ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Despite some of the team’s imperfections, the Buffalo Bills were riding high heading into Sunday night, unbeaten and viewed as potential AFC favorites.
Then, like the very “Cold Front” their special all-white rivalry uniforms were intended to replicate, the Bills were the ones who were hit by a tear-inducing, lake effect wall of wind as soon as the game began.
To put it bluntly, the Bills got out-Bills’d by the very team trying to unseat them from their perch in the AFC East.
The up-and-coming New England Patriots, boasting a young quarterback who has the skill set and “how-did-he-do-that” playmaking abilities reminiscent of Buffalo’s superstar quarterback, unexpectedly upended the Bills — at Highmark Stadium, of all places.
The Patriots, not the Bills, were the ones in charge of their fate with the game on the line. Drake Maye, not Josh Allen, was the one engineering the game-winning drive.
In one fell swoop during the Patriots’ coming-of-age 23-20 victory, they ripped the Bills of their short-lived title as the last remaining unbeaten NFL team in 2025. They gave the Bills their first home loss since Nov. 13, 2023. And on a night where the Bills could have given themselves another leg up in the race for the AFC’s top seed, they instead invited everyone back into the conversation in a game they could have won.
“If you look at it from the paper point of view, it was a pretty pivotal game in terms of what we could have done with this,” Allen said. “And we didn’t take advantage of our opportunity.”
“I mean, woulda, coulda, shoulda, right? It’s the NFL. It’s highly competitive,” Bills head coach Sean McDermott said. “And it teaches the lessons — fast.”
Even in a frustrating night that bore unusual challenges for a relatively polished regular-season team that has made winning its standard, the Bills had every opportunity in the fourth quarter to return to their usual script. However, for many reasons, they remained off-script for much of the evening.
At one point, it appeared the Bills had finally woken up from their game-long inconsistencies. After the Patriots took a 20-10 lead in the fourth quarter, the Bills ripped off a vintage “don’t you dare count us out” style touchdown drive to make it 20-17.
Then, the defense, which had been hemorrhaging yards and points the two drives before, got the clutch stop they needed — a three-and-out to be exact.
The Bills watched Allen, both their and the NFL’s reigning MVP, trot onto the field in all too familiar way. The Bills had the ball late in the fourth quarter, only down three points, with the opportunity to rip the hearts out of the upset-hopeful opponents with a game-winning drive.
Usually in those spots, the Bills are like a slow-moving villain in a horror movie. No matter how much the opposition tries to evade, you always knew how it ended.
“We would take that situation all day,” left guard David Edwards said. “We’ve got the best player in the world for those sort of situations.”
Except this time, the Bills sputtered and watched their once-promising drive grind to a halt.
Even with a great start to the offensive series, where they picked up three separate first downs to get themselves into field-goal range, it unraveled from there, with a drop on first down, then with no one getting open as Allen kept the play alive for an outrageously long time on both second and third down.
Rather than the go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter that the Bills had made their regular-season brand, they had to settle for a game-tying field goal.
How that drive ended, considering the promise it started with, encapsulated their evening quite well.
It was an imperfect night right from the start — an overall funk emanating from the previously undefeated Bills that they’ve avoided throughout the season, even when things were at their most dire in Week 1 against the Ravens.
Turnovers, penalties and an overall inability to find a middle ground on either side of the ball ultimately did the Bills in. However, there was only one common refrain throughout the building after the game.
“It’s not gonna win many NFL games turning the ball over three times,” Allen said.
There were several culprits for the game-changing plays. The first was a bad exchange that should have been a handoff to Dawson Knox that fell to the ground for a lost fumble. Then Keon Coleman had the ball stripped after a reception. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Allen threw just his second interception of the 2025 season.
“Usually it’s us taking the ball away three times to none, and in this case it was the other way,” McDermott said. “I told the team, I said, ‘Usually we do what they did.’ And so in doing so, we didn’t play our game tonight, and that’s frustrating.”
There’s a bit of a glass-half-empty or full element to the specifics of the loss. For the pessimistic, it’s the team’s inability to put away a team, even with an opportunity to do so late, despite the challenges. For the optimistic, it’s that the Bills even had the chance to win the game despite uncharacteristically losing the turnover battle and being unable to get their rushing attack jump-started.
Either way, self-reflection will be critical for the now 4-1 Bills.
