Drake Maye leads New England Patriots to statement win over Bills | Pro Football Talk | NFL on NBC

Drake Maye leads New England Patriots to statement win over Bills | Pro Football Talk | NFL on NBC

Good look for the New England Patriots. Yeah, and you were right. Look, I don’t want to go. We got Thursday when you can rub my face and we disagreed on six games this weekend, but for the Vikings somehow pulling one out of the bung hole against the Browns, you would have gone six and0. So 5- one instead. And you trusted and believed in the Patriots. We had about a split panel last night on Football Night in America. Patriots, I wasn’t expecting that. And they they pulled it off. And hey, you know what? The Bills the Bills play with their food. And you know what happens sometimes if you play with your food, your food eats you. And that’s what happened last night. I I think so. Well, you know, and also I think you got a team of New England Patriots who, you know, you heard Chris Collinssworth and Tarico talk about this last night. We talked about it. They should have been going into that game three and one and not two and two. They outplayed the Pittsburgh Steelers uh a few weeks back. So, I think they also were little chippy in that, hey, we’re better than two and two and we’re about to be a force in the AFC. It was a statement game. I mean, if there’s ever a statement game and Mike Vrabel in his early career here as the head coach of the New England Patriots, this was it. I mean, Buffalo Super Bowl Super Bowl favorite, you know, right now the the only undefeated team as of yesterday. So, I mean, because of all of that, that was a fun game last night. And the Patriots, not only did they do some good things on the defense and stop the run and all that, but how could you not be excited for the Patriots and what Drake May did. I mean, Drake May did some Josh Allen stuff last night. That throw he made late in the fourth quarter where he’s getting dragged. He made a few of them. I thought he just thrown it away, right? And he completed it. It’s like, good lord, what’s that guy doing? Right. I mean, this was a game where they went up there and it didn’t necessarily maybe go the way the Patriots would have liked it, right? It was a phenomenal play where you go, oh, the Patriots would probably like this to be a little more lowcoring, controlled the ball. And I I know this wasn’t a huge highscoring game, but I think they thought they might be able to run the ball on Buffalo. Nonetheless, they won this game because of the right arm of Drake May and his legs and his ability to extend some plays a few times against some creative blitzes by the Buffalo Bills. And then here you see the the game-winning clutch field goal by uh Bout Baragas. I I am so bad at saying his name. I got to practice it a few times. But either way, regardless, I think the uniforms worn by the Bills last night, the nification, I think those go away forever. Cool, though. I like them. Well, I guess it was hard to see the numbers. I’m talking about that on the broadcast. Yeah. And you know, on a global warming night where it was 80°, the cold the cold front uniforms don’t work. But the last time the Patriots will ever play at that stadium, which I remember it as Rich Stadium in the 1970s, you remember the Patriots coming to town. What are you talking about? Well, the Patriots come to town. Usually there’s an object thrown on the field. Oh, and that wasn’t thrown on for one last time last night. Gez, I had completely forgotten about that. Who knows? We didn’t see Just because NBC cameras didn’t share any images of it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And and when Tom Brady is there later this year for the Eagles Bills game, I assume there will be some backhanded lobbing of certain objects into the booth where Brady is working. So yeah, I’ve forgotten all about that. But that’s a huge win for the Patriots. And hell, hell, who knows? Maybe there’ll be a rematch in January there. Both teams seem to be on track for the playoffs. Agree. And the Patriots, look, we knew that they were going to be well coached with Mike Varel, you know, as we’re getting close to the late of the game, late late stages of the game, the final two minutes with and we’ve seen so many times now the chess match of how do you work the clock? How do you go for it? all the different factors that will cause a normal human being’s brain to just scramble. As that was approaching, it’s like, you know what, Varel’s the last guy I’m worried about. He’ll he’ll have a plan and it’ll work. And he’s thought through every scenario. He’s thought through every permutation and he’s got a plan. And that’s where he’s a lot like Bill Bich. And I think he learned that from Bill Bich. Just an obsession with understanding all the nuances of the rule book and how to take those rules and put them into action. But the way that that ended driving 20 to 20 because when the Bills tied it up, I’m thinking it’s going to be another overtime game and then who knows what’s going to happen. But the Patriots put together the perfect drive and they left the Bills with nothing. That’s the key. You’re going to go up by three points late in the game with the the K balls now, which clearly and it’s so funny. Let me just say this. I didn’t write it yet at PFT, right? And you saw the kick, the game-winning kick, 50 plus yards and it’s it’s good by 20. It was it was above the top of the goal. It was crazy. It was I’ve never seen a 50 plus yard field goal kick like that. We We were talking about it at home. I I was literally at home watching it at that point. Yeah. So last week, Vic Fangio, the Eagles defensive coordinator, was the one that peeled back the curtain on the Kballs requiring an asterisk and invoking Barry Bonds, Mark Magguire, Sammy Sosa, and Brady Anderson, right? Like Brady Anderson caught a stray from Fangio last week, but then you have the mobilization of the coaches saying, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s not the Kball.” Well, we we spoke to one over the weekend who believes the Kball is good for five to seven yards. Yeah. And all you have to do is look cuz the Kball’s a different color cuz they have been beating the out of that thing, rubbing it down, scrubbing it down. There’s a lot of stuff you can do. Squeeze it to make sure the air gets to the center of the ball. You want the sweet spot. You want the sweet spot to be big and full. You don’t want it to be slippery because it’s going to go it’s going to go through Brucey’s hands. He just had popcorn, right? Or Tony Romos as the case may be. You don’t want it to be slick. They used to have 90 minutes max to get the balls ready. They got all week now and they’re ready. And that field goal that Yeah. I’ve ne I mean, you when you think about it, you you don’t see 50 yarders that high up. He drilled that thing. He did. He was close. Somebody’s going to hit from 75, not 70. Well, yeah. I mean, I I think we’re all expecting 70 to happen. 