New England Patriots @ Buffalo Bills Free Pick & Preview

New England Patriots @ Buffalo Bills Free Pick & Preview: About 100 years ago (actually about 3), the New England Patriots beat the Buffalo Bills 56-10 in a game where the Patriots were 16-point favorites, and world beating in the offensive scoreboard area of the record books. It’s been a different ball game since then. I think it comes down to what the Bills do in their secondary, as it just seems to match up well against Tom Terrific and his offense.

The Patriots seem to run the ball a lot more against Buffalo, and if anything, that’s not what they usually do. Now, they’ve beaten the Bills in 10 straight games (at least, the “history” I use only goes back 10 games) but the last 5 have all been pretty close football games. The Patriots have won by 8, 7, 1, 13, and 10 in those last 5 games (from most to least recent). The Patriots have only exceeded 245 passing yards once in those 5 games. So, while they’ve been really successful in the W/L column, the Patriots haven’t been dominating this match-up.

The Bills have shown some good stuff of late, mainly running the ball. They have out-rushed their opponents in 4 of the last 6 games, all victories for the Bills. They are doing everything a lot better than earlier in the season, and after a 5 game stretch that saw the Patriots dominate the league’s best week after week, they slowed down a little bit last week against the Packers. They won, sure, but Green Bay was good defensively, and won the rushing and passing yards battle with Aaron Rodgers out and Ryan Grant on IR. They weren’t very efficient offensively and they allowed Matt Flynn to have a big day through the air. Only 1 of the Bills’ last 9 games have they lost by more than 3 points. That’s good enough for me to take them with 9. Then you add in the fact that New England doesn’t have much to play for (though they’ve rarely been a team to shut it down in the final weeks). The little things just say “BUFFALO GREAT VALUE”.

New England Patriots @ Buffalo Bills (+9)