The other guys

The Patriots go to Buffalo to play as important an early season division game as you can get. A loss and the Bills will go to 3-1 and the Pats will fall to 1-3. There's a lot of football left to play, but there's a lot on the line in this one.

The Buffalo Bills are the other guys in the AFC East. The Patriots have had a heated rivalry with the hated Jets and the arrogant Dolphins for decades. No matter how good or bad those two franchises are in any given season it's always sweet to beat them. The Bills? ... eh. Even when Buffalo was dominating the NFL in the early '90s (except in the Super Bowl) there wasn't much anti-Buffalo sentiment in New England.

Why? Because the Bills' fans have been as long-suffering as Pats' fans were before Bill Belichick and Tom Brady arrived. And unlike the always annoying Jets or always cocky Dolphins, the Bills are always classy. As are their fans. And that's saying something with all the heartbreak they have endured. I worked with a diehard Bills fan for many years. She would proudly wear her white jersey with the big blue buffalo in the center as her team lost Super Bowl after crushing Super Bowl.

When I was a kid the Bills were O.J. Simpson. He would come into Foxborough and run for what seemed like 300 yards every game. But even with one of the greatest running backs of all time the Bills were never really a contender. It wasn't until Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas, and the rest of one of the best teams ever to play in the NFL was assembled in the '90s. The K-Gun offense. Marv Levy telling war stories. A ferocious defense. The Bills dominated the AFC and went to four straight Super Bowls. It was an amazing feat. And I was rooting for them each time. They lost the first one to the Giants on the famous "wide right" last second kick and each loss got progressively worse. Never has so good a team left their fans with so sour a taste.

The Bills haven't been a contender since. They've had a few good seasons but seem to always find a way to lose. There was the "Music City Miracle" where they lost on a crazy kick return lateral on the last play of the game. There was even the game in 2001 where they took the Patriots to overtime only to lose when David Patten's fumble was ruled not a fumble because his unconscious head was touching the sideline when he dropped the ball.

Then they got Lawyer Milloy and Drew Bledsoe from the Pats and beat them 31-0 on opening day in 2003 and thought they were going to make another run at a Super Bowl only to see the Patriots return the 31-0 favor in the last week of the season on their way to their second of three Super Bowls. The Pats would go on to dominate the Bills for a decade. The Patriots have won 21 out of the last 23 games against the team from western New York. The Bills have managed to find lots of ways to lose to the Pats. Here's hoping they find another way today.