Like many members of the NFL community, first-year New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel spent a portion of the team’s bye watching the Buffalo Bills earn a thrilling 39-34 win over the Cincinnati Bengals that improved Buffalo to 9-4 on Sunday.
During a Monday appearance on Boston sports radio station WEEI, Vrabel addressed how the 11-2 Patriots are approaching the Dec. 14 home game versus Buffalo that will be massive for both clubs.
Patriots are heading into a championship Sunday vs. Bills
“We’re playing for a championship this week,” Vrabel said, per Hayden Bird of Boston.com. “Each week you have a new opportunity, a new message. This is a championship week for us, an opportunity to win the AFC East, something that this team hasn’t done in five years. Buffalo has done it five years in a row.”
Back in Week 5, the Patriots notched a 23-20 victory at Buffalo in the early days of what became a 10-game winning streak for New England. Due to a tiebreaker, the Patriots will enter the upcoming weekend trailing only the 11-2 Denver Broncos in the battle for the AFC’s No. 1 playoff seed.
“We didn’t start saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to win the Super Bowl in November,'” Vrabel continued. “It’s just conversations that I have with the team to try to focus on things that we need to try to do and want to do.”
Mike Vrabel warns Patriots about Bills
Against the Bengals, Bills quarterback and reigning regular-season Most Valuable Player Josh Allen completed 22-of-28 passes for 251 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions. He also accumulated 78 rushing yards on nine attempts, and he picked up 40 of those yards on a fourth-quarter touchdown carry.
“That team’s not going away,” Vrabel warned about the Bills. “They have a quarterback who is an MVP quarterback that under any circumstances is going to be ready to win the football game with whatever running or throwing that he has to do, and then whenever they need a play, he seems to make it.”
As of Monday morning, DraftKings Sportsbook had New England as a 1.5-point home underdog against the Bills. Week 15 will give the Patriots a chance to show that those who view them as pretenders instead of contenders should rethink such takes ahead of Christmas.