Sean McDermott shades Bill Belichick after Patriots’ Monday Night win
By Adam Weinrib
The New England Patriots won a game unlike any other against the Buffalo Bills this week on Monday Night Football, thanks to Bill Belichick’s ground-and-pound-and-pound-and-pound-and-pound offense.
Mac Jones threw the ball just three times (two of those coming late in the fourth quarter), and every other play was a rush by Damien Harris, Rhamondre Stevenson, Brandon Bolden or Assorted RB Off the Street.
No matter what you thought of the exhibition, it was one of the strangest and clearly most effective ways of dealing with outrageous winds and cascading snow we’ve ever seen. It was also an NFL game that can’t be repeated. A wholly original 60 minutes of football action.
Bills coach Sean McDermott doesn’t want to hear it, though.
When asked after the game about the madness he’d just watched, McDermott cautioned the media not to get too carried away with what Belichick had just shoved down his throat.
Too late, though. The momentum was cascading long before this one had ended.
Sean McDermott: "Let's not give more credit than we need to give Bill Belichick in this one."
— Matthew Fairburn (@MatthewFairburn) December 7, 2021
Bills coach Sean McDermott wasn’t hearing the Patriots-Bill Belichick praise
Hmm. Seems like the kind of salty thing a coach would say after they just proved they couldn’t stop, to quote Bart Scott, a nosebleed.
222 rushing yards in a game when everyone from Steve Levy to David Letterman knew you were taking the air out of the ball is an emasculating triumph for the Patriots, and McDermott clearly wasn’t ready to hear the media wax poetic about how he was dominated, physically, by the simplest possible game plan.
Of course, the sting is harsher when you, on the other sideline, couldn’t figure out how to handle the weather whatsoever.
As Henry McKenna of Patriots Wire pointed out, Buffalo had Josh Allen employ his howitzer 30 times, and didn’t emphasize their struggling run game any more than they might’ve without swirling ice chips orbiting the stadium.
You honestly got the sense the Bills thought Josh Allen's rocket arm would go unaffected. And while he DID make some beautiful plays, the Bills probably didn't honor the elements as much as they should have. https://t.co/CB0JH6iTQm
— Henry McKenna (@McKennAnalysis) December 7, 2021
Sorry you got outfoxed and bulldozed, Sean.
We understand that the Bills HC would’ve preferred not to see his season slip away in an old-school, record-setting groundswell brawl, but don’t be sad it’s over. Smile because it happened.
Who knows what happens from here? Perhaps the Bills can regroup and go on a run. We’d bet against it, though. They’re probably too scarred from this loss to ever run again.
