The Patriots snapped the Bills’ streak of 30-point games on Sunday.
The New England Patriots ended up losing their Week 16 game against the Buffalo Bills with a final score of 24-21, dropping to 3-12 on the season. Despite the end result and their record overall, the Patriots did put up an admirable fight on Sunday.
Their competitiveness was not lost on Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen either. After Sunday’s game, the current MVP frontrunner spoke highly of the Patriots.
“That’s a better team than their record shows,” Allen said during his postgame press conference. “And these division games are tough. It’s someone that we’re used to, and they’ve seen us quite a bit over the last few years. They came out ready to play today.”
Losers of four straight and owners of one of the worst records in the NFL, the Patriots headed into Orchard Park as massive 14.5-point underdogs. They faced a near-impossible task against a team still fighting for the No. 1 playoff seed in the AFC that had scored 30 points in a record-tying eight straight games before Sunday.
And yet, New England put its stamp on the contest early on, going up 14-0 in the early second quarter. That lead was not meant to last and eventually fell victim to three straight second-half drives ending in turnovers.
Nonetheless, New England gave the current AFC East champions all they could handle on both sides of the ball.
“That’s a good team,” said linebacker Terrel Bernard. “They’ve been in a bunch of games, pretty much every game all season that they’ve played. They got a good quarterback, good offensive line, good running backs and two tight ends that are really effective in the passing game as well. We knew it was going to be a tough game.”
“They played a lot of man. They came up. They got their hands on, were undercutting some of our crossing routes,” added Allen. “That’s something we’ll look at and try to get some counters to.”
In the end, the Bills emerged as winners and at 12-3 are still alive in the race for that top spot in the conference. For the Patriots, meanwhile, there are still some positives to take away from the game — starting with their first-half performance and improved urgency compared to their lackluster loss in Arizona the previous week.
Despite all that and the Bills’ praise, head coach Jerod Mayo quickly shut down any talk of a “moral victory” on Monday.
“I don’t believe in good losses,” he said before admitting that, “there’s a lot to learn from the game. We’re headed in the right direction, but it’s all about consistency, and we have to do that on a down-after-down, a game-after-game basis to be successful in this league.”