Patriots WR Danny Amendola and Bills CB Aaron Williams fight for the ball (Getty Images)
If you had told New England Patriots fans at the start of the regular season that with Tom Brady serving a four-game suspension, and with Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett both starting games at quarterback, the team would still go 3-1, the majority of those Pats backers would have been thrilled.
So long as that loss didn’t come at the hands of the Buffalo Bills and bombastic head coach Rex Ryan.
Unfortunately, that’s what happened on Sunday. And to make things worse, it was a shutout.
Playing their fourth and final game without Brady, who can report to the team facility at Gillette Stadium at 12:01 a.m. on Monday (and he just might), the Patriots fell to the visiting Bills, 16-0. It was the first shutout loss for the Patriots in a decade, and their first home shutout loss in over 20 years – the last time they were blanked in their home stadium was Nov. 28, 1993 at the hands of the New York Jets.
The Patriots started the rookie Brissett for the second straight game after it was determined pre-game that Garoppolo hadn’t regained enough strength in his injured right shoulder to play.
Things got off to a bad start for New England, even before kickoff: as Brissett and receiver Malcolm Mitchell were jogging on the sideline during pregame warmups, Buffalo DB Robert Blanton rushed up to them and shoved Brissett and Mitchell. A short melee followed.
And they didn’t end there.
The Patriots’ first play of the game, a 90-yard catch-and-run from Brissett to Julian Edelman (who was also the team’s backup quarterback with Garoppolo inactive) that saw Edelman tackled just inches from the goal line, was wiped out thanks to an offensive pass interference penalty on Chris Hogan.
New England was just 1-for-12 on third down on offense, and defensively struggled to contain both Bills quarterback Tyrod Taylor (27-of-39 passing, 246 yards, one touchdown, five carries for 28 yards) and LeSean McCoy (108 yards from scrimmage).
At one point, Patriots coach Bill Belichick was so frustrated he slammed his blue Surface tablet into a bench on the Patriots’ sideline.
Though Belichick has generally expressed respect for Ryan’s defensive acumen, Ryan couldn’t help poking the bear last week, opening his first news conference of the week with an imitation of Belichick’s dry delivery, and then pretending to be a reporter during Buffalo media’s conference call with Julian Edelman.
Fortunately for Ryan, his team backed up his shenanigans with a solid performance.
Not surprisingly, the post-game midfield handshake with Belichick and Ryan was stilted, a silent Belichick grasping Ryan’s hand and walking away, his face as blank as a freshly-washed chalkboard.
“Obviously we didn’t do anything well enough to win today,” Belichick said. “I think we’re a better team than we showed today, but we just didn’t do anything well enough.”
Meanwhile, Ryan boasted to reporters that his “sources inside the Patriots building” told him that it would be Brissett, not Garoppolo, starting against his team.
New England plays in Cleveland next week, and the poor Browns will be getting both the Return of Brady and the Wrath of Belichick, who will undoubtedly light into his team after the shutout loss.
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