Takeaways From the Patriots 20-13 Win Over Buffalo

“That one is pretty unique”, Brady said of the Ryan audible. After huddling with his on-field crew for several minutes, Steratore announced that “when the receiver caught the football, there was an inadvertent whistle by an official on the field”. The Patriots followed up with four straight runs and then an incomplete pass to lead to a field goal, but the Patriots were able to get up two scores on the Bills as the result of this play. On a 3rd and 10 with under 20 seconds to go in the half, Brady found J. White for a 20-yard touchdown, giving the Patriots a 10-3 lead going into the second half.

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady survived a sustained buffeting from the Buffalo defense to steer the reigning Super Bowl champions to their 10th win of the current campaign.

“We’ve lost a lot of guys and we’ve lost quite a few guys over the last three weeks”, Brady said. “We know we have to find a way to get better”.

Following a 41-yard pass to Amendola, who finished with nine catches for 117 yards, the Patriots went back up by a touchdown on a 6-yard White run.

The Bills’ Rex Ryan said the whole thing left him confused. Taylor was strip-sacked on the game’s penultimate play, and the time it took to reset the ball after the fumble took precious seconds off the clock, and on the final play Taylor hit Sammy Watkins for 16 yards, but went out of bounds going backward instead of forward, causing the clock to run down to 0:00. Wide receiver Chris Hogan had six catches for 95 yards. The score accurately indicated a change in the tone from one contest to the next, with Buffalo’s defense proving far more formidable on Monday than in the first meeting between the teams, albeit with a severely depleted group of Patriots receivers.

It was a head scratcher early in the third quarter. Running back LeSean McCoy agreed.

Six plays later, Brady connected with White with a pass in the right flat and he shook a poor tackle by Buffalo safety Corey Graham at the 10 and scored from 20 yards out for a 10-3 New England lead with 13 seconds remaining in the half. “They proved it again tonight”, said Ryan. Taylor was 20-of-36 for 233 yards, but could have had bigger numbers for himself and on the scoreboard if not for a handful of missed throws that he’ll have to make for the Bills offense to put up enough points on a weekly basis. Brady had a fairly quiet night too, with 277 yards and a touchdown on 39 attempts. Another 15 yards were tacked on for a sideline interference penalty called on Ryan. The miss snapped Gostkowski’s streak of consecutive field goals made at 31, including 22 this season.

“That’s one of the craziest I’ve ever seen”, said McCoy. It was his first miss from at least 50 yards since 2013. Dobson, who was added to the injury report on Monday morning, played in the game but didn’t last, limping off midway through the second quarter.