For twenty seasons, the Buffalo Bills were not even close to being the legitimate playoff and Super Bowl contenders that they are now under Josh Allen and Sean McDermott. When the New England Patriots dynasty kept raising Lombardi trophies and hoisting banners, the Bills were just stuck in a pit of misery and sadness. Such is the feeling when your team loses four straight championships and does not have a single playoff win in the 2000s or 2010s. However, once Tom Brady left the picture, it was Buffalo’s turn to dominate the division. Since 2020, they have won four straight AFC East titles and are 9-2 against New England including the playoffs. Beating this team during that time period meant more to them than beating any other team that they could have gone up against, even when the Patriots were the absolute standard of the NFL. To look back at how tormented the Bills have been against this division rival would not do it justice it would just defeat the purpose. Instead, let’s take a look at five of some of the most meaningful Buffalo victories against the New England Patriots and see if they made a long-term impact on any of their success that season.
From Little Brother to Alpha of the AFC East
Two Former Pats Get Revenge
This underappreciated rivalry began in the offseason of 2003, when the Patriots made the surprising decision to release their starting Pro Bowl safety Lawyer Milloy after he refused to take a pay cut for the organization. It didn’t take long before he signed with New England’s division rival, the Buffalo Bills later that summer. This team finished with a respectable 8-8 record in 2002, but they were trying to move up to the next level. They had a former New England Patriots as their starting quarterback in Drew Bledsoe, signed some key defensive pieces such as Sam Adams, Takeo Spikes and head coach Gregg Williams hoped that the Milloy signing would make them a more fiery and spirited team. Their offense did not have the most explosive talent on the field, but Travis Henry was a quality 1000-yard back and their quarterback had just thrown for over 4300 yards and twenty touchdown passes. It was only fitting that their home opener was against the New England Patriots because a couple of former players had some things to get off their chest.
It might have been Week 1, but the Bills quite literally treated this matchup as if it was the Super Bowl. They were leading 21-0 at halftime and there was no way that New England was going to get points on the board, let alone try to make a comeback. Bledsoe threw for 230 yards and threw a touchdown pass, Lawyer Milloy came up with a sack and five tackles, but the guys around each of them stepped up in a dominating performance. Tom Brady threw four interceptions, one of them to the 350-pound defensive lineman known as Sam Adams, who ended up being a pick-six. Travis Henry was the main star of the Bills offense, who ran for 89 yards and two touchdowns on twenty-seven carries, which allowed Buffalo to control the clock. The Patriots were flat-out destroyed 31-0 in their first game of the season and for about a week, media pundits thought that they were officially a one-year wonder that was just too lucky to win the Super Bowl. That ended up not being the case.
The next matchup between these two teams was in the final game of the year in Gillette Stadium. New England was 13-2, had already won the AFC East, but were still trying to lock up the number one seed in the conference. The Bills, on the other hand, were still stuck in purgatory at 6-9 thanks to a very underwhelming and agonizing offense. Even with a 4-3 record at one point, they lost six out of their next eight games leading up to Week 17, five of them by one score. Their defense was incredibly respected and the biggest reason why Buffalo stayed competitive, but Bledsoe could not even throw for 3000 yards and the team fell apart as a result. All of that came crashing down in Foxboro with a shutout defeat by the same score, the ultimate definition of payback. Tom Brady made up for that four-interception performance with a four-touchdown afternoon, the Patriots’ defense had four sacks and two interceptions and New England completely flipped the script. The team went on to run the table in the playoffs and capture their second Super Bowl in three years, while Buffalo fired their head coach at the end of the season and had to start over once again.
Fitzmagic Outplays Tom Brady
Between 2004 and 2010, the Bills were just an average football team. They were never bad enough to compete for one of the top five draft picks, yet nobody ever believed that they were good enough to back into the playoffs. Throughout that span, the team went through four head coaches with just one season of more than seven wins and not much was different heading into 2011. Chan Gailey was heading into his second season as the head coach and it was the first time that Ryan Fitzpatrick would be the Week 1 starting quarterback, so many thought that the Bills were going to once again be a below-average squad with too many flaws on their team. However, they got off to a very fast start with a 41-7 victory against the Kansas City Chiefs in their first game and then came back from a 21-3 deficit against the Oakland Raiders to win 38-35 and improve to 2-0. Heading into their Week 3 matchup against the New England Patriots, the Bills were hoping that they could pick up where they left off and take their energy out against their hated division rival, who just could not stop tormenting the “mafia” that is their fan base. The Patriots were just on a completely different tier that had dominated the division for years, recently coming off a season where Tom Brady won the second MVP award of his career and clinched the number one seed in the AFC, so Buffalo wanted to be the ones that would give New England their first stunning defeat of the season. As 7.5-point underdogs, the message was just simply to play ball.
