Orchard Park, N.Y. — Bill Belichick spent several minutes during Saturday night’s Wild Card playoff game animatedly bending a referee’s ear on the sideline at Highmark Stadium.
But after a historic loss to the Buffalo Bills, the New England Patriots coach didn’t have much more to say.
“I want to congratulate Buffalo on the win tonight,” Belichick said during brief post-game comments. “We just couldn’t keep up. [They] certainly deserved to win.”
Belichick said the Bills were well coached and the team executed.
“We just couldn’t do much of anything,” he added. “So we’ll just pick up the pieces, go back to work here and find a way to be more competitive.”
What about Josh Allen’s performance?
“I said, we couldn’t keep up.”
The Patriots coach was characteristically mum after the bruising 47-17 loss to the Bills that ended his team’s season. The game wasn’t even as close as the final scores suggests.
The Patriots’ defense had no answer for Josh Allen and the Bills offense, which never left the field without a touchdown. The team made history in the win.
The Patriots scored just three points in the first half, on the way to a deficit from which the team would never recover.
Patriots’ Quarterback Mac Jones threw for two touchdowns (one of them in garbage time) and two interceptions en route to a 63% completion rate for 232 yards.
Jones, a rookie, said lots of “little things” went wrong Saturday.
“I know that I’m a rookie and whatever but I could have done a better job of just holding everybody to that standard, myself included,” Jones said. “I think it’s just the little things show up in the game, like tonight just the little things for everybody, myself included, that’s something I’ll learn from.”
The Bills advance to the divisional playoff round next weekend against either the Cincinnati Bengals or the Kansas City Chiefs.
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