W2W4: New England Patriots (6-1) Defense vs Buffalo Bills (4-3) Offense

The New England Patriots are readying for their second of two big road games: last week against Pittsburgh on the road and travelling to Buffalo on Sunday to face the only team who defeated them in the 2016 season.

Buffalo is coming off a horrendous loss to Miami made worse by bad decision-making by head coach Rex Ryan leading to him likely not having his top offensive playmaker. Ryan risked playing offensive star LeSean McCoy against Miami last Sunday with a hamstring injury.

McCoy left the game in the second half after an ineffective first half and re-aggravating his hamstring. Rather than resting McCoy against Miami and getting him healthy, Ryan focused on the short-term single game rather than the long-term slate of games this season.

With McCoy not practicing all week and listed as doubtful (although very unlikely to play), the Bills are now likely to have no McCoy to go along with no Marquise Goodwin (concussion symptoms). With former first round draft pick Sammy Watkins on still injured reserve the Patriots are catching the Bills at a point where they are short on explosive players.

MusketFire.com’s W2W4 (What to Watch for) weekly feature looks to give you the best analysis of the upcoming game. For your convenience, we will break the feature up into two parts over the weekend. Yesterday, we examined the New England offense against the Bills’ defense. Today it is the Bills’ offense against the Patriots’ defense.

So without further delay, let’s get to the match-ups for the Bills’ passing offense against Patriots’ passing defense, the keys to to the game, and then the Bills’ rushing offense facing the Patriots’ rushing defense.