“This is a pivotal learning opportunity for us right here,” McDermott said. “We’ve got to look at some things and just be honest with ourselves and learn from it holistically here.”
Added Edwards: “I think that it’s one of those things that if we use this the right way to center our focus again, correct the things that need to be corrected, we can use this as a great learning opportunity to move forward. We want to win every game. That’s the goal.
“But when you lose games, it’s really important that we all stay on the same page and look inward, take responsibility and then use it in a positive way to go forward. I think that’s really important and I know that’s how we’re going to respond.”
Here’s what else stood out from the Bills’ first loss of the 2025 season:
Complementary football, or lack thereof, personified
Odds are that if you’ve listened to a McDermott news conference throughout his time in Buffalo, you’ll have heard him talk about “complementary football.”
If ever there was an example of the antithesis of complementary football, that’s just what the Bills endured against the Patriots. Throughout the game, there was just a disjointedness to how the Bills were playing.
In the first half, the defense was on fire. Not only did they limit the Patriots from scoring any touchdowns, but they even bailed out the Bills’ offense following a turnover that had the Patriots begin their drive at the Bills’ 11-yard line. The defense didn’t cede a single yard, instead forcing the Patriots to go three-and-out and settle for only a field goal.
When the defense plays that way, an offense as good as the Bills usually turns a run out like that into a lopsided contest. However, that was the nature of their incredibly non-complementary football. When the defense was at its best, the offense was at its worst — generating only three first-half points and turning the ball over twice.
Then, in the second half, once it seemed like Buffalo’s offense found its groove to begin the third quarter and immediately charged down the field for a touchdown, the defense had, by far, its worst stretches of the entire game.
On the next two Patriots drives, the defense allowed two touchdowns. However, it gets much worse than that.
On the 16 plays of those two touchdown drives, the Patriots averaged 9.8 yards per play, nearly a first down per snap. Seven of the 16 plays on those two drives went for 10 or more yards, with three of those going for 20 or more.
And by the time the fourth quarter arrived, the Bills faced a two-score deficit. They nearly came back from it, but rarely having both sides on the same page during a game was a critical factor leading to the loss.
Coleman questions, Kincaid’s big night
Although the defense has faced its share of questions all season, the offense will get its fair share of focus to begin the week.
Most notably, the wide receivers have struggled to make a consistent impact in the 2025 season, mainly due to a lack of separation and finishing ability. Unlike other games in which the Bills could rely on the running game to propel them forward, the receivers’ inability to consistently uplift the offense was on full display against the Patriots.
Keon Coleman, despite a handful of catches made near the end of the game, provides the perfect example of what the Bills are still searching for. The Bills had high hopes heading into the 2025 season that Coleman could be the player who stepped up and became that player within their offense.
However, between concentration drops, a lack of separation to earn winnable targets and his lost fumble on top of it, it’s certainly worth wondering if the Bills are headed toward another offseason where they need to make a notable addition to their receiver room. In a game where their former star receiver, Stefon Diggs, put up 146 yards and challenged the Bills all night, the entire receiver room collectively managed only 130.
With the receivers struggling, though, the Bills leaned into tight end Dalton Kincaid.
Working against man coverage, Kincaid was their most consistent separator all game, resulting in a perfect six catches on six targets for 108 yards. What was even more impressive was that he did so while still not even cracking the 60 percent snap rate marker in the game.
Kincaid was one of the clear matchup advantages the Bills had coming in, and he was the only thing working in their favor all game. Because it was so matchup-specific, it’s tough to know if performances like these are sustainable, but knowing that Kincaid has these high-ceiling games in his arsenal is a promising development for 2025.
Bills MVP, Kincaid: He was easily their best player on the field Sunday night, though stunningly, they did not target him on their final offensive possession despite him being on the field for seven of their 10 snaps.
Bills LVP, the running game: Usually a strength of their offensive attack, the lack of a push up front caused the Bills to be relatively one-dimensional on offense and be overreliant on a passing game still trying to find its way.
Injury update: In his first game back, starting linebacker Matt Milano potentially re-aggravated the same pectoral injury that forced him to miss their previous two games. Milano did not re-enter the lineup after halftime. Center Connor McGovern suffered a hand injury but did not miss a snap. He had a large ice pack on his hand after the game.
Up next: The Bills (4-1) will be at the Atlanta Falcons (2-2) on “Monday Night Football.”
(Photo of Marcus Jones and Keon Coleman: Bryan M. Bennett / Getty Images)