Fan Notes from the Patriots’ loss to the Bills

We all knew it couldn’t last forever.

An incredible winning streak has come to an end, and New England’s chances for the One Seed just took a major hit. In a must-win game for Buffalo, Josh Allen and company relied on their late season experience and big play ability to engineer an incredible comeback that keeps them alive in the race for the AFC East title. It’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish, so massive cap tip to Buffalo.

1. This was one of the weirder weeks leading up to a game that I can remember. A Bills team that has been good for five years but hasn’t won a championship taking on a Patriots team that has been lousy for five years but won a lot of championships in the past, and the fans of each team seem to have lost their minds over this factual statement. “Kiss the Rings!” “Josh Allen is the MVP!” “No signature playoff wins!” “Stop living in the past!” If I’m being honest, I don’t think that either fanbase is in any real shape to throw this kind of shade, based on the way this whole season has played out. I just don’t get it.
2. Actually, that’s a lie; I get it. I really do. Trash talk is a part of sports, and sports fandom is likely the only hobby on the planet where being miserable, angry, bitter, illogical, hypocritical, and overly, aggressively combative with complete strangers greatly enhances the overall enjoyment of the activity. Getting angry online gives more than a few people that perfect balance of rage and joy that allows them to be their best selves. It’s like Sweet and Sour sauce or Salt and Vinegar chips. And here we have two division rivals vying for a playoff spot, so it makes all the sense in the world for tensions to be high.
3. But I don’t know; I’ve just always liked the Bills. I even liked them back in the early 90s when they would slap the Patriots around twice a year. They’re a great franchise, with a great fanbase, and an awesome history. And Josh Allen is just so fun to watch. What an incredible talent he is. Good for them hanging around and generating a much-needed win.
4. Also, this game wasn’t nearly as massive a deal as it was made out to be, in my opinion. New England still has a stranglehold on the division. Honestly, the fact that we’re sitting here in mid-December talking about playoff byes and seeding is just so wild I still can’t comprehend it.
5. It’s good to see J.J. Watt diversifying his portfolio. With the coiff, quarter-zip pullover, and face stubble look, he can seamlessly transition from calling football games to being the guy at the beginning of the Hallmark Christmas movies that the protagonist thinks she’s in love with before she has to leave the city and head back to her small town to take care of some unexpected business.
6. And like the angry fan trash talk all week, I understand the appeal of Hallmark movies. They’re not for me, not even a little bit (if you’re married, odds are you’ve watched more than one, and that’s fine. It doesn’t make you any less of a badass), but I get it. There’s a level of comfort in knowing exactly what’s going to happen, with zero surprises, zero tension, zero stress, and enough cheese to keep Papa John’s in business forever no matter how hammered the owner gets.
7. But I’ll tell you what had plenty of surprises, tension, and stress—yesterday’s game. Though in hindsight, I should have seen this one coming. I’ve been saying for weeks now that the biggest flaw of the 2025 Patriots is that they can’t close out games. How many times have we seen this team with an opportunity to finish an opponent off, only to come up short and let them hang around? We saw it against the Saints, the Bucs, the Falcons, the Bengals, and even the Jets. And the concern was that when the Patriots couldn’t close out against a good team, that team was going to take advantage. And here we find ourselves.
8. If I’m handing out turd medals for this game, I think gold has to go to the 2nd half playcalling. I don’t know why New England shied away from what was working so well for them in the first half, on both sides of the ball, but they did. I think that sometimes coaches will get too deep inside their own heads when playing catchup or protecting a strong lead and will deviate for no reason. Maybe that happened here.
9. The Silver Turd has to go to Special Teams on the kickoff coverage. Not nearly as hard to score when most of your answering drives start at around midfield.
10. I want to give the Bronze Turd to the officiating, but I’m not going to. I’m not going to make any complaints about the wildly inconsistent officiating and blow hot air into the wind yet again about how there isn’t a single person on the planet who can tell you what constitutes a catch or what constitutes DPI. There were a few calls/non-calls yesterday that completely altered the complexion of the game, but that’s just the league. It has been baked into the cake for years now, and at least there’s consistency in the inconsistency. If String Theory turns out to be true and there is in fact a multiverse out there in which thousands of New England Patriots teams played thousands of Buffalo Bills teams across a multitude of different dimensions all at once, then there still isn’t a plane of existence where the refs called any of the games the same way. All you can do is whine about it when it happens, acknowledge that bad/inconsistent officiating is as much a part of the sport as hash marks and end zones, and hope that everything kind of evens out for you by the end of the year.
