ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. \u2013 It\u2019s a good thing the Buffalo Bills\u2019 offense is as bad as it is.<\/p>\n
The Patriots were more than able to shake off all the drives that fell short of the end zone and overpower the Bills in the second half.\u00a0 Two fourth quarter touchdowns cemented a 25-6 Patriot win on Monday night at New Era Stadium.\u00a0 One of these days, Josh Allen will give the Patriots a good game, but the injured rookie quarterback could only stand on the sidelines and watch.<\/p>\n
His replacement, 35-year-old Derek Anderson, presided over a mostly inept offense which generated only two Stephen Hauschka field goals and only 46 rushing yards as a team.\u00a0 Anderson did manage to throw for 290 yards on 22 of 39 passing with one interception, but his rating was only 69.4.\u00a0 Anderson was sacked three times, and never really got into a good rhythm.\u00a0 Buffalo finished only 4 for 14 on third down conversions.<\/p>\n
This enabled Tom Brady and his offense to merely not screw up, score when you can, don\u2019t get hurt, and don\u2019t worry about the final score.\u00a0 Brady also found getting into a rhythm rather difficult, and also didn\u2019t get much help from the running game.\u00a0 With Sony Michel out with a knee injury, the leading Patriot rusher turned out to be Cordarrelle Patterson with 38 yards on 10 carries.<\/p>\n
This was an evening where Buffalo could have been expected to do better.\u00a0 It was the first home Monday night game for Buffalo in ten years.\u00a0 At halftime, the Bills honored former running back Thurman Thomas with the retiring of his number 34.\u00a0 Former Patriot assistant coach Brian Daboll was in charge of the Buffalo offense, and got real creative in the first half with several Wildcat packages and gadget plays.\u00a0 But those plays were more about looking good than helping to beat the Patriots.\u00a0 The visitors weren\u2019t about to get snookered like when Miami came to Gillette Stadium in 2008 and unveiled all that option stuff on them.<\/p>\n
Instead, it was Brady who shined more than the Bills did.\u00a0 Brady won his 15th<\/sup> game at Buffalo, the most by any NFL quarterback in a visiting city.\u00a0 Jim Kelly has the most wins in Buffalo by a quarterback, and Joe Ferguson is second.\u00a0 Incredibly, Brady\u2019s 15 wins is third, one ahead of Tyrod Taylor and former teammate Drew Bledsoe.\u00a0 Brady was 29 of 45 passing for 324 yards, but no touchdowns and a rating of 85.8.\u00a0 Brady managed the game just perfectly, maintained a nice status quo, did nothing to lose the game, and waited for the chance to put the game away.<\/p>\n It was only 9-3 Patriots at the half.\u00a0 Four of the five first half drives led to field goal attempts for the Patriots, as the Bills\u2019 defense did the \u201cbend but don\u2019t break\u201d thing perfectly.\u00a0 Stephen Gostkowski hit on field goals from 25, 40 and 38 yards but missed from 50 just before intermission.\u00a0 Buffalo managed only a second quarter 47-yarder from Hauschka.\u00a0 Nobody in Patriot Nation seemed really concerned about the lack of offense or not being able to finish drives with touchdowns.<\/p>\n Things got slightly dicey in the third quarter.\u00a0 On their first possession of the third quarter, Brady and the Patriots went three and out inside their own 15, then punted.\u00a0 Micah Hyde returned the punt 31 yards to the Patriot 35, and after a three and out, Hauschka drilled a 51-yard field goal to make it 9-6 Patriots.<\/p>\n The Bills got the ball back after still another stalled Patriot drive at their own 20.\u00a0 On the second play, Kyle Van Noy strip sacked Anderson, and Patrick Chung recovered at the Buffalo 29.\u00a0 But the drive stalled at the six-yard-line, and Gostkowski booted a 25-yard field goal to put the visitors up 12-6.<\/p>\n The Patriots were finally able to put the game away in the fourth quarter.\u00a0 Julian Edelman hauled in a nice 26-yard pass, and Patterson broke off a 22-yard right end run to put the Patriots at the Buffalo 22.\u00a0 Chris Hogan nearly found the end zone with a left sideline catch, but James White plowed in from the one on the next play to make it 18-6.\u00a0 Brady tried to hit a 2-point conversion, but threw the ball to Julian Stanford instead.<\/p>\n Buffalo needed to answer.\u00a0 Anderson drove the Bills from their own 25 to the Patriot 30.\u00a0 Facing third down and 15, Anderson tried to hit tight end Charles Clay in the right flat.\u00a0 On a miraculous switch, Devin McCourty shook off a receiver on the other side of the formation, broke to the ball and picked it off right in front of Clay.\u00a0 McCourty took off down the left sideline and used four or five blockers to turn it into an 84-yard pick six to put the game away.<\/p>\n The Patriot defense shut down the Bills the rest of the way, vanquishing their last two offensive possessions with heavy pressure on Anderson.\u00a0 On the final drive, Anderson was sacked twice, the second time knocking him out of the game with a sore wrist.<\/p>\n Edelman led the Patriot receivers with 104 yards on nine catches.\u00a0 White led the team with ten catches.<\/p>\n LeSean McCoy was the leading pass catcher for Buffalo with six receptions for 82 yards, but only had 13 yards on the ground.\u00a0 Former Jet Chris Ivory led the Bills with 34 yards rushing on six carries and managed to average 5.7 yards per carry.<\/p>\n Patriot fans might be forgiven if they weren\u2019t too interested in this game, let alone the players on the field thanks to the worst offense in the NFL on the other side.\u00a0 Still weary from Sunday night\u2019s World Series title celebration thanks to the Red Sox, fans have duck boats on their minds more than they have football.\u00a0 That will now change, once you get Wednesday\u2019s Rolling Rally out of the way.\u00a0 If the Patriots could pick one game to basically sleepwalk their way to a win without anyone in the fan base caring or paying attention, this game was it.\u00a0 The Patriots don\u2019t have to apologize for the Bills playing so poorly, but it\u2019s a good thing that this wasn\u2019t the Rams or Chiefs or some team like that.<\/p>\n Bill Belichick began his postgame presser by paying homage to the Red Sox, then proceeded to pay homage to the Bills for a tough game.\u00a0 Belichick was typically gracious to the other team, and made Buffalo seem like the Rams or Chiefs or some team like that.<\/p>\n Next week the Patriots go back home and entertain the Green Bay Packers, who did play the Rams this week and gave them a great game in front of a ton of Packer fans at the LA Coliseum.\u00a0 Like the Red Sox at Dodger Stadium later Sunday evening, the Packers enjoyed playing in front of what seemed like a home crowd.\u00a0 The Packers will have no such luxury next week at Gillette Stadium.<\/p>\n Belichick said that the Red Sox \u201cset the bar high\u201d.\u00a0 Good.\u00a0 We\u2019re all for another Rolling Rally in February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s a good thing the Buffalo Bills\u2019 offense is as bad as it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":20055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1826,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2018-patriots-regular-season","category-patriots-commentary"],"yoast_head":"\n