Boy, this looked good in overtime. After a Pierre Woods sack and a Gary Guyton pass break-up, the Jets faced a third down and 15 from their own 15-yard line. Had the Patriots held there, they would have gotten the ball back into the hands of their molten-hot quarterback Matt Cassel, the guy who’d just directed a 62-yard touchdown drive with 1:04 left to tie it in regulation.

But New York got the first down on Brett Favre’s 16-yard pass to tight end/newly-established nemesis Dustin Keller, and they got every first down they needed after that, eventually getting a 34-yard field goal for the win.

Maybe Cassel’s performance (30 for 51, 400 yards, three touchdowns) will propel New England to better things. Maybe the play of the defense, led by Jerod Mayo (20 tackles), will become more consistent.

But – and this has to be in the mind of every New England fan this morning – maybe it’s too late to matter. The Patriots find themselves at 6-4, looking up at the Jets, AFC East leaders at 7-3. And the worst part is, it didn’t have to be this way.

Sure, the Patriots stayed close with a second-half surge, but they lost the game in plenty of ways. From early on, due to lack of energy and execution, it seemed it wouldn’t be the home team’s night. That became apparent during the Jets’ opening drive, on the incomplete pass to Lavernues Coles that was overturned for a first down, and the 21-yard pass to Keller (damn you, Keller!), and Favre’s bubble screen for to Leon Washington for a touchdown. Add to that Washington’s kick return touchdown and a near-impossible helmet catch by Jerricho Cotchery leading to New York’s third TD, and this one seemed well over before the half.

And yet … New England put together several solid second-half stands (my alliteration allotment for the column) and a couple of consistent offensive drives to tie this thing. For Patriots fans, that’s what hurts so much.

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Following an 18-15 setback to the Colts in Week 9, the Patriots entered a critical stretch of three straight divisional games, the first two of which would match them against opponents possessing a share of the AFC East lead.  With every team in the division owning a winning record, even a Miami squad one season removed from a 1-15 record, the AFC East has become the best, most competitive division in the conference.  It’s never too early to be concerned about playoff seeding, and with just one game separating all of the teams, each divisional contest takes on added importance.

A 20-10 defeat of Buffalo at home was a great way to start this stretch off.

And what a brutally efficient display we were treated to during the 4^th quarter Sunday afternoon!  Plenty of print and bandwidth have chronicled the Patriots club record tying 19 play drive, the other occurring during a Week 2 contest against the the Jets back in 2002, but the author would be remiss as to not mention it in this weeks column.  Some other interesting facts (and notes) about this drive:

• 19 plays (Buffalo’s offense logged 43 total on the day)
• 9:08 elapsed (24 minutes real time)
• 6 clock stoppages (5 timeouts and the two minute warning)
• 19 commercials (1.0 commercial per play or CPP) for programs few of us will watch and shit we’ll likely never buy (okay, so that KFC Guitar Hero Big Box Meal is a pretty good value)

Although that drive destroyed any hope of a Bills comeback, up until that point things weren’t always peachy for the Patriot offense.  While they moved the ball well (370 yards) and continued their reinvention as a ball control offense (37:40 TOP), their 50% Red Zone efficiency (a season-long concern), a missed field goal and a lost fumble left a lot of points on the field and kept Buffalo alive much of the game.

Thus, the author agrees with Borges (this time) that the Patriot defense deserves a big share of the game ball.  Their combination of pressure and confounding coverages held the Bills to a season low 10 points.  For this week’s Turning Point, we’ll examine how manifestations of each (a sack and an interception, respectively) crippled two of Buffalo’s second half drives.

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New England’s 20-10 handling of Buffalo can be summarized by their first and last offensive drives: a fast start and a slow finish. The Patriots took just over three minutes to go up 7-0 on their opening drive; they ran more than nine minutes off the clock to seal the game in the fourth quarter. As the awkward guy said to the cute librarian, “Nice bookends.”

The defense deserves plenty of credit here, too. Shaking off some early missed tackles, the Phalanx of Foxboro held the Bills to 3.3 yards per rush. They picked off Trent Edwards twice and held him to 120 yards passing. The visitors could muster only 168 yards of offense overall, holding the ball for all of 22:20. Offensive, yes, just not in the way they wanted.

Much like New England’s opening drive, Buffalo’s helped set the tone for the day. After Marshawn Lynch ran up the middle for seven yards, the Bills decided to pass on the next two downs. Edwards threw incomplete in the face of pressure from linebacker Jerod Mayo, and he got sacked by Richard Seymour.

The home team took advantage of a couple of calls to extend their first offensive possession. Matt Cassel threw deep to Randy Moss to open the drive, a sign of things to come (long incompletions, that is. Hey, it’s not like we haven’t asked for them). The incompletion didn’t count because safety Ko Simpson’s 15-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness pushed the Patriots up to their own 44. After medium-range passes to Jabar Gaffney and Moss, BenJarvus Green-Ellis got his first of 26 runs (Green-Ellis scuttled, plowed and swept for 105 yards on the day). Cassel found Wes Welker (10 catches, 107 yards) along the left sideline for a 21-yard gain to Buffalo’s 17. Replays showed that Welker failed to get his second foot inbounds, but, really, when do replays matter in the NFL, right? Anyone?

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