Once upon a time, during a dynasty far, far away, the Buffalo Bills were an afterthought.
A laughingstock.
A doormat the Patriots, Dolphins and even Jets wiped their feet on during the season. No team failed quite like the Bills, a little brother’s little brother with a long history of bad quarterbacks, fumbled coaching searches and lost drafts.
From 2001 to 2019, whenever Tom Brady started and finished a game against Buffalo, the Patriotss won. During one stretch spanning the late 2000s and early 2010s, the Pats beat the Bills 15 straight times. In all, the Patriotss went 34-4 in the division series during the Brady era.
But at the end, Buffalo quietly began to gain significant ground. Head coach Sean McDermott arrived in 2017, and Brady threw more interceptions than touchdowns against McDermott’s defense over his last three seasons.
Then Brady left, and Josh Allen, after struggling in his initial battles with Bill Belichick, took over. Over the past three years, Allen has tossed 18 touchdowns to two interceptions against the Patriots. The Bills have gone 6-1, averaging more than 30 points per game.
Like Brady, there is no solution for Allen, a modern master of the quarterback position. Aside from Allen’s unprecedented development, Buffalo has steadily built one of the league’s best rosters around him. Belichick was asked about that process Wednesday.
“You’re talking about a period of years here, but right now, they’re really a well-balanced team,” Belichick began Wednesday.
FOXBORO MA. – DECEMBER 26: New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick walks the sidelines during the 2nd quarter of the game against the Buffalo Bills at Gillette Stadium on December 26, 2021 in Foxboro, MA. (Staff Photo By Nancy Lane/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)
Then he hit on the Bills’ highly rated special teams, their defense that generates turnovers and an offense stocked with weapons. Finally, Belichick nailed the dismount.
“I mean, they brought basically the same team back two years in a row,” he said. “They haven’t made a lot of changes in the last two years.”
Bingo. Continuity.
In the same way the Patriots could run it back around Brady and Belichick and remain competitive year after year, Buffalo now enjoys the fruits of nailing any franchise’s two most important decisions and years of roster-building around them. Allen was a risk, a developmental prospect refined over three years by former offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, now the Giants head coach.
Once Allen proved worthy of further investment, the Bills traded for ex-Vikings receiver Stefon Diggs in March 2020. He was the missing piece for an offense that had grown into a steady, if unspectacular, unit in 2019. Diggs elevated Buffalo in a way only a true No. 1 wide receiver can.
“They’re a very explosive team,” Pats linebacker Jahlani Tavai said. “They have (Stefon) Diggs on the outside, and they have a really strong running game.”
Diggs made the All-Pro Team in his debut season and has earned a Pro Bowl nod every year since. His acquisition represents the starkest difference between the Patriots’ building strategy around Mac Jones and how the Bills invest in Allen’s supporting cast. Though, there are similarities, including mid-level veteran signings in free agency.
Patriots need to find Demario Douglas more snaps coming off of injury
Offensively, Buffalo also ran a game-plan operation under Daboll, an ex-Patriots assistant, meaning they adapted their schemes each week to attack specific weaknesses in their next opponent. Under Daboll and his successor, Ken Dorsey, the Bills have gashed Belichick’s defense more deeply and more consistently than any other opponent to face him as a head coach. The Pats felt this shift in 2019, the beginning of their end and the dawn of Buffalo’s current era.
From ex-Patriots linebacker Dont’a Hightower in December of that season: “I think constantly whenever we play Buffalo — especially defensively — they always have a new wrinkle. And I mean, the skill players that they have and the offensive line that they have, the way that they’re built, it’s built to be in this division. It’s built to play us.”
In the draft, the Bills separated themselves by hitting on virtually every top pick under McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane. Before Allen, Buffalo selected cornerback Tre’Davious White, a two-time Pro Bowler, in 2017. Then came Allen, and in 2019, they selected defensive tackle Ed Oliver, whom Belichick described this week as “as good as anybody we’ll play.”
In consecutive years, the Bills added defensive linemen A.J. Epenesa and Gregory Rousseau with their top picks, now cornerstones of the NFL’s best pass rush. While 2022 first-round cornerback Kaiir Elam is trending toward bust territory, Buffalo unequivocally hit on 2022 second-round running back James Cook, one of the league’s most impressive young rushers. Another mid-round pick from that draft, linebacker Terrel Bernard, is currently the Bills’ leading tackler, while rookie first-round tight end Dalton Kincaid ranks third in receptions, behind Diggs and another one-time mid-round pick, Gabriel Davis.
