STOP HATE.
That’s what it says, in caps, on the back of Josh Allen’s helmet.
Shouldn’t there be an asterisk?
*Except for the Patriots.
Our polarized nation does not agree on many things, but on this we do: We hate the New England Patriots.
This is true almost everywhere except New England’s own half-dozen states. The Pats are reviled from sea to shining sea – especially so in Buffalo. We reserve for them a visceral, no-holds-barred hate normally reserved for Darth Vader and ice storms in April.
Paul Revere, an original New England patriot, warned on his midnight ride in 1775 that the British were coming. Well, don’t look now, but the Patriots are coming! They’ll be here for an AFC East showdown against the Bills in a matter of days on "Monday Night Football."
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“They’re back,” says Rick Keaton, a lifetime Bills fan from Kenmore. “And it makes me sick.”
Western New Yorkers hate-watched on Sunday as the Pats thumped the Tennessee Titans, 36-13. “Haaaate both these teams,” tweeted Bills Mafia co-founder Del Reid, and those added vowels really capture the spirit of the thing.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way after Tom Brady vamoosed for Tampa Bay. The Pats started 2-4 this season, which made them 9-13 in their first 22 games post-Brady. The Bills beat the Pats twice last season as Buffalo won the division for the first time in 25 years. Visions of a decade of dominance danced in our heads.
We should have known better. The Patriots are like the movie monster that keeps coming back to life in all the sequels.
“I blame the football gods,” tweeted WGR’s Howard Simon. “We only got one season of a bad Patriots team.”
Bills fans were not alone in thinking the division crown would now belong to Buffalo. The acid-penned writer Drew Magary gleefully wrote this of the Pats for the website Defector before this season: “No more Super Bowls. No more dynasties. Those days are gone now, just as we all prayed for. This is a team that ceded dominion over the AFC East to the Buffalo Bills.”
The Bills can still make good on their promise, of course. They play the Pats twice this month. So, yes, the division title can still be Buffalo’s. Or it can wind up in the hands of, well, you-know-who all over again.
The Pats have won six Super Bowls over the past couple of decades, so it wasn’t just the Bills they were beating. But listen to Luke Russert, son of the late NBC newsman Tim Russert. Luke preaches the Bills gospel to his 266,700 Twitter followers.
“There are real questions about the legitimacy of those titles because of Spy-gate and Deflate-gate,” he says. “Even if you don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist, there are real questions there. And it always seems as if the Patriots get preferential treatment from the referees. Those things put together make them very hate-able.”
Kenmore’s Keaton writes a weekly email Rant for his friends in which he calls the Pats “the Boston Cheatahs.” He figures the nickname works on two levels: “They’re cheaters, and it goes along with their accent, too.” Keaton also styles Pats coach Bill Belichick as Bill Belicheat.
This week Belichick got asked on Boston radio about his relationship with Bills fans. “They definitely don’t like me,” he said. And on this we can all agree.
Magary wrote that Belichick was revealed as a fraud once Brady left: “For 20 ... years I’ve had to hear about Belichick’s genius. How he doesn’t waste precious tape-study time on wardrobe selection. … How he can solve any opposing offense by consulting the library of ancient scrolls located in his fruit cellar.”
That was in August. Now, as December beckons, hosannas for Belichick’s evil genius are back in vogue. The Patriots are 6-0 since their 2-4 start. NFL mavens are salivating for Brady vs. Belichick in the Super Bowl. And just how much would Bills fans loathe that?
Brady famously went 32-3 as a starter against the Bills from 2001 to 2019. That’s the most wins for any NFL quarterback against a single opponent. And guess who the Bills play after their showdown with the Pats?
Yes, the Bills will get Belichick and Brady on consecutive weeks, so don’t waste all your haaaate on Monday. Just remember that hating the Pats has been a Buffalo tradition since long before Brady was born.
It is part of our DNA since the early days of the American Football League. The Bills lost the first playoff game in their history to the Boston Patriots, in 1963. That came on a snow-covered field at War Memorial Stadium to decide the AFL’s Eastern Division. The Pats held Cookie Gilchrist to 7 yards on eight carries and won, 26-8.
As it happens, the Bills beat Boston for the first regular-season victory in their history, in 1960, but it has been pretty much downhill ever since. The Pats lead the series 76-45-1. The Bills have lost more games to them than to any other NFL team.
Ah, but history is not destiny. These old rivals will meet Monday night with first place in the division at stake: High drama at Highmark Stadium.
Where else would you rather be?
And who else would you rather play?
