The Buffalo Bills have a chance to take a three-game lead — and hold the initial head-to-head tiebreaker — on the New England Patriots in the AFC East this afternoon, but the real value in a win for Joe Brady’s team today will be found far beyond the division standings.
It’s early October — too early to crown any team a division champ in the NFL’s long and arduous regular-season voyage that features ebbs and flows for every team. Sure, a Bills win would make headlines about Buffalo’s stranglehold on the AFC East. And they are in prime position, for sure.
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Today’s victory over Mike Vrabel, Drake Maye and Co. will hurt the Patriots more than anything to do with their win-loss record.
Teams rebound from slow starts or mid-season lulls all the time in the NFL.
Heck, in 2023, the Bills trailed the Dolphins by three games… entering Week 14 and were chasing them to win the division.
But the Patriots feel on the brink of implosion.
And the essence of a team is perhaps a better indicator of its stability than anything else.
It starts at the top in any organization, with the head coach and quarterback, and that’s where the Patriots feel so fragile going into this game at Orchard Park.
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A tumultuous offseason for Vrabel halted any momentum he had after leading the Patriots to the Super Bowl in his first season running the show in New England.
Maye was runner-up for NFL MVP last season.
Now the third-year quarterback has one touchdown to six interceptions through three games. This past week after an abysmal performance in a blowout loss to the Jaguars, all that everyone in New England could talk about and write about was the sense of a rapidly widening rift between Vrabel and his young quarterback.
Vrabel didn’t hold back in postgame pressers, or interviews during the week, almost jumping at the chance to criticize some decisions and throws from Maye against Jacksonville. Maye has pointed to a shoulder injury as the culprit for his disastrous start to the season. Vrabel didn’t want to hear about it.
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Patriots insiders would go on Boston-area radio saying there was nothing wrong with Maye.
Maye was listed on the Patriots injury report all week as “full” with a shoulder injury for the first time all season.
This New England team is incredibly weak right now.
Not because they’ll be joined by Christian Gonzalez and Christian Barmore, two of the team’s three best defensive players. Don’t get me wrong, their collective absence is major. I’ve long been an advocate of players on the field being more important than coaches or the status of a team’s culture.
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But I can’t imagine the media and fan firestorm for the Patriots if Maye has another poor performance, and the Bills are clearly the better team on the field right now inside the new Highmark Stadium.
And the psychological toll on this New England team will likely be substantial. I still believe the quality of the players is more important than anything else in the NFL. But I realize that the human element of those players, in this game, or any professional sport, is actually more important than any analyst, report, or fan believes.
And maybe that realization hit me now because I got to know Mitch Morse a lot in the last two months while I was watching Ted Lasso. Quite a combination, right?
This means the Bills need to come up with one of their best efforts of the season to break down the Patriots from a mental standpoint. Doing so would mean more than just New England shipping in 1-3 to four weeks.