FOXBORO — Warning: blasphemy below.
Sports sacrilege.
The type of column you can get away with in any other city, but not here.
Still, here goes a Hail Mary, because all unsaid prayers go unanswered.
The Patriots can lose Sunday night in Buffalo and still leave with a victory.
A moral victory.
And that shouldn’t be discounted.
I know, I know. Pathetic. Ugly. A verbal participation trophy for professionals living in, working for and representing the city of champions.
But here’s the truth about the Patriots’ most anticipated regular-season game in almost four years: they will almost assuredly lose.
History says so. Oddsmakers say so. Anyone who has watched the Bills since Josh Allen developed into a superhero with shoulder pads should say so; not to mention the Pats’ last half-decade spent as spectacular losers.
This is a measuring stick game. Nothing more, nothing less. Mike Vrabel gave voice to that idea in his post-game press conference Sunday, his mind having already drifted from the Panthers to a more telling test ahead.
“It’s going to be a great environment (in Buffalo),” Vrabel said, “and hopefully we’ll see where we’re at.”
Despite the building mid-week hype, Sunday will be far less significant than the Patriots’ last most-anticipated regular-season game: a home duel with the Bills in 2021 that served as a de facto division championship. That day in December 2021, Buffalo didn’t punt once over a 33-21 win. Three weeks later, the Bills obliterated the Patriots over a 47-17 Wild Card playoff blowout while, again, never punting.
That was the last Patriots team to finish with a winning record. Since then, Buffalo has become the AFC East standard, the bar by which their division rivals measure themselves. And it all starts with Allen.
“There’s a reason that he’s up there in the MVP every year and that his teams are very successful,” Vrabel said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for him, and he knows that.”
If the Patriots can graze that bar because of their coach and quarterback, just five games into the Vrabel era, that’s a win. That’s further proof of their potential as a playoff-caliber team with bigger dreams down the road.
Winning, of course, is the goal. But there will be no shame in a hard-fought loss to the clear-cut Super Bowl favorites that comes down to the fourth quarter, especially if Drake Maye plays well.
Because understanding where you are means knowing where you’ve come from. And the Pats — in case you recently awoke from the world’s best-timed sports coma — just puked up back-to-back 4-13 seasons. That is who they are right now. And that is what they are trying to run from by gunning for Buffalo, a model organization winning games by an average margin of more than 10 points this season that hasn’t lost the turnover battle in a record 26 straight games.
“What coach Vrabel says is, that’s where we want to go,” Maye said. “Where we want to be at is where the Bills have been the past couple years: contenders, winning the division and playing well at home.”
Granted, signs of change are already afoot in Foxboro.
The 29-point loss the Patriots handed Carolina last weekend was the type of punishment not seen in New England since the Pats last made the playoffs. Maye is playing the best football of any Patriots quarterback since Tom Brady. His ongoing development is the best possible case for the Patriots eventually completing their franchise renaissance, just as Allen’s once was for the Bills.
The other strongest evidence? Pushing good teams like Buffalo, which first knocked on the Patriots’ door during Brady’s final season by dragging them into close games and then kicked it down after Brady left.
So, dismiss the moral victory all you want. But a final history lesson: the spark that lit the blaze that became the Patriots’ dynasty may have been, if you can believe it, a moral victory.
Do you remember the last game the Patriots lost on their run to toppling the Greatest Show on Turf in Super Bowl XXXVI?
A Sunday Night Football game against those same Rams, after which players and coaches felt, nay, knew, they could compete with any team in the NFL. Vrabel was there. So was Tedy Bruschi, who once wisely suggested teams get one moral victory per season.
So, yes, it’s Week 5. Yes, we’re barely a week into October.
But Sunday, if the Patriots fight well, should be it.
This is their one victory in defeat.
