ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — That, in case you forgot after that sunny Super Bowl run and dreary start to this season, is what Mike Vrabel-led teams do.
They punch up.
They connect on the jaws of giants, uppercutting again and again until the best teams and players in football topple over like they did Sunday. Josh Allen threw an interception on his final snap of the Patriots’ 29-26 win, a desperate heave that capped a victory almost impossible to believe if you hadn’t watched it live or seen them do it before.
Don’t you remember?
Sunday’s win was almost a year to the day of the Patriots’ last win at Buffalo, Oct. 5, 2025, the day that sparked a run to the Super Bowl, and the last time the Pats had been slated as touchdown underdogs before this weekend.
Think oddsmakers will be so quick to doubt them again?
Granted, the Patriots gave everyone, and I mean everyone, reason to believe the Bills would stampede them. Heaps of reasons.
Drake Maye had more interceptions than throwaways through Week 3. At times, his offensive line looked like it might have trouble blocking the ghosts Maye was seeing. Defensively, the Patriots were out-schemed and out-gunned at Jacksonville, and later learned star corner Christian Gonzalez and defensive tackle Christian Barmore wouldn’t make the trip with them to Buffalo.
This is how Vrabel, who owns the highest winning percentage when coaching as an underdog among head coaches since 2018, began to fix that.
He started Monday, with a regular day-after team meeting where Vrabel covers all the Patriots’ lowlights in the team meeting room after a loss; remote in his hand rewinding, fast-forwarding and pausing video on a large screen for all to see. Critiques and wise cracks fly, sharp and pointed. No one is spared.
During Vrabel’s tenure, the Patriots had never produced so many lowlights like they did during last week’s 35-6 loss at Jacksonville. But after detailing all of his players’ miscues, missed blocks and blown assignments, Vrabel began to breathe belief into his team.
He told them all that they needed to start winning again was already in that room. A simple message that drafted off the Patriots’ loudest rallying cry last season; one that first echoed off the walls of the visitors’ locker room after their upset at Buffalo.
“We all we got,” Stefon Diggs began at the center of a huddle.
“We all we need!” his teammates cried around him.
A year after Diggs’ huddle, and six days after his Monday meeting, Vrabel opened up about his new message.
“Everyone has to believe that they’re going to be the answer for why we’re going to get back in this thing, each and every day that we come to work,” he said postgame. “That’s what the message was, that’s what the message will continue to be. And whether that’s examples that we can show ’em of guys stepping up, of guys stepping in …”
Let’s pause for an example, one of the most famous steps in American sports history.
The time Allen Iverson, AKA The Answer, stepped over fallen backup Lakers guard Ty Lue on the sideline after he’d crossed Lue up and sank a jump shot over him during a Game 1 upset of the Shaq-Kobe Lakers in the 2001 NBA Finals.
A slice of basketball brilliance, swagger and belief. A moment of such disregard for one’s opponent, no matter how great or talented or unbeatable they may be, that it’s lived longer than any other play from those Finals, which ended with a 4-1 Los Angeles series win.
On Wednesday morning, Vrabel showed the clip of Iverson stepping over Lue in the Patriots’ team meeting. He repeated his message from Monday about every player and coach being one part of the team’s larger answer. But it was what Vrabel didn’t say, as he rewound and played, rewound and played Iverson’s step-over, that spoke loudest.
“It’s time to start stepping over motherf—s,” Pats captain Kevin Byard said. “That’s basically what he was trying to get to.”
His message clicked.
“I think that maybe we’ve been lacking a little bit of belief in the last few weeks, but it came together this week,” added Patriots fullback Reggie Gilliam. “Vrabes was pushing it all week: we are the answer.”
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye (10) passes against Buffalo Bills linebacker Greg Rousseau (15) in the second half during an NFL football game in Orchard Park, N.Y., Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Offensively, the Patriots’ solutions on the field were as non-negotiable as they were obvious to anyone who studied their recent tape. Maye couldn’t turn the ball over anymore in high-leverage moments. The skill-position players had to start breaking more tackles. And run or pass, the offensive line needed to sustain blocks longer.
Check, check, check.
Maye’s game-winning touchdown pass to Efton Chism III highlighted a 29-point outburst, which doubled their offensive output for the season.
Defensively, containing Allen and the Bills, who owned the NFL’s highest-scoring offense, a thornier proposition. Doing so without Gonzalez and Barmore, conservatively two of the Patriots’ 12 best players overall, should have been a death knell for a defense that has been defined by two tactics: man coverage and blitzing.
Through Week 3, the Patriots played more man-to-man than all but two other teams, and ranked third in blitz rate at 43.8%. In their last meeting, a 35-31 Buffalo win, the Bills crossed up their defense immediately with two deep intersecting routes, then played off that success later by having their receivers bend toward the middle only to snap back toward the sideline to exploit the Patriots’ anticipation of a repeated play. This time, Vrabel and defensive coordinator Zak Kuhr played Buffalo.
The Pats cut their man-coverage rate by almost half, according to SumerSports, and played zone more than 72% of the time. Zone coverage allowed them to confuse Allen and limit his scrambling, which becomes especially dangerous when he’s extending plays versus man-to-man. Allen finished with four rushing yards.
Said Pats corner Carlton Davis: “It was a good switch-up because (Buffalo) was like, ‘Oh s—, they’re not playing man.’”
As for their blitz tendencies, the Patriots sent extra rushers just 25% of the time and often showed blitz on third down only to bail out into safer zone coverages. Against those blitz looks, the Bills called screen passes to exploit the pressure they expected, screen passes that instead went nowhere, forcing them to punt.
In discussing Kuhr’s plan after the game, Vrabel quickly pivoted, as he often does, to praise the players.
“All credit goes to those guys being out there and containing (Allen) and not letting him extend and make plays out to his right,” Vrbael said.
Except the Patriots foremost responsible for keeping Allen off the field in the final minute did not play defense. They were Maye and Hunter Henry, who connected for a game-sealing completion on third-and-10 with 55 seconds left.
Taking the snap deep in his own territory, Maye faked a hand-off left and wheeled right. Henry, who initially blocked, then leaked into the right flat. He was open, just as they hoped.
Maye fired, Henry caught the pass and rumbled 12 yards up the sideline, where he was knocked out of bounds. He popped up inside a crowd of jubilant teammates. Henry broke free to celebrate briefly on his own.
He stepped forward, flexed both arms and let out a roar, primal and victorious.
A white sleeve, the signature accessory of Iverson’s Hall of Fame career, ran down his right arm.