75. give me 75. But you know, to your point with the end of the game and the management there, I thought it was handled well. Even on the last third down, they took a chance to go, hey, maybe we can throw a ball here and get really down there in chip shot range instead of hit having to kick a 52 yard field goal, right? But at the same time, they call that play. They obviously had coach Drake May up on what to do. He rolls out to the right. Nobody’s there. He’s smart. He doesn’t run out of bounds. He doesn’t throw the ball away. He just runs, slides down to the ground, takes a sack, loss of no yards, I believe. You can tell F was happy. Was like, good, good, good, right? It was almost like Drake May was like, I think somebody might have been open. I could have maybe thrown it. He was like, no, no, that was perfect. But yeah, that was tough, gritty win by the New England Patriots. That’s the one thing about Verable during the game. He’s got no poker face. He should not even try. You can tell exactly what he’s thinking, what he’s saying. All the gestures, all the mannerisms, the exact opposite of Bud Grant and Tom Landry back in the day. No. No question. But I think the Patriots as as we expected, you know, with Josh McDaniels manning down the OC, I mean the offensive side of the ball, Mike Vrabel and company for the defensive side of the ball. And then we’re seeing here that Drake May is on an upward trajectory where you’re starting to go, “Oh man, every week it’s pretty efficient. He makes a few throws every week where you go, whoa, whoa, that changed field position.” And of course we’re seeing his ability to run. And then now on the defensive side, they’re healthy. Christian Gonzalez is there. We see Carlton Davis and we know they were stout up front and one of the best runs stopping defenses in football. That to me is where I look at New England and go they got potential to be a real pain in the butt here in the AFC. And no doubt they can go toe-to-toe with the Bills team that you know that I think even at 4-0 has some flaws. I didn’t look at it and went, “Oh man, they are just an unbelievably they just, you know, impose their will and and’ll physically beat you up.” No, I think the Bills are they can be had and you saw that last night. There’s some flaws with their football team even as good as they are. This was their third straight home game and their prime time game against the Dolphins was not impressive. They could have lost that. Their prime their afternoon game at home against the Saints was not impressive. They could have lost that run game. You know, the the best teams do not screw around. Look at what the Colts did yesterday with the Raiders. You don’t screw around with an inferior opponent. You go out there and you beat the crap out of them and you leave no doubt whatsoever as to what the outcome may be. Drake May, yeah, praising him, right? You’ve had your reservations about him. Yeah. You’ve had your concerns with mechanics and right try to, you know, focus too hard and where’s his feet. What have you seen from him so far this year? Well, I think the the big thing is is just the mechanics are consistent, right? The one of the things I talked about, you know, a little last year, but especially coming out in the draft, was, you know, the arm was all over the place. It would get long. The the motion itself was segmented. He’d almost would start the throw, he’d stop, and then he’d restart it again. There was a lot of that in college football. So, yeah, he was one of my out of all the six guys that got drafted in the first round, kind of my least favorite there. But we’ve seen he’s gone to quarterback school, worked with a quarterback coach with a guy like Josh McDaniels who teaches him how to play in the pocket. And I think that’s the other thing you’re seeing too where last year we saw, okay, the mechanics were going in the right direction, but still the pocket movement, he was all over the place. He’d move into trouble. Sometimes you’d go, “Wait, why’d you get out of the pocket? You didn’t need to here.” Or you just looked at one guy and you ran. Now you’re seeing him sit in the pocket, wait for people, work the pocket. Oh, wait. There’s somebody coming open. 25 yards down the field. Let me put the ball on the money there. You know, he is tough in the pocket. He plays big there. And his athleticism continues to really impress me there. But on a night where I thought maybe they’d be able to run the football like the Saints did the week before who absolutely bludgeoned the Bills in the run game, and that’s something I know you and I have talked about. The Bills are not real big up front. So you that’s why we saw Derrick Henry in week one have a huge day. I thought the Patriots would be able to run the ball on them, but the the the Bills had a pretty good game plan and getting people down there and making things confusing. And the fact that they had a win with Drake May making plays to me is even bigger because now the whole team can be like, we got a guy here. They got Josh Allen, but Drake May looks like he’s on his way to Josh Allenville and that kind of player here. And I think the team can rally in that. And of course, he’s going to get so much confidence winning a game like that on the road. Hi, it’s Mike Florio. Thanks for watching PFT on YouTube.

Mike Florio and Chris Simms break down the Patriots’ “statement” win over the Bills and how Drake Maye’s ability to lead a game-winning drive makes New England players in the AFC. #NBCSports #NFL #ProFootballTalk
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Drake Maye leads New England Patriots to statement win over Bills | Pro Football Talk | NFL on NBC https://www.youtube.com/NFLonNBC