year grip on the AFC East feeling like it was down to the tips of the final finger still holding on, the Pats showed some fight in the middle of the third quarter and put together an encouraging, complementary sequence that provided some sorely-needed signs of encouragement after what might’ve been the team’s most discouraging month in a decade.
It wasn’t enough for a win, but it was a sign of life, and after last week’s dud against the 49ers was the moment where New England began to again look like a team at least capable of competing. They looked like the Patriots of old, in fact, executing in all three phases to seize the momentum and pull themselves back into the game.
It began with a good punt, Jake Bailey pinning the Bills inside their own 10 after the Pats’ coaches opted to play for field position by calling a conciliatory wide receiver screen on third and exceptionally long. The defense did its part, forcing a three-and-out while conceding only four yards. On the ensuing punt, Gunner Olszewski got some good blocking before bringing the ball 15 yards, all the way to Buffalo’s 37.
An offense that had been dormant for weeks nearly shot itself in the foot initially, with Shaq Mason’s illegal hands penalty pushing the Pats back to 1st and 20. Similar mistakes had spoiled a couple of drives already on the day, and all season it’s been evident this isn’t a team that can afford to be chasing the chains.
But this time they erased the error. Rex Burkhead picked up a third-and-10 with a bullish haul on an inside draw, and two plays later Damien Harris took it over left guard, then went 22 yards to score the team’s first touchdown in nearly seven full quarters. Newton hit Jakobi Meyers for the subsequent two-point conversion, and with that, the game was tied.
For a moment, the Patriots looked like the Patriots again. The game looked winnable again. And maybe — just maybe — even the division looked like it might be in play again.
… SPOILED BY A BAD DECISION
But then the Pats opted to try an onside kick. Bailey pounded it into the turf, and the ball took a nice big, easy hop for the Bills’ alert up-man.
It landed softly in his arms — and gave the Bills a nice soft landing spot after they’d finally been pushed back up against the ropes.
Remember, Buffalo came in having lost two of three and didn’t exactly blow out the lowly Jets last week. They’d just given up the lead they’d held since the second series of this game. The Bills know the history. They know the pressure. They know what’s expected of them. And the Pats had put them in a position where they might’ve been starting to doubt they were ready to be the alpha of the East.
Instead, the decision to try the onside kick let the Bills out from some of the pressure. New England put Buffalo in a favorable position to start its next drive offensively — and also signaled to the Bills that the Pats themselves doubted their ability to hang with the new division leaders. The ineffective kick effectively told Buffalo that New England wasn’t sure they could hang with their hosts if they played it straight up. It amounted to an admission that the Pats felt they needed to trick the Bills out of a possession in order to pull this one out.
And on top of all that, it put too much misguided trust in a defense that continues to regress from the ranks of the NFL’s elite. Set up at the Pats’ 45, the Bills covered that in nine plays to re-take the lead. New England answered, but then so did Buffalo, which a 63-yard possession that produced a field goal.
So, just when it looked like the Bills might be reeling they took advantage of a short field and put up 10 points. They flipped the pressure back on to the Patriots. They forced the visitors to play chase, and the team that’s chasing can’t often afford a major mistake.
The 24-21 final is a testament to that.
MEYERS AND HARRIS: 2021
If Sunday’s loss shifted the Patriots into the mode of trying to sift through who might be part of their future — particularly with Tuesday’s trade deadline looming — they should take the recent play of Meyers and Harris as evidence that both second-year players should have a place with the team moving forward.
Meyers finished with a team-high six catches for 58 yards, and were it not for a couple of big catches negated by offensive line penalties he would’ve been pushing 100 yards. Factor in those two non-plays, and he was the target on 12 of Newton’s 25 would-be pass attempts, plus he was the recipient when the quarterback fit the ball into a tight window when the Pats converted a two-point try in the third quarter.
The knock on Meyers is that he’s slow, and that assessment left him undrafted after a prolific collegiate career. But as a pro he’s proven to be reliable as a pass target, first earning his way onto the roster at the start of last season, then in the process of making 25 catches as a rookie. Before Sunday, he’d caught the only five passes thrown to him this season, but with Julian Edelman on injured reserve and N’Keal Harry dealing with a concussion, a door has opened for Meyers and Newton appears comfortable looking his way. Even Brady appeared to trust him on some key third downs, like the third and four Meyers picked up on the final drive against the Bills Sunday.
Harris was a third-round pick last year, but effectively red-shirted the season, then missed the first three contests of this season. Sunday was his fourth contest — but the second in which he’s eclipsed 100 yards on the ground, gaining 102 on 16 totes, and boosting his average to 5.7 per attempt for the season.
He runs with power, and has flashed the footwork to make the subtle moves that foster extra yardage. He’s not a burner, but he can burst into the second level.
Sony Michel remains on IR, but the eye test says he should slot in behind Harris even when healthy. James White and Rex Burkhead have their role, but Harris is emerging as the bell cow — for this year, and beyond. And it’s time the Pats stop undervaluing Meyers’ ability to execute a route, catch the ball sure-handedly, and contribute, too.
IT’S HARD NOT TO THINK OF THE ALTERNATE REALITY
In one alternate reality, the Patriots never let Tom Brady leave. (Chad Finn wrestled with that one a few days ago.)
But the what-ifs and if-onlys of the 2020 Patriots are plenty maddening by themselves, even without needing to entirely rewrite that part of history.
Sunday’s loss stung. It hurt. But that hardly renders it an exception in the run that’s created the Pats’ current predicament — and that makes it almost impossible for any Patriots fan to avoid going back through the gamelog and wondering what might’ve been.
At 2-5 and without a first-quarter offensive touchdown to this point, it feels like a lost cause, and like this team is totally bereft
of talent. At times we’ve wondered if the toughness is missing, too.
Yet we can go back to Seattle and wonder how it might’ve been different if Newton had found a way to slip through traffic when trying to rush in for the winning score from the 1 in the final minute. We can go back to Kansas City, and project how it might’ve been different had Brian Hoyer not allowed the clock to bleed out of one half, then fumbled away points in the other.
We can think back to the home loss to Denver, and lament the lack of urgency and preparation that seemed to hamper a team trying to play without really practicing — then still almost pulled off a comeback. And now we can think about this loss to the Bills, when if Newton holds on to the ball, it’s probably Buffalo that would’ve been relieved to see the game go into overtime. The Pats were marching, they had timeouts, and they had a chance to win.
If two of those games go differently, they’re 4-3. If they execute with the careful expertise of the Patriots of yesteryear, it’s not crazy to think they could be 5-2. Maybe even 6-1, with an extreme stroke of luck.
The flaws would still exist. They would still be a team in need of help. But it’s hard not to look back at four of the five losses and recognize that it might only be a handful of plays accounting for a difference as massive as the one between the Patriots carrying hope into the second half of the season and the reality of now almost hopelessly playing out the string.
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