Patriots-Bills takes on new meaning after ESPN insider’s peek behind the curtain

It’s Mike Vrabel’s job to downplay the significance of one regular season game out of 17. Yes, his New England Patriots can clinch the AFC East title with a win at home Sunday against rival Buffalo. They could also clinch it later down the line, say Week 17, when the Patriots play the Jets, and the Bills play the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.

Pick your favorite NFL cliche. Vrabel could’ve bored us all to death with them this week.

But he didn’t. Not even close, actually.

Vrabel’s been preaching two words to both his team and Patriots fans entering Sunday’s massive showdown: “Championship Week.” He hasn’t been afraid to say those words publicly. In fact, he doubled down during his weekly appearance on WEEI’s Greg Hill morning show.

"We're playing for a championship this week," Vrabel said. "Each week, you have a new opportunity, a new message. And this is a championship week for us, an opportunity to win the AFC East.”

It’s a refreshing message for fans who have been waiting two weeks for the biggest game of the Vrabel-Drake Maye era. You could’ve argued the same about Week 5, when the Patriots stunned the NFL world by going toe-to-toe with Josh Allen and the Bills on Sunday Night Football and winning the game, 23-20, in Buffalo.

But as Mike Reiss of ESPN stated this week, Sunday's ematch is something much bigger, an event Patriots fans haven’t experienced since you know who left for Florida six years ago.

The New England Patriots are embracing a magnitude fans haven’t felt in years

Just to be clear, Sunday’s 1 p.m. (EST) Patriots-Bills kickoff in Foxboro is not technically an AFC East championship game. It is for New England (11-2), as a win clinches its first division title since 2019. It’s not for Buffalo (9-4), though; two games back in the standings, all a Bills win would do is extend the division race another week.

A Patriots loss, however, could massively impact their chances at the No. 1 overall seed in the AFC playoffs. They’re currently even atop the standings with the Denver Broncos, but Denver holds the tiebreaker thanks, in part, to New England’s brutal Week 1 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders.

So, again, the Patriots are treating this one like a playoff game. Everyone’s expecting the best from Allen, head coach Sean McDermott, and the Bills — but they should be expecting the exact same from Vrabel’s Patriots, who have won 10 straight games (and have looked good doing it).

For ESPN, Reiss described how the Patriots are embracing the magnitude of their biggest home game since the Brady-Belichick days.

“I wanted to take you behind the scenes,” Reiss said. “It’s a Wednesday, so all the reporters here around the Patriots… when the locker room door opens, we always run down to Stefon Diggs’ locker, because this is the day he talks. And he’s the pulse of the team. His messaging usually reflects what the team is all about. And there were three things he said that stood out to me. He said, ‘This game is different, because you’re playing for something.’ He said, ‘There’s a great opportunity in front of us, so why not go chase it?’ And of Drake Maye, he said that to him, his maturation process has been second to none. And the third thing that Stefon Diggs said, was he likes the idea that the Patriots are underdogs. He says it gives you an edge to play with, and he said, ‘This team is full of players who play with an edge.’”

Patriots fans know Vrabel well. We know he’s been delivering those exact same messages throughout the last two weeks, as New England shifted its focus squarely on the Bills over its Week 14 bye.

After two straight years of mostly meaningless football, Sunday’s game at Gillette Stadium will definitely be different (in the best way possible).