Sunday night in Buffalo, the Patriots (3-2) pulled off a thrilling 23-20 upset over the Bills (4-1) handing defending MVP Josh Allen his first loss of the 2025 season and loudly announcing to the rest of the league that it’s time to take New England seriously moving forward.
On Monday, Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel joined The Greg Hill Show to discuss the biggest win of his New England coaching tenure thus far.
Despite the massive win, one of the storylines coming out of Sunday was veteran running back Rhamondre Stevenson losing his third fumble this season - which would have been notable on its own, even if Stevenson didn’t lead the NFL in lost fumbles in 2024.
Vrabel stuck with the 27-year-old, and Stevenson was able to punch in two touchdowns on the ground from under 10 yards out.
A tip of the cap for two scores, but the fumbles need to stop. Especially if fellow veteran running back Antonio Gibson is going to miss time with an apparent leg injury suffered on Sunday night.
“What is it that you see in Rhamondre that, despite the fumbles, you want to keep going with him?” WEEI’s Courtney Cox asked Vrabel.
“We go with all of them, and we’ll use all of them,” said the 50-year-old head coach. “He’s valuable in protection, and when teams start blitzing and heat this up, it's critical that somebody protects the quarterback. And they can go short yardage instances and around the goal line, and we mix carries up. So everybody's going to have a role, and we'll have to continue to take care of the ball. And so you have to make those decisions.
“I think Rhamondre understands how critical the ball is, but we've got to start putting that fire out and making sure that until we're back in the huddle that that ball remains in our possession, whether we're going down or we're close to the ground.
“We're going to need them all. We're going to need everybody, and we're going to need especially all the backs in that room to help us.”
Patriots are back on the road in Week 6, as they’ll head down to New Orleans to take on the Saints. With New Orleans sporting a bottom-10 run defense in the NFL by almost every metric, Stevenson will have every opportunity in Week 6 to show that ball security is priority No. 1, 2 and 3 moving forward.
As of publishing, the Patriots are 3.5-point road favorites at FanDuel. You can get them on the moneyline at -180, and the total sits at 46.5.
Tune in each and every Monday throughout the football season to Patriots Monday on WEEI. Head coach Mike Vrabel joins The Greg Hill Show at 6:30 a.m. ET, and quarterback Drake Maye joins WEEI Afternoons.