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By contrast, the Patriots roster one player from their 2016 and 2017 draft classes combined. They whiffed on 2018 first-rounders Sony Michel and Isaiah Wynn, cut ties with every draft pick from 2019 and almost half of their 2020 class is now out of the league. Things began to turn in 2021, when the Pats landed Mac Jones, Christian Barmore and Rhamondre Stevenson, but early returns on their 2022 haul are discouraging.
Without a young core and question marks at quarterback and on their coaching staff, the Patriots are the team they used to beat like a punching bag for all those years. And the results bear it out.
As of Friday night, the Bills were 8.5-point favorites, and if that holds, they will be heaviest favorites to ever walk into Gillette Stadium. How soon the Pats can reverse roles with Buffalo will depend on the answers to the aforementioned questions, and perhaps a little bit more free-agent spending.
Buffalo is scheduled to rank in the top 10 for cash spending every season through 2026, while the Patriots sit 30th, 31st and 32nd and 29th over the next four years.
Scarnecchia thankful for the memories
On Friday afternoon, the eve of his induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame, former offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia reflected on his 34-year career in New England.
“(I) never thought anything like this would ever happen to me,” he told reporters.
Scarnecchia’s tenure pre-dated Bill Belichick’s hiring as head coach and included five Super Bowl wins. Before becoming Belichick’s top assistant and O-line coach in 2000, Scarnecchia coached in New England from 1982-1988, then returned to work under former Patriots head coaches Dick MacPherson, Bill Parcells and Pete Carroll.
Bill Belichick honors Dante Scarnecchia, Mike Vrabel ahead of Patriots Hall of Fame ceremony
Scarnecchia counted the Patriots’ introduction as a team at Super Bowl XXXVI in Feb. 2002 among his favorite memories.Of all the challenges Scarnecchia helped the Patriots’ offensive line overcome, he highlighted their victory in Super Bowl XXXVIII over the Panthers in Feb. 2004. He remembered Carolina’s defensive line being loaded with first-round picks, and his offensive line, specifically left guard Russ Hochstein, receiving outside criticism before kickoff.
“That was one of those games against Carolina where we had to really be at our best,” he said. “I remember specifically, Russ Hochstein started that game for us. And Warren Sapp went on TV and beat (Hochstein) up really bad because he had been in Tampa, and they cut him and we claimed because I really liked the way Russ played football in Nebraska. And (Hochstein) started that game.
“And Sapp beat him up on Wednesday night, all the players were concerned about it. Shoot, he went out there and played a great game. That was special. That was really special.”
As for the team’s current offensive line, one of the NFL’s worst, Scarnecchia told 98.5 The Sports Hub on Friday morning: “It’s just a lack of continuity, and that’s very important. And I think that’s the biggest problem, and hopefully, hopefully, they can get that resolved. Hopefully they can get Mac (Jones) into a comfort level and a confidence level that he’s had in his three years here, at times.”
Pats’ practice change
Foxboro, MA – September 20: Patriots Mac Jones stretches during practice at Gillette Stadium. (Matt Stone/Boston Herald)
For a second straight week, the Patriots shifted their practice scheduled to include a walkthrough on Tuesday.
Bill Belichick explained the change as an adjustment to the team’s travel schedule returning from Las Vegas last weekend. The week before that, Belichick opted to give players the day off following their 34-0 beatdown at the hands of the Saints.
Regardless of the reason, Pats wide receiver Kendrick Bourne said this week he appreciated the change.
“Practicing on Tuesdays has been new for us, but for me personally, but I think it’s good for us,” Bourne said. “Everybody’s coming out there with the right mentality, and it’s been two days of some good work. You can just feel the energy, guys are going hard. Shout-out to our O-line today, it was kind of like their damn pads, and I feel like they were intense today, and I like that energy from them because I feel like we feed off them. So to see them start good and have a good day, I feel like the energy is right out there.”
Quote of the Week
“Football is a big part of my life, but I also have other parts of my life, you know? I think I’m definitely sometimes misconstrued, or whatever, but I just try to be Mac.” — Mac Jones on how he believes he’s related to Patriots fans.
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