Football has given us the Super Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Pro Bowl, the Snow Bowl (aka the Tuck Rule Game), the Ice Bowl, the Wasabi Fenway Bowl and an old-time favorite at this address, the old-timey, tongue-twisty Poulan/Weed Eater Independence Bowl.

Could this be the year of the Baton Bowl?

To be precise, we’re talking about a Passing the Baton Bowl, which is what might be happening on Sunday when the New England Patriots host the Buffalo Bills at Gillette Stadium. Yes, the 11-2 Patriots could lose to the 9-4 Bills and still end the regular season in first place in the AFC East, but let’s not get caught up in the fine print. That this late-season matchup between the Drake Maye-quarterbacked Patriots and Josh Allen-quarterbacked Bills means anything is partly because of what happened earlier this season in Buffalo, when the Pats shocked the Bills on “Sunday Night Football.” For bookkeeping purposes — make that bookmaking purpose — it’ll take another upset for the Patriots to win the rematch. The Bills are 1 to 1.5-point favorites, as they should be. Allen has that level of panache.

Of course. Even taking into account Buffalo’s suspect receiving corps and other problems, Allen is as dangerous as ever. He’s coming off a three-touchdown game in Buffalo’s 39-34 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, with the Bills rallying from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter. Allen also contributed a 40-yard touchdown run that set a franchise record, plus a 17-yard run late in the game that enabled the Bills to run out the clock.

Wonderful work from NFL Films here. Oh, and Josh Allen isn’t bad either. pic.twitter.com/aZcZVCS9F7

— Peter Schrager (@PSchrags) December 8, 2025

And then there’s Maye, whose stellar passing and his own daring running game have vaulted the Pats into first place. The earlier matchup wasn’t billed as Allen-vs-Maye, not really, it being just the fifth game of the season. This one will have that buildup.

So let’s talk about that changing of the guard. To be clear, we’re not talking about the quarterbacks. Allen is just 29 and he’s on top of his game. Maye is 23 and already inspiring MVP chants. And any football fan with a soul, be they from Orchard Park, N.Y., or Old Orchard Beach, Maine, should want these guys to battle it out for the next half-decade or more. Twice a year. Possibly in the playoffs. Grand.

Drake. Maye.@DrakeMaye2 | @k_mmoneyyyy | #ProBowlVote

📺 ESPN pic.twitter.com/FaddiUw5vF

— New England Patriots (@Patriots) December 2, 2025

Allen or no Allen, Buffalo’s string of first-place finishes in the AFC East might be coming to an end. The Bills have won the AFC East for five straight seasons, this after the Patriots won 11 straight AFC East titles and 17 over the past 19 seasons. Other than the Bills and Patriots, the only other teams to finish in first place in the AFC East this century are the 2008 Miami Dolphins and the 2002 New York Jets. (The Dolphins also finished first in 2000, but as my seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Carrabino from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Elementary School, taught us, each new century begins in a year ending in 1. In other words, 2000 was way back in the 20th century.)

Patriots coach Mike Vrabel was asked on Monday about this showdown against the Bills being a “hat and T-shirt game.” He didn’t take the bait.

“No, I don’t use the hat and T-shirt,” he said. “We’re just trying to play for the championship that we have available this week, and I think it’s a great testament to our players that have put us in this position to be able to do that. Again, that’s not going to be easy. This is a very good football team. There’s a reason that they’ve won this division five years in a row. A lot of respect for them. They’re never out of it, never down, and they may be down, and just like last week, it’s a football team that understands that somebody’s going to make a play. And then the quarterback is going to give them a chance to the very end.”

Good, solid coachspeak right there from Vrabel. But if the Pats win, it won’t make any difference whether or not the interns are running around with “AFC East Champions” hats and T-shirts to give to the players. It’ll get played up as the Pats regaining their long-held perch atop the division, hence the Passing the Baton Bowl. But don’t look for these new, post-Tom Brady Patriots to run off 11 straight AFC East titles of their own. Allen will have something to say about that. Nor should anybody look for the Bills to bounce back and win another five straight AFC East titles. Maye will have something to say about that.

The real baton-passing going on here is that the AFC East has gone from one dynamic quarterback to two. Just as the 1990s gave us Jim Kelly of the Bills and Dan Marino of the Dolphins, it looks like we’re going to have a good, long run of Allen and Maye battling it out. Again, Allen has been around longer — this is his eighth season. But Aaron Rodgers is still slinging passes at age 42, and Brady won his last Super Bowl at age 43. Peyton Manning won his last Super Bowl at age 39.

Admittedly, it’s awkward and uncomfortable to be talking about Super Bowls whenever there are Bills fans in the room. Sorry about that. For the sake of decorum, then, we’ll stick with the AFC East for the time being. Thanks to Allen, thanks to Maye, fans of both the Patriots and Bills should be able to look forward to lots of baton passing in the years to come.

Jets fans, meanwhile, can look forward to going back to the drawing board.