Buffalo Bills: Ranking the primetime games in the 2020 season
By Thomas Gore
New England Patriots
The Bills will play their second game against the New England Patriots on December 28 on ESPN’s Monday Night Football. The game has a kick off time of 8:15pm ET and will be played in Gillette Stadium.
This year’s two bouts against the team from New England are going to be different, very different. After suffering two full decades of heartbreak at the hands of Tom Brady, the Buffalo Bills will see a New England Patriots squad without the six-time Super Bowl champion as their signal caller.
Instead, New England will have to rely on the talents of second year quarterback Jarret Stidham or career backup Brian Hoyer. Either way, the Patriots’ biggest weakness seems to be at the quarterback position.
If there is one thing Bills fans (and all fans) know about Bill Belichick’s teams, they still will not skip a beat. After all, the Patirots managed to go 11-5 in 2008 with Matt Cassel as the starting quarterback while Tom Brady nursed an ACL injury.
New England’s offense sputtered last year as Tom Brady failed to find an elite pass catcher to throw screen passes to. All joking aside, the Patriots are still a formidable foe for the Bills. Their defense was the top ranked unit in the NFL last season and with Belichick as its architect, that is not likely to change.
This game is big for so many reasons. First, it looks to be the most winnable game against New England that the Bills have played in a long time. Second, if the Bills can finally beat the Patriots and end the team’s decades old reign over the AFC East, then Buffalo will have a window to take the spot of the division’s top team.
If the Bills want to take the top spot, they’ll have to have a much more productive offensive outing than they have had in the past.
The game will likely be tough, but don’t expect Buffalo to play scared.