When you look at the first-half box score on paper, it looked like the Patriots were going to crush the Bills once again. Brady threw three touchdown passes, the Bills were trailing 21-10, but the momentum started to shift towards the end of the second quarter. Trying to increase the huge lead to 28-7, Brady threw a red-zone interception to Bryan Scott, which Fitzpatrick capitalized on by driving his team into field goal range and setting up a 42-yard kick that made it more possible for the Bills to come back from. When the third quarter began, it looked like a completely different ball game. Brady threw three more interceptions in that period alone, Buffalo scored twenty-one points off of those turnovers and one of them included a pick-six by Drayton Florence that gave the Bills the lead! Even though the Patriots tied the game at 31 with 3:33 left, the legend that was Fitzmagic was born on September 25, 2011. Two huge passes to Donald Jones and Fred Jackson set Buffalo up at the one-yard line and by making the Patriots burn all their timeouts, all the Bills had to do was just milk the clock down and kick the game-winning field goal with little time left. That is exactly what they did and with one second left, Rian Lindell nailed a chip-shot 28-yard kick to win the game 34-31. The Bills were now 3-0 and in first place in the AFC East, while the Patriots were 2-1 and had just gotten completely punked by what was supposed to be an inferior division rival. The media had their fun for about seven days, but once again, reality kicked in for both teams.
Through eight weeks, the Bills were 5-2 and it looked like they were going to be one of the biggest surprise teams in the league. Then the seven-game losing streak kicked in, which eliminated them from playoff contention and crushed any sort of hope the fans had for this team. Fitzpatrick might have thrown for 3800 yards and twenty-four touchdowns but also threw twenty-three interceptions, which sums up his whole career. There were the mind-blowing performances that were full of magic, then the tragic ones that reminded everyone why he was a journeyman in his career. The team finished with a 6-10 record after losing to the Patriots on the road in Week 17, a game where they led 21-0 in the first quarter and surrendered 49 unanswered points. New England finished that 2011 season 13-3 with the number one seed in the AFC once again and while they might have lost the Super Bowl to the New York Giants, they never let go of their division dominance.
Rubbing Salt on the Wound
When the 2020 season arrived, even with the difficult circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the United States, the Buffalo Bills were heading in the right direction as an organization. Two years earlier, they had drafted quarterback Josh Allen with their first-round pick, hoping that he would be the savior of their franchise. It took a lot of development and work, but in just his second season, he helped the team get to the playoffs as the fifth seed in the AFC, thanks to his dual-threat abilities. He had a rocket of an arm and he was even more dangerous when he took off with the ball, but they still needed to make some moves that would not only help Allen become a superstar but make the Bills into one of the most feared teams in the league. Nobody thought much when they traded for Stefon Diggs in the offseason, but those two matches together ended up being the best thing that could have happened in each of their careers. Diggs finally had a chance to show the league that he was made to be a number one option at receiver and with Allen as his quarterback, he posted some of the best numbers in his career. In 2020 alone, he led the league in targets, catches and yards. Josh Allen thrived as a passer, using his arm more than his legs and he posted career highs as well. He finished that season completing 69% of his passes, 4500 yards, thirty-seven touchdown passes and just ten interceptions. Through fifteen games, the Bills were 12-3 with the AFC East locked up, the first time they had won the division since 1995. For the New England Patriots, it was lamenting to see them on the outside looking in, especially with the year that they had.
Everybody knew that Tom Brady’s absence was going to be felt, but nobody thought that it would lead to the Patriots missing the playoffs for the first time since 2008. With all of the opt-outs due to the pandemic and the injuries they suffered throughout the season, the Patriots were frustrating and agonizing to watch. Before their Monday night home matchup against the Buffalo Bills, they were officially eliminated from contention at 6-8 and were just hoping to end their season on a high note. They had already played Buffalo in Highmark Stadium in Week 8 in what was a very competitive and gutsy matchup. Both teams ran the ball for a combined 372 yards, each offense was scoring touchdowns back and forth, but a lost fumble from Cam Newton on a quarterback sweep with thirty-seven seconds left ended a potential game-tying or even game-winning drive. The Bills won that game 24-21, but now that this was in Gillette Stadium, the Patriots were hoping that they could finish the job that they could not nearly two months ago.
