The Patriots return to Highmark Stadium on Sunday afternoon, where oddsmakers believe they’ll see their toughest test of the season.
Despite a Week 7 win over the Bills in Foxborough, Bill Belichick’s team is a 14-point underdog in the rematch. It’s New England’s largest point spread of the 2023 season. So will they be able to shock the world and pull off a second upset of Josh Allen on New Years Eve?
Here are three predictions for Sunday’s game:
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1. Defense (finally) struggles
For the first time in two months, the Patriots defense simply has a bad day.
Josh Allen has been a nightmare for healthy Patriots secondaries, and with a banged up safety room — Jabrill Peppers and Kyle Dugger are both questionable — and a thin cornerback group, the Bills are going to make life difficult through the air. Earlier this week, Bill Belichick likened the leap Josh Allen made to a very high level of play in his third season (2020) to Tom Brady’s development.
“He just kept doing it. It’s kind of like Brady,” Belichick said. “Once Brady got to a certain point there in ‘03, that’s pretty much the way it was the rest of his career. Wasn’t really like that in ‘02. Wasn’t like that in ‘01. It certainly wasn’t like that in 2000.
“But once he got to a certain point there — about the midseason of the ‘03 season, and then the playoffs and from then on, his level of performance and play and consistency was at the very top of the league. Different style of play, but once those quarterbacks, usually when they get to that point then they’re able to sustain it. Sometimes you just don’t know what the growth pattern is going to be.”
2. More bad than good from Zappe
Bailey Zappe’s Cinderella-ish run comes to an end in Buffalo, too.
The Bills are Top 10 in both total defense and scoring defense, and this time around, they’re going to have Ed Oliver. The game-wrecking defensive lineman missed New England’s upset of the Bills in October with a toe injury, but he’s back to full health and sacked Chargers quarterback Easton Stick twice last weekend.
With a ton of uncertainty at left guard — Atonio Mafi and James Ferentz both got snaps in Denver — expect the Bills to hunt that matchup with Oliver. The Bills pass rush will speed Zappe up and lead to a couple of turnovers.
3. The Bills win
Shocking considering the first two predictions, right?
The guess here is that Buffalo wins with relative ease, 30-13. There’s no repeat of the upset in Foxborough. That’d be good news for the Patriots 2024 NFL Draft pick though, as a loss drops New England to 5-11 and leaves them comfortably in the Top 5 — if not the Top 3.
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