ORCHARD PARK — Drake Maye and the New England Patriots are coming. At some point they are going to be the top challengers for Buffalo Bills AFC East throne.
But not yet.
Yes, the Bills learned Maye is one of the game’s rising stars. But the biggest nugget they took from their 23-20 loss to the Patriots was that they can’t toy with their opponents every week and get away with it.
The Bills survived average performances against the Miami Dolphins and New Orleans Saints, but neither of those teams had Maye, who made a pair of A-plus throws on the game-winning drive. And when Maye wasn’t making throws with a defender draped on him, the Bills seemed intent on serving the game to the Patriots on a platter.
The Bills went an NFL-record 26 games without losing the turnover battle. That’s over. They had also won 14 consecutive games at Highmark Stadium. Sayonara. The Bills, from the jump, seemed gracious enough to allow their visitors to leave with a win.
“These are things we have to learn from,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “… You cannot turn the ball over three times and expect to win. Three times. And then the field position is a 10-yard difference. Let’s just start there.”
Three turnovers were the most committed by the Bills since the 2023 regular-season finale in Miami. But if that wasn’t enough, the Bills tossed in 11 penalties for 90 yards and both started on the opening offensive possession.
Buffalo had a chance to jump on the Patriots early after defensive end Greg Rousseau responded to criticism about having no tackles for a loss and ½ sack during the week with one of each on the opening drive. But a holding penalty on center Connor McGovern on the very first offensive snap backed the Bills up and set the tone for the entire night.
Josh Allen got the Bills out of the hole after looking to scramble only to pump the brakes and deliver a laser to Dalton Kincaid to erase any damage from the penalty and then some. And then he hit Kincaid for another 20 yards and the Bills looked on their way to a fifth consecutive opening-possession touchdown.
Except on the next play, the Bills ran an end around to Dawson Knox — Really? Dawson Knox? — and he was too early in his motion and knocked the ball from Allen’s hands. Two drives later the Bills nearly duplicated the first drive — starting from their 14-yardline, first-play holding call and then a fumble by Keon Coleman set the Patriots up for a field goal.
Five first-half penalties committed by the offense limited them to three points, their fewest since losing to the Houston Texans exactly a year earlier. If that wasn’t enough, Allen got antsy, something that hasn’t happened often over the last two seasons and it was costly.
Not only did the Bills fumble twice in their own territory, but Allen threw an interception in the red zone, trailing 13-10. And it was a bad interception, a foolish one, one the NFL MVP isn’t supposed to make.
And it left Allen — who’s been plenty upset and downtrodden after losses — as mad or frustrated as he’s ever seemed, calling their mistakes “piss-poor offense” and his interception in the red zone “a recipe for disaster.”
Despite all their mistakes, the Bills still had a chance to win the game at the end. Allen’s interception should be forgivable because he was dealing strikes for most of the game, throwing for 253 and running for a team-high 53.
Three straight incompletions resulted in a game-tying field goal. And that put the game in the hands of Buffalo’s slippery defense. And the defense couldn’t finish the job, which was the synopsis of the game.
The 31st-ranked run defense in the league held the Patriots to 71 yards on 3.2 yards per carry. A struggling third-down defense held New England to 33% conversions, except it only faced nine of them.
Eleven times the Bills allowed three yards or fewer on first down and seven times the Patriots picked up a first down on the next play. And they did it on throws of 22, 32 and 30. The last such occasion came on the final drive, when Maye hit Stefon Diggs — who torched the Bills for 10 catches for 146 yards — for a 19-yard gain that essentially ended the game.
The Bills battered Maye, smacking him eight times but only hauling him down on half of those hits. McDermott deflected any culpability from the defense, placing the blame squarely on turnovers, but the defense simply couldn’t finish the job. And so for the 10th time since Allen became the starter in 2018, the Bills lost a game after tying or taking the lead in the final three minutes.
Once their biggest enemy, the Bills seemed to rid themselves of the mistake-riddled games in which their miscues had more to do with losing than opponent success, the errors that make them vulnerable to any team in the league.
Maye, the second-year quarterback bold enough to post a photo of Allen’s wife, Hailee Steinfeld, on Instagram during the lead-up to the game, capped his weekend by saying, “Where else would you rather be?” Brash? Maybe. Cocky? Certainly. Don’t like it? The Bills had plenty of opportunities to shut him up.
As much as the Bills tried to give the game away, the Patriots were reluctant to take it until the end. They actually had 93 penalty yards, including four personal fouls.
The most important thing now is to not let the loss snowball because the Bills have lost back-to-back games every year under McDermott, even in his three seasons of 13 wins. The Bills still have a one-game lead on the Patriots and see them again Dec. 14.
They just can’t let their AFC East lead fizzle in the meantime.