For two and a half quarters, New England made it competitive with an early touchdown run by Newton, but a missed extra point by Nick Folk forced them to trail 10-9 instead of having the game tied. Unfortunately, not only was that the last time the Patriots would get on the board, but the Bills just simply never took their foot off the gas. To say that they were the better team is a total understatement. Josh Allen threw for 320 yards and four touchdown passes, Stefon Diggs had a signature performance with 145 yards on nine catches and three touchdowns and their defense held New England to just 78 passing yards through the whole night. Watching Bill Belichick slam the press box phone down to the turf in anger and disgust just summed up everything you needed to know about that game. Buffalo ran away with the game 38-9 and while it was not going to affect any of their seasons in the long run, there was a lot of vented frustration that needed to be let out after decades of futility and mockery.
Needed Revenge in 2021
The 2021 season had different meanings for both the New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills. One team was hoping to pick up where they left off, while the other was trying to make sure that last year never happened. Even though the Bills lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game, the team was proud of the direction that they were heading in and many thought that this would be their time to reach the Super Bowl. The Patriots, on the other hand, had one of the most aggressive offseasons they had in years and did everything they could to make it back to the playoffs. They signed key free agents such as Matt Judon and Hunter Henry, drafted Mac Jones to hopefully be the quarterback of the future and spent millions of dollars to revamp the roster. After seeing Tom Brady hoist a Lombardi trophy with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Bill Belichick was not going to let his legacy go to waste, so the Patriots wanted to send the Bills a message that they were getting a different team. No matchup was more meaningful than in Week 13 on Monday Night Football. The Patriots had officially risen back to the top with an 8-4 record, while the Bills were trying to hold their ground at 7-4. Whoever won this game was going to officially be first place in the AFC East, so this was going to be a night to remember. Well it was, but not the way that anybody could have imagined. In a game where Mac Jones threw just three passes, the Patriots ran the ball forty-six times for a total of 214 yards, but they only scored fourteen. So how did New England win? Their defense. Josh Allen was held to just 145 yards and the Bills could score just ten points in their house, failing to score in key moments and close down the stretch. The media hounded them after the game for letting this happen and everybody could see just how angry and bitter they were once the clock hit zero. Their next matchup was set in Gillette Stadium in three weeks and Buffalo was hoping to remind their old rival just why everybody saw them as the most feared team in the league.
Heading into this matchup, the Patriots were still in first place in the division at 9-5, but the Bills were quickly getting back into the race just a game behind, so there was no clear winner whatsoever. If New England won, then it would be yet another accolade on their 20+ year resume, something that Buffalo just could not let happen before their eyes. For sixty straight minutes, they were the better and tougher team, on both sides of the ball. Their offense did not punt the ball once, Josh Allen totaled close to 380 yards from scrimmage and threw three touchdown passes without two of his top receiving targets and the best receiver on the field was Isaiah McKenzie with eleven catches for 125 yards. Every time that the Patriots punched the ball into the endzone, the Bills always found a way to respond and it ended up paying off in the fourth quarter. Damien Harris might have rushed for over 100 yards and three touchdowns, but two interceptions from Mac Jones hurt New England badly, which was why Buffalo got back on top with a 33-21 victory. Two weeks later, the Bills clinched the AFC East title and had the third seed in the AFC, while the Patriots still made the playoffs as the sixth. It was going to be the third time that these two teams would play each other, the second in Highmark Stadium and the first in that building since that Monday night stunner.
A Playoff Annihilation
This matchup between the Patriots and Bills has somewhat of a feel to a Game 7 in an NBA playoff series. It’s not really about the adjustments or matchups, even though those two are extremely critical in the NFL, but it’s about who wants it more and how badly they are craving a victory. From the first snap of the game, it was very clear who it was and how they got it done. It was an absolute blowout from start to finish and not once did the Bills show mercy. They scored seven touchdowns on seven straight touchdowns, meaning that they once again did not punt. Josh Allen had a near-perfect passer rating with 308 yards and five touchdowns on just four incompletions. The only touchdowns that the Patriots scored took place when they were down 33-3 and 47-10. The minute that Buffalo scored on their first drive of the night, everybody knew it was going to be a long day for the Patriots defense. Once Mac Jones threw an interception to Micah Hyde on his first possession, the game was already set in stone. The Bills used all of the adrenaline they had in the world against this team and took every single ounce of energy and frustration out on this team, winning 47-17 in humiliating fashion after losing to this same team in the same building 14-10 just one month earlier. Buffalo would end up losing to the Kansas City Chiefs for a second straight year, but once again, the message in the AFC East was clear: the Patriots dynasty was officially dead and a new team had officially risen to the top.
Main Image: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports
