7 takeaways from Patriots’ upset win over the Bills

They say history repeats itself.

Last year, on the first Sunday of October, the New England Patriots went into Buffalo and handed the Bills their first loss of the season with a statement road victory.

On the first Sunday of October 2026, they did it again, beating the previously undefeated Bills, 29-26.

“It gets us back in the race,” Mike Vrabel said.

Here are seven takeaways from the statement win.

This was the game Drake Maye needed

It wasn’t perfect, as he turned the ball over twice. One was an unlucky interception on a low throw that Romeo Doubs should’ve handled, while the other was a fumble Maye should have just eaten. But overall, Drake Maye looked like his old self on Sunday.

Maye threw for three touchdowns, triple his total entering the game, and a season-high 269 yards while completing 22 passes, also a season-high. He added 54 yards on eight carries.

“It’s relieving a little bit,” Maye said. “But we’ve still got some work to do.”

After falling behind 29-26 with 4:27 remaining, Maye, who appeared confident and poised all afternoon, led an eight-play, 73-yard touchdown drive and converted the two-point conversion to give the Patriots a three-point lead with under two minutes remaining. The Patriots threw on seven of the eight plays, with Maye completing four passes for 68 yards, including gains of 14, 12, 19, and 23 yards.

It was a massive step in the right direction for Maye, who turned in his best performance of the season after facing plenty of criticism for his early-season struggles.

Efton Chism was the unsung hero

Efton Chism entered Sunday with just five career receptions. He had played only 26 offensive snaps through the first three weeks.

But with more opportunity after Mack Hollins left the game with a calf injury, Chism stepped up and became the Patriots’ unsung hero.

On the final drive, the undrafted second-year receiver made two of the day's biggest catches.

First, he hauled in a 19-yard leaping catch on second-and-10.

Then, with under two minutes remaining, he hauled in a one-handed, 23-yard touchdown that proved to be the game-winner.

The Patriots have believed in Chism despite his limited opportunities, and he rewarded that belief with a pair of clutch catches in Sunday’s win.

It was an up-and-down day for Romeo Doubs

Drake Maye’s lone interception was largely on Romeo Doubs.

That’s a ball Doubs needs to secure, although Maye also deserves some blame for an unnecessarily low throw. Doubs also had a chance to make a play on an X-play in the fourth quarter. It would have been a difficult catch, but the opportunity was there.

But the Patriots don’t win on Sunday without Doubs, who had a team-high six receptions on nine targets for 58 yards and two touchdowns. It was his fifth career multi-touchdown game.

Doubs also came up big on both of New England’s fourth-down conversions. He picked up 15 yards on 4th-and-3 in the first quarter and nine yards on 4th-and-2 in the third quarter. Both drives ended in touchdowns.

Doubs was big for the Patriots on Sunday.

Aggressive coaching pays off

On two of their four touchdown drives, the Patriots converted on fourth down. The aggressive coaching was intentional and paid off big time.

“When you play Josh Allen, you are going to have to be aggressive,” Vrabel said. “We can hope and wish that we can stop him, and sometimes you do. We got some huge three-and-outs. Sometimes we got the drive stopped, and sometimes we didn’t. That’s what elite players do. He’s never out of it, so we wanted to try and stay aggressive at our moments, and the guys rewarded us by converting.”

The Patriots’ defense took away some of Buffalo’s biggest strengths

Tight end Dalton Kincaid entered Week 4 leading the Bills in receptions (14) and receiving yards (268). He was second on the team in targets (17), just one behind DJ Moore (18).

The fourth-year tight end is a focal point of Buffalo’s offense, but the Patriots took him out of the game, as he finished with just one catch on two targets.

“That certainly was one of the keys,” Vrabel said on taking Kincaid out of the game. “Certainly between Allen, Cook, and Kincaid, those guys have been showing up for them in the first couple of games. I think the ability to stop the run early on, to get some turnovers, and hammer the football ultimately gave us some hope.”

