Patriots Preview: Week 4 at Buffalo
by Zak Drapeau
Sportz Nation - 10/3/2026
Overview
The Patriots will travel to Buffalo for their first AFC East matchup of the season this week. Standing at 1-2, the Patriots will be a touchdown underdog to the 3-0 Bills who will be playing in their 3rd consecutive home game at Highmark Stadium.
This game has the Bills -6.5 across most major markets with a 49.5 over/under mark. With the way both teams have been performing so far this season, I'm assuming oddsmakers believe this game to be around the 28-21 range in favor of the Bills.
In recent history, the Patriots won their matchup in Buffalo last year, breaking the Bills 4-game win streak at home against them beforehand. Even including that game, the Bills have been dominating the series 9-3 over the last 6 years.
Patriots
The Patriots are 1-2 so far this season with a Home win vs Pittsburgh and Away losses in Seattle and Jacksonville. As far as "good losses" go those are VERY good, and the win against Pittsburgh may have been against a 1-3 team but it was a dominant showing against a solid team.
Anytime you start the season with 3 out of your first 4 games on the road against playoff teams including the reigning champion, that's a brutal assignment.
Before we get into the elephant in the room, let's talk about the bright spots so far for New England. Their passing defense has been one of if not the best in the league with guys like Christian Gonzalez and Carlton Davis controlling the skies and the Front-7 have been a full team effort with guys like Elijah Ponder and Gabe Jacas standing out. Christian Elliss has probably been the overall best player on defense and definitely the most well-rounded in both coverage and against the run.
There are some obvious and glaring issues with the Patriots ahead of their Week 4 matchup and it largely has to do with their passing offense. After finishing the 2025 regular season 4th in total passing, the Patriots now rank 20th so far this season. The problems all come down to Drake Maye who has gotten off to a generationally bad start to the season just 8 months removed from being announced as MVP runner-up. Starting the season with 1 touchdown, 8 turnovers being sacked 9 times and only averaging 195 passing yards per game is... very different from how he left off last year.
Bills
The Bills are off to a great, 3-0 start in 2026 and are the #1 team in my latest Power Rankings, (full article here). Josh Allen may have had a poor game last week against the Chargers but he is still firmly in the MVP race again after a spectacular first two weeks.
Even with last week's performance which saw 204 yards, 0 touchdowns and 2 interceptions through the air, Allen's had his cape on every game. With 786 yards, 5 TDs and 2 INTs through the air, and 114 yards and 6 TDs on the ground, Allen's per game averages are 300 total yards and almost 4 TDs a game.
And quite frankly, he's needed to be spectacular with their defense ranking 25th in the league in yards allowed and 21st in points. Allen's performances may be even better with Joe Brady as the new Head Coach but the team's dismissal of defensive sepcialist Sean McDermott who served as their Head Coach for the previous 9 seasons has affected their defense in 2026.
Aside from Defensive End Gregory Rousseau who has amazingly earned 2 sacks in each contest so far this season, there isn't much to be said about the entire unit. The argument can be made that they too have faced 3 Playoff teams from last year to start their season, but that being said both the Texans and Chargers are 0-3 to start the season and clearly worse off then they were a year ago.
Predictions
So this game took another big hit for the Patriots this week when the team announced the injury report.
WR AJ Brown (IR)
OG Mike Onwenu (IR)
CB Christian Gonzalez (Out)
DT Christian Barmore (Out)
The Patriots really needed both Barmore and Gonzalez to try and combat Josh Allen's Josh Allen-ness this Sunday and that is a HUGE loss for a defense that was kind of the only way the Patriots would've won this game.
On the other end... I'm not underrating Drake Maye. I realize he's off to a bad start and going to Buffalo is a raucaus environment especially in a divisional game but he's still in there somewhere I know it.
That being said, this game is one that could get away from the Patriots early. If Maye is under pressure and feeling nervous in the pocket from the jump with guys like Rousseau and Bradley Chubb in his face, he's going to turn the ball over.
With Buffalo's offense being great, the Patriots defense losing key players, and the Bills' ranking toward the top of the league in takeaways, I see this game being around 21-10 by halftime. The Patriots have a good run defense which I believe will do them well when the Bills try to run the clock in the 2nd half but there truly is only so much you can do in holding both Josh Allen and James Cook.
I'm going with the Bills -6.5 and the Under/49.5.
Final Prediction:
Bills 27-Patriots 17
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Patriots Previews Every Saturday.
Patriots Reviews Every Monday.
-Z.D.
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