As a team, they were 0-4 on third down in the first half and that lack of trust in the passing attack was apparent in the final seconds before halftime. In the first half, there were a number of third-and-long situations where the Patriots elected to run the football instead of dropping Newton back to pass. With Newton struggling coming into Week 8 and New England down a number of pass-catchers, Josh McDaniels and Bill Belichick were extremely conservative with their offensive approach to start. That's been a theme for Bill Belichick's club all season as the offense has yet to score a single point in the first quarter. For starters, the Patriots once again came into this game extremely cold. While it's easy to look at the Newton fumble as the reason why New England lost this football game, that would be a little shortsighted as there were a number of reasons why they are now losers of four straight that came much earlier than that turnover.
CAM NEWTON PATRIOTS VS BILLS FULL
New England's defense had no answer for his physical running and Buffalo was able to take full advantage. Zack Moss was particularly impactful, rushing for two touchdowns and 81 yards on 5.8 yards per carry in the win. While Allen was serviceable through the air, the offensive MVPs have to go to the ground game.
They dropped 17 points in the final two quarters and were able to make the biggest defensive play of the day by stripping Cam Newton before he could either tie the game or win it. It only took the Bills five plays to travel 75 yards and go up by eight. Where they really started to flip the switch, however, was coming out for the third quarter. Luckily for them, the Patriots offense couldn't do much with that opportunity and Buffalo was able to hang onto a one-point lead heading into the locker room. In reality, this was a game that came down to which team was going to make the big mistake and the Bills were fortunate enough to come out on the positive side of things.Īfter impressing with a 10-play, 78-yard touchdown drive to begin the day for themselves offensively, Josh Allen's unit went silent for the rest of the first half, punting twice and then throwing an interception. You certainly have to give credit to Buffalo for getting the win here, but they did let an inferior Patriots team hang around far longer than they should have. Below, you can see our main takeaways for how Buffalo was able to fend off New England and see how all the action went down in real-time in a live blog from Sunday's AFC East head-to-head showdown. The balance of power in a division that has long been ruled by Bill Belichick's Patriots seems to be shifting in the direction of the Bills for at least the 2020 season. The ground attack for Buffalo was extremely effective, totaling 190 yards and three touchdowns as a team in the win. Josh Allen showed tremendous poise in the pocket at times, completing 11 of his 18 throws for 154 yards in the win and added 23 more yards on the ground, including a touchdown. Even with the score so tight, Buffalo was clearly the superior team from wire-to-wire. Newton finished with 174 yards passing and rushed for 54 yards and a touchdown. As the Patriots quarterback called his own number and tried to inch New England even further toward the end zone, the ball slipped through his grasp, as did the game. Newton's fumble came deep inside Buffalo territory with just 31 seconds to play in the game as the Patriots were knocking on the door of either forcing overtime or winning outright. Buffalo now sits atop the division at 6-2, while the struggling Patriots are 2-5 and losers of four straight. A late fumble by Cam Newton that was recovered by the Bills all but clinched them the 24-21 win over the Patriots in Orchard Park, New York, on Sunday.
The Buffalo Bills are now even further in the driver's seat to doing something they haven't done since 1995: Win the AFC East.
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