New England also did a good job limiting Buffalo’s rushing attack.

They also limited Buffalo’s rushing attack.

The Bills entered Sunday fourth in the NFL in rushing yards, averaging 155 yards per game on the ground. The Patriots held them to just 91 rushing yards.

Josh Allen finished with four rushing yards on five carries. It was just the sixth time in his career that he was held to fewer than five rushing yards in a game he started and finished. James Cook had 75 yards on 12 carries.

Defensive coordinator Zak Kuhr deserves plenty of credit for his game plan, as the Patriots found ways to limit Buffalo’s biggest offensive threats without both Christian Gonzalez and Christian Barmore.

The running backs are still searching for answers

The run game showed signs of improvement, with both Rhamondre Stevenson (10 yards) and TreVeyon Henderson (11 yards) more than doubling their longest runs from last week (five yards each). But the running backs are still searching for consistency.

Stevenson finished with 13 carries for 47 yards (3.6 yards per carry), while Henderson had 14 carries for 42 yards (3.0 yards per carry). Combined, they totaled 89 yards on 27 carries, averaging 3.3 yards per carry.

Through four games, the two have combined for 304 yards on 83 carries (3.6 yards per carry) and two touchdowns.

The Patriots need more production from both backs moving forward.

Another meltdown at the end of the first half

The end-of-half woes continued for the Patriots on Sunday.

After scoring a touchdown on their previous drive to take a 14-7 lead, the Patriots had the Bills facing third-and-goal from the New England 17-yard line with 1:48 remaining in the first half.

In that situation, the Patriots needed to hold Buffalo to a field goal attempt and give their offense a chance to extend the lead before halftime, with an opportunity to double it when they got the ball to start the second half.

Not quite.

After a very questionable holding call on Marcus Jones, the Bills were gifted a fresh set of downs. It was the Patriots’ first penalty of the game.

Mike Vrabel clearly disagreed with the call and voiced his frustration to the officials, resulting in a rare unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the head coach. If the lip readers are correct, Vrabel’s reaction didn’t seem to warrant a penalty, especially given what officials hear regularly.

The penalty moved the ball half the distance to the goal.

“I told him it was a terrible effing call,” Vrabel said. “I’ve said that 87 times since I’ve been a head coach. It was nothing derogatory. You’d have to ask him [Bill Vinovich]. I think he was a little sensitive. Once I get the word from upstairs that it wasn’t what we felt like was a good call — which I’m going to trust Stretch [John Streicher] with my life — I probably shouldn’t have sworn. But I can tell you that in my history of being on the sidelines as a head coach, I’ve said that. I apologized to him. Again, the players responded, and it was unfortunate. I have to be better in those moments.”

Instead of facing fourth-and-goal from the 17, the Bills had first-and-goal from the New England 6-yard line. Buffalo, one of the best red-zone teams in the league, scored three plays later.

It only got worse from there.

With 1:00 remaining, the Patriots still had a chance to put points on the board before halftime. Instead, they went three-and-out, throwing three straight incompletions and taking just 31 seconds off the clock. That gave Josh Allen and the Bills another opportunity to score and take the lead before the break.

Buffalo needed just two plays to get into field goal range, but Carlton Davis bailed out the Patriots by punching the ball free from Bills wide receiver Khalil Shakir. Elijah Pounder recovered the fumble at the New England 36-yard line with 16 seconds remaining.

The Patriots once again had a chance to retake the lead before halftime, but they couldn’t capitalize. On the first play, Drake Maye’s low pass was bobbled by Doubs as he tried to scoop it off the turf. The ball popped into the air and was intercepted by Dee Alford, who returned it to the New England 20-yard line. That set up a 38-yard field goal for Tyler Bass, giving the Bills three more points.

The Patriots need to be better in those situations. The sequence turned what could have been a two-score lead into a halftime deficit, which could change the outcome of the game.