FOXBORO — Do you remember Tom Brady’s last win as a Patriot?
It was late Dec. 2019, a fourth-quarter comeback.
Because, of course it was.
It was also a Saturday night — yes, a Saturday — when the Pats clinched an 11th straight division title by holding off the playoff-bound Bills. The Patriots were slipping, and they knew it. Buffalo had ascended with Josh Allen. They knew that, too.
Days before kickoff, a few veterans told me they could feel Buffalo nipping at their heels as a division power, maybe even a Super Bowl contender. They were right.
The Bills came 15 yards and 65 seconds short of catching the Patriots that night, then made the playoffs as a Wild Card team. Since then, they’ve dominated the Pats, stomping them each of the last five years while they ran away with the division crown.
Now the Patriots are steps away from ending that streak and seizing their own AFC East title. If they beat the Bills, the crown is theirs. But to treat Sunday as a finish line or coronation would be to miss the bigger picture.
Buffalo is after what the Patriots had — Super Bowls — and the Patriots are chasing what the Bills have now: sustained success as a means to more titles. Both are close to what they want. Buffalo is an AFC favorite, as one of two NFL teams to reach the divisional round of the playoffs every year since 2020. Care to guess the other team?
That would be Kansas City, the gold standard of the NFL’s modern era and the chief — pun intended — obstacle in the Bills’ path. And that is the power of rivalry.
Two teams perpetually in the other’s way, bound by a history of big battles and healthy hate. That is what the Chiefs have been to Buffalo, even if Allen and Co. have only drawn regular-season blood from Kansas City. The Bills know who their rival is, and so do the Chiefs.
If you asked the 29 other teams around the league if they consider themselves a Patriots rival, none would volunteer. None. But give it time.
Rivalry is returning to Foxboro. Bet on it. Maybe as soon as Sunday.
“They’ve won the division for five years. We have something that we need to go take,” Maye said Wednesday, “and know it’s going to be hard to do.”
If the Patriots win, they will unseat Buffalo for the first time since 2020. If the Bills win, they will slow the Patriots’ return to the top of the division; an old lion holding on for another week and maybe another year, just as Brady did back in 2019. Both outcomes are on the table, according to Vegas oddsmakers, who have installed Buffalo as a 1-point road favorite.
Allen is the reason for that. He’s 29, the reigning MVP and a perennial MVP candidate. He’s going nowhere. Neither is Maye, who should be the NFL’s next MVP if he can hit cruise control for these last four games.
So long as Allen and Maye reside in the same division, they will block each other’s path to every place he wants to go.
The playoffs. Super Bowls. The history books.
That type of twice-a-year familiarity is sure to breed contempt that goes beyond competition. Inevitably, the Bills will become an object of hostility. Or, a bar to be cleared.
“We are chasing them,” Maye said. “They’ve had a bullseye on their back for really since they probably took (the division) over the first year.”
Frankly, rivalry is long overdue.
When Rex Ryan declared he wasn’t here to kiss Bill Belichick’s rings in 2009, “The Hangover” had just hit theaters. Losses to the Jets hit like hangovers those next few years because of the healthy hate that flowed from Ryan’s words and push against the Patriots’ greatness.
The Jets’ divisional-round playoff upset two seasons later stung for years because they had the power to wound the Patriots and did, sprinkling salt in those wounds along the way. But rivalry in this division never sustained because the Jets, Dolphins or Bills never had a quarterback capable of challenging Brady. Not even briefly. That is, until Allen emerged right as Brady left.
Now Maye has stepped to Allen, upsetting him in Week 5 and leading him in MVP odds today. He beat Allen in Buffalo by just playing like him, conjuring two completions from thin air on a game-winning drive, including one while he was in the meaty grasp of Bills defensive tackle Daquan Jones. Just before Jones slammed him to the turf at the start of that drive, Maye hit Stefon Diggs for 12 yards and a first down.
Then Maye marched the Patriots into field goal range a few moments later, and they walked off the field victorious, their first real steps toward an AFC East title.
In the moment, that game gave reason to believe in the Patriots again.
A division title would give reason to fear them — even for the Bills.
Game on.
