Amid all the questions surrounding the New England Patriots after their ugly loss to Jacksonville, Sunday’s 29-26 win over the Buffalo Bills provided an important reminder that this team has a massive coaching advantage over the rest of the AFC East.
And honestly, it might not be particularly close.
Mike Vrabel and his staff walked into Buffalo coming off a 35-6 disaster in Jacksonville. Their quarterback had struggled. Their offense had been inconsistent. Christian Gonzalez and Christian Barmore were unavailable. The season was beginning to feel like it was slipping away.
Instead, New England went into Buffalo and delivered its best performance of the season.
The Patriots held Josh Allen to 253 passing yards and just 4 rushing yards, then forced the former MVP into a game-sealing interception on Buffalo’s final possession.
That is coaching.
The Patriots identified exactly what Buffalo wanted to do offensively and took it away.
Dalton Kincaid entered the game as one of the most productive tight ends in football, but New England’s defensive game plan essentially erased him. James Cook, last season’s rushing champion, was another major piece of the Bills’ offensive identity, yet Buffalo failed to consistently turn to him as the Patriots took away other parts of their attack.
Which turns the attention to Bills head coach Joe Brady.
Brady deserves credit for the job he’s done calling plays for Buffalo’s offense, but Sunday raises legitimate questions about whether the former offensive coordinator is becoming too obsessed with maximizing Allen's MVP case rather than simply doing whatever gives the Bills the best chance to win.
Allen is obviously the engine of the Bills’ offense and the face of the franchise. But when Cook is the defending rushing champion and one of the most dangerous running backs in football, you have to lean on him. Not to mention, when Kincaid is coming off a monster start to the season, you have to find ways to get him involved.
Instead, Buffalo leaned heavily on Allen when the game was on the line, and his late interception effectively sealed the Patriots’ victory.
This was only Brady’s fourth game as an NFL head coach and his first against a division opponent, so it would be foolish to draw any sweeping conclusions about his future from one afternoon. But if Sunday was a test of whether Brady could find more success in a big game than his predecessor, Sean McDermott, did, the rookie head coach failed.
And that’s exactly what makes the Patriots’ coaching advantage so important.
Meanwhile, look around the rest of the AFC East.
With their loss in Chicago on Sunday, the Jets dropped to 1-3, while Aaron Glenn fell to 4-17 through his first 21 games as New York’s head coach. At this point, the questions surrounding Glenn and his future are becoming impossible to ignore.
And Sunday was another brutal example of why.
Glenn’s defense was on the field for 89 plays at Soldier Field. Yes, you read that correctly. The final score was 23-12, but the game was far more lopsided than the scoreboard indicated. Ben Johnson’s Bears picked up 34 first downs, more than the Jets’ offense ran plays all afternoon (32). New York also possessed the ball for just 45 seconds in the fourth quarter.
And this wasn’t happening against some elite quarterback. The Jets were getting shredded by Tyson Bagent, Chicago’s backup, and the Bears’ rushing attack.
There was at least one bizarre silver lining. The Jets finally recorded their first interception of the Glenn era, ending a 20-game drought that had become an NFL record. For a coach whose calling card is supposed to be defense, that milestone says a lot about how little Glenn’s “superpower” has shown up during his time in New York.
"To me, play calling is my superpower"Aaron Glenn on his decision to call plays on defense https://t.co/FvHFYW97pK
— New York Jets (@nyjets) February 24, 2026
Glenn was a defensive back during his playing career and built his reputation as a defensive-minded coach. Yet through 21 games, the Jets’ defense has consistently failed to look like the unit you would expect from a coach with that background.
Then there’s Miami, where Jeff Hafley is off to an 0-4 start in his first season as head coach. The expectations were already low entering the season after the Dolphins stripped down their roster and handed the starting quarterback job to Malik Willis. Still, Hafley has yet to give Miami much reason for optimism.
Through four games, the Dolphins have scored just 46 points, the fewest in the NFL, and have yet to crack 13 points in a single game. Three of their four losses have come by multiple scores, while Miami ranks near the bottom of the league in total yards and sits 30th in total EPA.
Nobody expected the Dolphins to compete for a playoff spot this season, but there was supposed to be some indication that Hafley was building something in Miami. Instead, his team has looked completely overmatched through the first quarter of the season.
If this continues, Miami could very well be playing for the No. 1 overall pick by the end of the season. And if the Dolphins keep looking like this, there’s a very real possibility Hafley won’t be sitting in the draft room when it’s time to make that selection.
Now, back to New England.
The Patriots were coming off a humiliating loss, the worst in the Vrabel era, and faced a legitimate Super Bowl contender on the road and completely changed the story of their season in 60 minutes. Vrabel's team played with discipline, adjusted defensively, trusted franchise quarterback Drake Maye when it mattered, and made aggressive offensive decisions, including two fourth-down conversions that led to touchdowns.
That is exactly why Vrabel was a highly sought-after coach two offseasons ago.
The Patriots are only 2-2 and still have plenty of questions to answer, but Sunday’s win in Buffalo made one thing clear: When it comes to the AFC East, New England has the coaching advantage.
And that may be the Patriots' biggest weapon moving forward.
The rest of the AFC East is still trying to figure out what it has on the sideline. The Patriots don’t have that problem. They know exactly what they have in Vrabel, a coach who can prepare his team, make adjustments, and get the most out of his players when the stakes are highest.
As long as Vrabel is running the Patriots, New England should have the coaching advantage in the AFC East. And after what we saw in Buffalo, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to argue otherwise.
