Another opponent is left smarting
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Two plays. Two decisions. The difference between two teams.
Many things and not many things separated the New England Patriots from the Buffalo Bills yesterday at Ralph Wilson Stadium, but two plays made clear why the Patriots have won their last 18 games while the Bills have now lost six straight and 10 of their last 12.
In a game linebacker Tedy Bruschi quite rightly called "really weird" the Patriots made the smart play and the Bills made the dumb play. The Patriots did just enough. The Bills overreached. It wasn't as simple as that, because this was a far more difficult struggle for New England than the final score indicates, but in the end while New England's 31-17 victory was the product of many things, two plays made clear why the day and this season is going the way it is for each.
Midway through the fourth quarter, with the Patriots leading, 24-17, Buffalo got the kind of break 0-2 teams pray for when facing undefeated, defending Super Bowl champions. David Givens fumbled as he was going down after a 12-yard reception and Bills linebacker London Fletcher scooped up the ball and returned it 33 yards to the 2-yard line. It was the kind of play that can revive a losing team, but Fletcher wasn't satisfied with making such a play. He had to try and do more, and in the trying he conspired against himself and his team.
As Fletcher was falling he reached out with the ball, apparently hoping to get it across the goal line. Whether this was because he's grown to not trust his offense or it was a more selfish act is hard to know, but that over-reaching led to disastrous consequences when the ball came loose on a hit by Stephen Neal and rolled through the end zone.
Because no one had possession when the ball went through the end zone the "fumble" now became a touchback and New England would get the ball on its 20. Instead of having a first-and-goal at the New England 2 with a chance to tie the game, the Bills now were scrambling to challenge the original call that ruled Givens had fumbled in hope of giving it back to New England in a third-and-2 situation at its 16 rather than a first and 10 at its 20.
"They recover a fumble in the red zone and then they're replaying it to try and get an incompletion?" Bruschi said. "That's crazy."
Costly would be more to the point, because although ultimately New England was forced to punt it still held a 7-point lead when the Bills got the ball back with 7:57 to play. Just over five minutes later the second play would be made, this time by the Patriots, although with a Bills subtext that again drove home the difference between a team that wins week after week and one that loses nearly as regularly.
Drew Bledsoe drove the Bills from their 19 to the Patriots' 16 with a chance to tie the game again with 2:59 on the clock. On third and 2, running back Travis Henry took the handoff and fell to the ground without being touched for a 1-yard loss that made it fourth and 3 from the New England 17.
Here the teams again made decisions that divide winners from losers. The Bills decided they would not try to tie the game by using the arm of Bledsoe or the legs of Henry. Instead they decided to use Henry's legs as a decoy and Bledsoe's as the stepping-stone to victory.
The plan was to play-action fake Henry into the line on a play the Bills had considerable success with in the hopes Bruschi would bite on the fake. If he did, that would afford Bledsoe enough time to roll around the end and into the end zone -- or at least for a first down. For those who have spent years watching Bledsoe run like a mule under water, this may be difficult to fathom, but the Bills believed he would be all alone.
"We were going to fake it to Travis," Bledsoe said. "It had been there all day. They had not been paying any attention to me after the handoffs, so we thought the last thing they'd be expecting at that point would be to fake the run and boot it around the edge. I still really think it would have been there. There was nobody there."
Well, not exactly.
Henry ran into the wrong hole and Bruschi ignored him, not believing for a minute the Bills would hand it to him. Instead of coming off his fake and blocking Bruschi as he should have, Henry plowed ahead in the wrong direction as Bruschi ran right by him and straight into a shocked Bledsoe as he turned expecting to see a sea of green turf in front of him.
But Bruschi did not tackle him initially. Seeing the ball hanging from Bledsoe's hand, he swiped at it and knocked it loose. Then he tackled him, knowing this would allow one of his teammates a better chance to recover the ball while preventing the closest man to it, Bledsoe, from doing it.
Enter Richard Seymour, who bent over, scooped it up, and rumbled 68 yards for a touchdown that ended for good any illusion the Bills had of ending the streaking Patriots' non-streak at 17 straight victories.
"I'd seen it a couple of times," Bruschi said of the play-action fake. "I wasn't going to bite on it. I came through untouched. I didn't see it clearly, but the whole picture told me he wasn't getting the ball. The center-guard alignment. The situation. Drew has a certain little hop he does when he's trying to sell play-action. A few quarterbacks do that, trying to oversell the play-action. It all just told me it wasn't a run."
After slapping the ball loose and then dragging down Bledsoe, Bruschi sacrificed his own statistics to afford someone else the opportunity to make a play.
It is the difference between Fletcher's stretching for a touchdown he didn't need to get and Bruschi understanding the situation and turning it to his team's advantage.
"In that situation I don't just want the tackle," Bruschi said. "I don't just want the sack. I want the big play. I want the score. That's how our defense thinks. I slapped at the football instead of going for the big hit. Then big Richard got it and took off. That's how we want to play. Somebody do something. Somebody make a play."
Somebody doesn't always mean you, however. Sometimes somebody means you sacrifice your stats so somebody else can make the play. In this case, Bruschi made the smart play and the physical play, reading the situation (although he thought Bledsoe was going to pass).
While that was the perspective in New England's locker room, the Bills, to be kind, were more confused.
"I think it was a run play and I was faking the run," Henry said when asked how Bruschi got by him. "I don't know what happened or why he came up the middle like that, but it was a miscommunication somewhere."
A miscommunication on fourth down? A miscommunication on the biggest play of the game? How can there be a miscommunication when you know your job is to draw Bruschi in and if you don't he will have a free shot at your quarterback before he ever has time to roll out of the pocket into the clear?
And what kind of call was that in the first place? Fourth and 3 at the New England 17 and you're hoping to trick the Patriots? You're not trying to beat them with your best play? You're trying to outrun them with your worst runner? This is what passes for a good idea at that juncture of the game?
"I think it is, knowing what I know compared to what you know," Bills coach Mike Mularkey said, testily.
Well, all I know is by the end of that play the game was over, Henry had run into the wrong hole, Bruschi had run untouched into Bledsoe, the ball had been knocked loose, and Seymour was sprinting 68 yards for a touchdown that turned a potential tie into a blowout.
What the Patriots know is that in games like yesterday's, close games that can go either way late in the day, they will do what's right. The Bills do the opposite.
"We just have an attitude that we won't be denied," Seymour said. "We won't lose. When it comes time to win, we feel like we're going to win the football game. That's the bottom line."
That's the bottom line for the 3-0 Patriots. The bottom line for the 0-3 Bills was one made up not of "we wills" but of "what-ifs?"
"If we had executed the play correctly, hopefully Bruschi would have tackled Travis on the play fake and it would have been there," Bledsoe said.
But it wasn't, just as Fletcher's attempt at reaching for a touchdown wasn't. That is the difference between winners and losers. It is a fine line, a way of thinking as well as playing, or maybe a way of thinking and playing, which Bruschi and Seymour did at the game's pivotal moment yesterday and Fletcher, Henry, and Mularkey did not.
