What a weird night.
The New England Patriots got what they hoped for as they took down the Buffalo Bills on the road Monday night, but it certainly wasn’t your typical current-day football game.
New England relied on its ground game due in large part to insane weather that featured a mixture of snow and strong winds even reaching as high as 50 miles per hour. Quarterback Mac Jones threw the ball just three times.
You read that right, it isn’t a typo.
Jones and the Patriots threw just three passes as they took down the Bills 14-10 to retain the top spot in the AFC East and the AFC overall. After the game, some of the players didn’t shy away from the weirdness of the win.
“We knew it was going to be windy. You can’t control it, there’s no on and off switch. But you can just go out there and have the right mindset and understand that everything’s not going to be perfect,” Jones said via team-provided audio. “I don’t think there will be a game like that in a long time, but when it is you can’t control it. You just got to go out there and do your job.”
Center David Andrews hadn’t seen a game like Monday night’s in his entire football career, even dating back to childhood.
“One, It was a win. Two, I don’t think I’ve ever played in a game where we threw the ball three times. I’ve been playing football since I was six years old so that’s 23 years,” Andrews said. “Maybe Shaq Mason’s the only who never threw the ball more than three times in a football game. At six years old I threw the ball more than that, so how can that not be a memorable thing on Monday night?”
Patriots defensive end Matthew Judon was impressed with the squad and even took a playful dig at Jones after the win for his lack of passing attempts.
“I don’t know what the coaches were thinking but they came out there and they executed whatever game plan they had. It got us a a victory,” Judon said. “Kudos to the running backs, you see their defense. It was everybody up on the line of scrimmage but they were still able to gain yards so that’s on the running backs, tight ends, offensive line. Just hats off to the offense, really everybody probably besides Mac. He really didn’t do nothing besides hand the ball off. Everybody out there was just executing when their number was called.”
The Patriots’ running back group had one of the its best nights of the season with 46 attempts and 222 yards and Brandon Bolden summed up the night perfectly.
“It was a very unique game,” Bolden said.
You’re not going to see another game like this for a long time.