11. And so I’m going to have to give the Bronze Turd to Drake Maye. Drake Maye did not look good as a passer yesterday. He overthrew more than a few receivers and looked shaky overall. Maybe the moment got too big for him. Maybe he bought into his own hype a little too much. Maybe he was just rusty coming off a bye. Maybe he just had an off day, which is allowed. But if you give credit where credit is due, you have to assign blame when warranted. Maye didn’t play well, and likely played himself out of the MVP conversation.
12. But the fact that he’s even in the MVP convo in year two once again hammers home how much of a massive win this whole season already is.
13. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: cold and wind and snow were all strong contributors to what I used to call “football weather” in my younger days. I have many fond, hazy memories riding the train from Providence up to Foxboro in the late 90s and early aughts, decked out in sweaters and gloves and boots with my Coca-Cola bottle half full of Coke and half full of Jack Daniel’s as I prepared to freeze my ass off – literally – on those old Foxbororo Stadium metal benches. And I’ll the current definition of “football weather” to stand as is. But just below that in the Official Football Dictionary is “weather in which middle-aged, out-of-shape men opt to stay inside, light a fire, pour a few fingers of good bourbon, and watch the young guys play on TV.”
14. Just so everyone is aware, I’m usually not a bourbon-at-1-PM kind of guy… but hey, it’s the holidays. And I needed to take the edge off coming into this one.
15. I guess I should be upset here..but I’m not. I wrote a whole article already aboutu how this entire season is all jjst gravy at this point, and there are still plenty of chances for the Patriotys to win the AF East. This was a must-win game for the Bills, and they did what they had to do. The 2025 New England Patriots have a lot of flaws, and those floaws were once again exposed yesterday. All good as far as I’m concerned. Bad penalties and an inability to finish the game have both been hanging around all year, and they reared their head again yesterday. Oh well.
16. Honestly, maybe the Patriots make some noise this postseason. Maybe they don’t. How much does it really matter, given where we all were in August? How likable is this team? How excited are you all for 2026 and beyond? I still think that the Patriots can hang with any team in the AFC. If they get bounced in the Wild Card Round, I wouldn’t be shocked. If they go to the Super Bowl, I wouldn’t be shocked. I’d be shocked if they win it, as the NFC is such a strong conference that I feel like whoever comes out of the AFC is going to get absolutely dogwalked by Seattle or LA or whoever, but that’s what makes football fun. Variety is the spice of life.
17. I don’t have a whole lot to write about this game, as you see. They played great, then they stunk in the second half. That’s more or less their MO. It works against bad teams, it won’t work against good teams. We know this already.
18. I thought about just kind of leaving my Fan Notes as they are now and shutting things down a little earlier than usual, but as I get ready to return to whatever passes for reality these days, I’d like to put something out into the ether, perhaps selfishly. You can stop reading now if you’d like, the Fan Notes are over. But at least 17 times a year, I send these articles out into the internet, and they stay there forever. There’s a piece of myself I’d like to leave behind today, even if just as a whispering ghost of what once was.
19. I am a proud alumnus of Brown University. I arrived there as a skinny freshman in August of 2000 (long live Morris Hall), and somehow BS’ed my way through enough English papers to graduate as a significantly less skinny senior in May of 2004. I then stayed on, avoiding adulthood and reality at all costs, and got a 5th-year Master’s at Brown in 2005. Brown is where I met my best friend, and it’s where I met a bunch of other drunken degenerates who (or whom? Ivy League English degree and I ain’t got a clue) I now consider family. The common room of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity on Wriston Quad is where I fell to my knees, sobbing with my face in my hands, when Adam Vinatieri kicked a 48-yard field goal right down the middle to win the Patriots their first Super Bowl. 376 Benefit Street was where I was living when the Patriots won their third in four years, and when the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918. I traveled from Brown to Foxboro/Gillette no fewer than 20 times between 2000 and 2005 to watch my favorite team play. I could walk that campus blindfolded – and I kind of did, many, many times, after a number of fairly epic late-night runs on the Beer Pong table. Brown is a place that will forever have a chokehold on my soul. The Patriots and Brown will forever be intertwined in my sick, twisted brain. I love that university. I love the city of Providence. I love who I am because of my time there.
20. There isn’t a single thing about watching professional sports that matters at all. None of this is important. Enjoy your friends. Enjoy your family. Enjoy the stuff you do when you aren’t watching the Patriots play. Get outside. Experience the world. Milk every second of the life you have.
21. I don’t know where I was going with that. I just wanted to get it out. I kind of needed to. Thank you for letting me share it. Let’s all do whatever we have to do to be good people, both to ourselves and to others.
    
    Are the Ravens good? I have no idea. Maybe we’ll find out next week. Two wins in the next three games and we’re good to go.