The Bills have had 2 terrible losses on back to back weeks in games where they had to win.

First the Bills had a monumental failure on Monday night against their divisional rival New England Patriots 14-10, where Mac Jones threw only three passes and was still able to beat the Bills. Then the Bills were down 24-3 at half to the Tampa Bay Bucs before Josh Allen put the team on his back and rallied the Bills back and tied the game 27-27 in the fourth quarter.  But Tom Brady (once again) found a way to beat the Bills in overtime.

Five weeks into the season the Bills were 4-1 coming off of a dominant 38-20 win over Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, while the Patriots were 2-4 and had to come back from a 7-point deficit over one of the worst teams in the NFL in the Houston Texans.

Now the Bills and Patriots are separated by one loss and the Patriots are 9-4 and are a top of the AFC East while the Bills are second.

How did the Bills get to where they are now? What happened, and why are rookie Michael “Mac” Jones and the Patriots taking the sports world by storm? I have the answers.

First we have to talk about the Bills since the Chiefs game. The Bills have gone 3-3 in their last 6 games. Their losses came to the 8-3 Tennessee Titans, the 2-9 Jacksonville Jaguars, and the 5-6 Indianapolis Colts. 

The Bills lost to the Titans 34-31 where they gave up 5 scoring drives in the second half and with a chance to win it Josh Allen slipped and did not get the first down. They lost 9-6 over the Jaguars where they were a 13 point favorite and couldn’t score a touchdown.    They lost at home against the Colt 41-15 where Jonathan Taylor tallied over 200 yards and 5 touchdowns.

Every win the Bills have had this year has been a double digit win. This is important because you can’t expect to beat teams like New England, Green Bay, and Tampa Bay by 20 points. 

The Bills will have to play playoff-style football against the Patriots and Bucs over these next three weeks.  

Now let’s see what the Patriots have done since week 5. Their win/loss column has been 6-1 and the loss was an overtime loss to the then 5-1 Dallas Cowboys. After that, they’ve won 6 straight where they’ve scored 211 points and have only given up 63–that’s a 148 point differential! 

Their rookie quarterback has been on fire, throwing for 1,378 yards, 8 touchdowns, and 2 interceptions. 

But that’s not all the Patriots are doing well.  They have one of the most underrated wide receiving cores in the NFL, with players like Kendrick Bourne, Jakobi Meyers, and Nelson Agholor leading the charge. 

Their defense has been dominant and has only given 190 points through 12 weeks (second to Buffalo who have given up 182). Players like Matthew Judon, who has 11.5 sacks through 12 weeks, and Jerald Christopher “J.C.” Jackson, who has 7 interceptions, have really given the Patriots defense their name. 

The Patriots overall have been a really complete football team with offense and defense both producing.

Let’s talk about the now-infamous wind-battered Monday night game. Simply, the Bills again beat themselves over and over again. They were 1 of 4 in the red zone and no matter how hard they tried, could not get their run game established.

Their defense is also responsible for this loss even though they only gave up 14 points and 222 yards on the ground to a team who threw 3 passes. The Patriots were basically telling the Bills what they were doing, and the Bills did nothing about it. The defensive performance falls on head coach Sean McDermott, a defensive coach who got beat by one of the most simplistic gameplans ever. 

Let’s turn our attention to the offense. Josh Allen should win MVP because if it were not for him, the Bills would be under .500.  He is the team’s leading passer and rusher in most games. 

Running backs Zach Moss and Matt Breida are not good enough and have little-to-no football IQ whatsoever.  There were so many times in this game where they could have cut to the outside to gain extra yards or even a touchdown in the case of Moss, but they just stick to the inside and do nothing. 

The biggest factor on why the Bills are where they are now is because of the terrible play calling of offensive coordinator Brian Daboll. Daboll’s play calling is so vanilla that anyone with any knowledge of sports could call it. Repeatedly he calls back-to-back identical plays… and it never works out. 

During Monday night’s game the Bills ran zero quarterback-designed runs for Josh Allen and made him throw 30 times in 30 mph winds. This is simply unacceptable. They couldn’t run, but part of that was because every–and I mean EVERY–run play was the same. Straight up the middle every, single, time. 

Brian Daboll should not be the offensive coordinator next year and maybe should have been fired before Tampa. His play calling is unacceptable and is holding back an MVP-caliber quarterback and an offense that can be so much more than what it is.

The Bills need to really look in the mirror and find the problems with this team. But judging by the Sean McDermott press conference where he didn’t want to give Belichick praise for the Patriots’ performance even though his defense got beat by an offense that threw 3 pass attempts (and if I sound redundant it’s because you need to understand how embarrassing that is for a “defensive” minded head coach), that won’t be happening anytime soon.  

Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer walking out on an interview because they didn’t like the question, and Isaiah Mckenzie complaining on twitter about how the head coach doesn’t trust him after he has muffed punts in the past, are also not helping. 

It sounds like the Bills are falling apart at the worst time of the season, and now with the heartbreaking overtime loss to the Bucs, the Bills will need to find a way to redeem themselves.