The Sports Xchange

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — The Buffalo Bills have the highest-paid, and perhaps highest-regarded defensive line in the NFL, but the collective group of Mario Williams, Kyle Williams, Jerry Hughes and Marcell Dareus didn’t live up to that standard in Buffalo’s 40-32 loss to the New England Patriots on Sunday.

Rex Ryan crafted a game plan against Tom Brady that was predicated on the front four generating pressure, thus forcing Brady into making quick decisions where he would have to throw into a secondary with seven men in coverage. Blitzing Brady is rarely a good idea, and Ryan thought his line would dominate New England’s offensive line that featured two rookie starters. Instead, the line managed just two sacks on 61 Brady drop-backs, and he was allowed to play pitch and catch with Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman. Brady looked like a maestro at the line as he directed traffic and got the Patriots into innumerable favorable matchups.

“Yeah, we were going to put it on our front four,” Ryan said. “We thought we had an advantage there. But shoot, it’s to their credit. You know I’ve been on the wrong end of it a few times when the kid gets hot and Brady was hot and if you make a mistake on top of it he kills you.”

Still, that didn’t quell Ryan’s irritation regarding what happened. “You score 32 points, that should be enough to win,” Ryan said. “The plan has to be better on defense. Can’t give up 500 yards and beat anybody. We did a horse (crap) job and it’s my responsibility.”

His players agreed that the performance was basically disgraceful.

“It was unacceptable,” said Hughes, who had a 15-yard sack of Brady while Mario Williams had one for zero yards. “We’ve got to come out and play a lot better. We shot ourselves in the foot and you can’t do that when you have (Brady) playing quarterback.”

Said Kyle Williams: “I couldn’t have forecast how bad we were, that’s how I would look at it. We’ve got to be better.”

The Bills have seen this show before, and so has Ryan from his days in New York. That’s why it was rather disconcerting to see the Patriots so easily shred the Bills defense. Ryan’s experience against the Patriots was one of the selling points in his coming to Buffalo.

“Well, I’m gonna tell you exactly what I told our team,” Ryan said. “First off, this loss is squarely on one man’s shoulders; it’s on my shoulders. Yeah we gotta get better as a team there’s no question, but I have to get better.

REPORT CARD VS. PATRIOTS:

PASSING OFFENSE: C-minus — Tyrod Taylor threw for three touchdowns, but he also threw three interceptions and looked very much like a young QB in his second NFL start trying to match wits with Bill Belichick. Taylor completed 23 of 30 passes for 242 yards, but he also took eight sacks. Part of that was on the line, but he seemed reluctant – or unable – to leave the pocket and use his athleticism to make plays. Sammy Watkins caught his first six passes of the year for 60 yards, and he, Charles Clay and Robert Woods all caught touchdown passes.

RUSHING OFFENSE: C — The Bills had 160 yards and averaged 5.9 yards per attempt against an average Patriots run defense, though 43 came from Taylor on scrambles. LeSean McCoy, who was listed as questionable due to his sore hamstring, played well with 89 yards on 15 carries plus three catches for 27 yards. Karlos Williams wasn’t used much because the Bills needed McCoy in the passing game when they fell behind, but Williams did score the game’s first touchdowns. Taylor also ran for a rushing touchdown.

PASS DEFENSE: F — A simply abysmal day for the Bills as Tom Brady threw for 466 yards, the most ever yielded by a Buffalo defense, and the second-highest total of Brady’s career. He completed 38 of 59 passes and threw three touchdowns. The Bills decided to back off on their relentless blitzing so that they could cover, but the plan went awry when the Patriots’ offensive line – with three rookies in the interior at time – held up just fine against Buffalo’s superb front four. The Bills had only two sacks on 61 Brady drop-backs, and there were four pass coverage penalties. The defensive backs had no answer for Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman, who combined for 18 catches for 210 yards and 3 touchdowns.

RUSH DEFENSE: B — This really should be graded as incomplete, so irrelevant was the Patriots running game. Belichick could have cared less about running the ball and taking Brady kneel-downs out of the total, they ran 12 times for 56 yards. The Patriots clearly felt, against a stout Bills front seven that welcomed DT Marcell Dareus back to the lineup, that the ball was better off in Brady’s hands than Dion Lewis’ or LaGarrette Blount’s, and that proved a wise choice. LB Preston Brown led the Bills with 11 tackles, but most of that came after pass completions.

SPECIAL TEAMS: F — The Bills were awful. They committed six penalties, five of those in the first quarter, and three other penalties were declined by the Patriots. A poor snap and hold led to a missed extra point by Dan Carpenter, and punter Colton Schmidt finished with a weak 34.7 net punting average on six attempts. The undisciplined play of the special teams contributed mightily to awful field position early, which the Patriots capitalized on to grab the game by the throat.

COACHING: F – Offensive coordinator Greg Roman scripted a perfect opening drive that resulted in a TD, but thereafter it got much more difficult against the adjusting Patriots. The Bills scored only once on their next nine possessions before a fourth-quarter rally produced three TDs when the game was pretty much decided. Rex Ryan admitted the defensive plan, and its execution, was horrendous, and he was right. He took blame for it all, as well as his team’s undisciplined play that resulted in 14 penalties for 140 yards.