National Football League

New England Patriots, Bill Belichick proclaim to the NFL world that they are back

Updated Dec. 7, 2021 11:29 a.m. ET

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By Charlotte Wilder
FOX Sports Columnist

On Monday afternoon, it started to snow in Buffalo. Twitter blew up with videos of the fluffy precipitation driven by high winds, as Twitter is wont to do whenever football and weather meet in the winter. 

Mac Jones, the Patriots’ rookie quarterback — a boy from Florida who played football at Alabama and might not have seen snow before he relocated to New England for his first job out of college — looked Monday night like a guy working a ski lift in Vermont in the dead of winter. He wore a neck guard under his helmet and seemed like he wasn’t exactly sure how it had come to this. 

For both fan bases, the Pats-Bills game Monday night in Buffalo could have been like Christmas morning. It also could have been like being snowed in the day after a wisdom teeth extraction, when you develop dry sockets and can’t dig out your car to drive back to the dentist (not that I’m speaking from experience). 

For Patriots fans, it was Christmas — albeit a low-key one. For Bills fans, it was the dentist. 

There was a lot at stake for a random Monday night game: the path to the No. 1 seed in the AFC East and, for the first time in 20 years, a chance at a legitimate rivalry. 

In 2020, the entire world went through the looking glass, and the AFC East went with it. The Patriots recorded a losing season for the first time in two decades, and the Bills made it to the AFC Championship for the first time in two-and-a-half decades. Last season marked the first time that the Patriots didn’t slam the Bills through tables in the Bills’ own parking lot in as long as I, a 32-year-old woman, can remember. 

But 2021 is different (OK, sure: It’s still bizarre and mostly bad, but it at least includes fans at sports games). The Patriots came into Monday with six straight wins, zero losses on the road and an 8-4 record. Mac Jones currently looks like the best quarterback from his draft class. His eight victories are more than Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Zach Wilson and Trey Lance put together can claim (and they were all drafted higher than him — yikes). 

The Bills arrived at Highmark Stadium with seven wins, four losses and a slightly-more-erratic-than-last-year QB in Josh Allen. They needed to prove that 2020 wasn’t a fluke. 

But these two teams were — seemingly for the first time since I’ve been alive — on almost completely even footing. 

It therefore would be nice if I could say that this was a game won only by players, but in reality, it was a definitive game for Patriots coach Bill Belichick and the weather. Namely The Wind, which ended up being the star of the show. The Wind played defense. The Wind played offense. Here are The Wind’s stats from Monday night:

The Wind was so intense that Bills kicker Tyler Bass missed a 33-yard field goal (wide right, which has historically been a bad look for the Bills). The wind was so intimidating that at the start of the fourth quarter, Jones had completed 100% of his pass attempts — because Belichick had allowed his QB to throw once, and Jonnu Smith caught it with one hand.

That’s perhaps a great lesson that if you don’t try, you cannot fail. 

What we saw Monday was a war of attrition. Belichick looked like he was auditioning to be the head coach of a military academy at which throwing is frowned upon: At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Patriots ran the ball for the 29th consecutive time. The Bills then stopped the Patriots’ offense, Nick Folk came out to attempt a 34-yard field goal, and despite The Wind’s best defensive efforts, Folk knocked it through the uprights to take his team up 14-10, which wound up being the final score.

Bills coach Sean McDermott allowed Allen to cook more than Belichick let Jones. Allen threw the ball for a few decent drives, but he couldn’t really feed anyone. He didn’t show the "maturity" the announcers said he needed. In fact, at the first sign of pressure on a vital fourth down with less than two minutes left, Allen threw right into the hands of the Patriots’ defensive plan, and Myles Bryant slapped away the pass intended for receiver Gabriel Davis.

So while I understand that you, dear reader, might not have had much fun watching this low-scoring NFL game in a blizzard, I had the time of my New England-born life.

Belichick’s game plan felt devilishly mischievous. McDermott was clowned in his own home — I don’t know what was going through his head, but I think that sometimes, people forget that even in a game with rules, there really are none. You might *think* your quarterback needs to throw the ball sometimes, but Belichick showed that no, he doesn’t.

Mac Jones won a pro football game with 19 passing yards, and it felt like the most significant game I’ve viewed as a Patriots fan in the past three years. 

This was a game that (fairly or not) carried a lot of weight for the legacies of both teams — and especially for Belichick. Jones is proving that he can be the future of the Patriots, but that’s largely because Belichick has designed game plans that put him in position to succeed (such as … never throwing the ball against The Wind). 

Belichick did that once again Monday. Was Super Bowl LIII fun to watch? No. Was it particularly exciting watching the Rams score a mere three points? No. But did Patriots fans like winning? Yes, very much.

That’s what was on the line Monday for Belichick: his ability to win in a tough spot. In this case, with a green quarterback playing against The Wind. And win Belichick did by playing the four-dimensional version of football chess that he has perfected. 

It was his 19th win in 20 games against the Bills in Buffalo. 

Last year, everyone said Tom Brady won the breakup after he left New England and Belichick with a depleted defense and abysmal quarterback situation, only to win a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay at the age of 87. But Belichick went out and rebuilt his team this past offseason by spending money on free agents and drafting a Pats QB in the first round for the first time since 1993. 

Belichick then drilled his players on fundamentals, put them in situations to succeed and came back *cue Britney Spears* stronger than yesterday.   

No matter what happens the rest of this season, Belichick has proven that Mac Jones isn’t just a rebound and that he — the Dark Lord of Football — is, definitively, back. 

Charlotte Wilder is a general columnist and cohost of "The People's Sports Podcast" for FOX Sports. She's honored to represent the constantly neglected Boston area in sports media, loves talking to sports fans about their feelings and is happiest eating a hotdog in a ballpark or nachos in a stadium. Follow her on Twitter @TheWilderThings.

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Charlotte Wilder