Picked-up pieces while waiting for Patriots-Bills kickoff . . .
⋅ They are the Mike Vrabel-Drake Maye Patriots now, and Sunday at Gillette Stadium they have a chance to clinch their first AFC East championship.
Not so long ago — when we watched the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady Patriots, winning the division was something that happened here annually — like February Fenway Truck Day, the Pops on the Fourth, and Allston Christmas on Labor Day Weekend. From 2001-19, the Patriots won the AFC East 17 times in 19 seasons.
That all ended when Brady left. Belichick lost his way, and the Patriots wandered aimlessly across the NFL landscape. Five long years came and went with no division titles and no playoff victories.
Now it is the holiday season and we have this unexpected gift of the 2025 Patriots. A franchise that won four games in each of the last two seasons comes into this weekend with the best record in the NFL (tied with the Broncos), 10 straight victories, and a chance to win the AFC East Sunday.
There is great symbolism and symmetry in the presence of Josh Allen and the Bills at Gillette. Buffalo replaced New England atop the AFC East in 2020 and has finished first every year since. With a win, the Patriots have a chance to say, “Thanks for filling in, guys. We’ve got it from here.”
“It’s really important to do it here,” Maye said Wednesday. “We’ve got a chance to face them head to head. I mean, there’s no better way to win the division than with the team that’s fighting to crawl back and keep themselves as division champs.”
The Patriots beat the Bills, 23-20, at Highmark Stadium on “Sunday Night Football” in early October. They haven’t swept a season series against the Bills since . . . Brady played here.
It’s not going to be easy. The Bills came into this season with legit Super Bowl aspirations and, despite recent struggles, righted their teetering ship last Sunday with a dramatic comeback against the Bengals, and come to Foxborough with a 9-4 record. They are road favorites and represent a rare departure from the chorus line of Tomato Cans featured on New England’s hideous, gift-from-the-gods, 2025 schedule. Seriously, folks. The Patriots’ lineup of layups looks amazingly like the first half of the 2026 NFL Draft. It’s been the Bills, Panthers, Steelers, Buccaneers, and Bums Are Us.
This is another reason Sunday’s matchup is so good, so good, so good. It’s a chance to see the Patriots against a bona fide contender. And there really haven’t been any games like that, other than the first game against the Bills. Patriots opponents this season are 65-117, and only four of them are over .500, with Buffalo the only one better than 7-6.
The soft schedule won’t matter if New England wins Sunday. The Patriots will be division champs and on to the playoffs.
⋅ Quiz: 1. Name four Patriots with more than 70 career sacks; 2. Name five players to hit more than 300 3-pointers in a season.
⋅ Bres-Lowball update: Simply stupefying that any Red Sox fan still buys what the team is selling. The Red Sox are about cost control, payroll flexibility, one-year contracts, and the illusion of contention in a watered-down playoff framework that now includes 12 of 30 big league teams. The Kings of Interest are unchanged since 2019. Operating in the black annually is paramount and the team does this very well. Remember baseball’s Gashouse Gang from a million years ago? The post-2018 Red Sox are the Gaslight Gang.
⋅ That Contemporary Baseball Era Oversight Committee, represented by seven actual Hall of Famers, delivered what looks like the knockout blow to the Cooperstown candidacies of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds last weekend. Clemens and Bonds each got fewer than 5 of 16 votes, and both are now out of contention until at least 2031, with the possibility of permanent ineligibility if they fail to hit the five-vote bar at that time. The message is clear: Folks generally scorn the BBWAA for rejecting steroid guys, but it turns out that Hall of Famers feel even more strongly than the writers. They seem to really care about the dreaded character clause. This doesn’t bode well for Pete Rose down the road.
⋅ Meanwhile, Cooperstown folk should think about fan apathy/backlash in the wake of last weekend’s vote. The BBWAA’s ballot is most likely to add Carlos Beltrán and maybe Andruw Jones to next summer’s class, but a stage with Jeff Kent, Beltran, and Jones lacks wattage.
⋅ Who’d have believed the Jayson Tatum-less Celtics would have the third-best record in the Eastern Conference as we approach mid-December? Architect Brad Stevens doesn’t get enough credit around here.
⋅ Another reason to despise the NBA: Imagine folks who bought tickets in advance for the Lakers’ only appearance in Boston during the 2025-26 season last Friday. Maybe they were thinking they’d see LeBron James’s last-ever game in Boston, or the newly trim Luka Doncic. Or even old friend Marcus Smart. Tickets cost a fortune. When game day rolled around it was learned that none of the three would play against the Celtics at the Garden. Not even Sam Kennedy would dare defend this.
⋅ Happy to learn that AI recognizes “Full Rochie.” According to the search app, “ ’Full Rochie’ is slang, most commonly used in sports, meaning boundless optimism or hope, especially for a team that is not playing well. It can also refer to a person named Rochie who is a source of illumination and warmth, or the Romanian word for dress . . . ”
⋅ I was tempted to put my head in the oven after reading Alex Speier’s excellent analysis explaining the proliferation of big league pitchers now throwing 100 miles per hour. Then I learned this in the Herald: “[Johan] Oviedo ranked in the 98th MLB percentile in Breaking Run Value in ’23. The minus-5.2 vertical drop on his fastball, however, ranked ninth-worst in baseball . . . ” Done with that, I came across The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey’s Sunday New York Times piece headlined, “How the Red Sox Overhauled Their Pitching-Development Program,” reporting that Craig Breslow in the last two years drafted 29 pitchers with 41 picks and that 22 of them were 6 feet 3 inches or taller. That wouldn’t leave much room for a young Tom Seaver, Pedro Martinez . . . or Craig Breslow.
⋅ The Chiefs haven’t missed the playoffs since 2014. But they are 6-7 and still have to play the Chargers and Broncos (plus layups against the Titans and Raiders).
⋅ The vaunted New York Post recently ranked the 25 worst debacles in New York sports in this century. Boston was all over New York’s Hall of Pain. The Red Sox’ comeback from 0-3 in the 2004 ALCS was ranked New York’s No. 1 sports disgrace, immediately followed by Belichick’s rejection of the Jets in 2000, and the Jets’ “Buttfumble” against the Patriots in 2012.
⋅ Robert Parish recently posted his top seven all-time NBA centers on X. The list: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Shaquille O’Neal, Nikola Jokic. In another post, the Chief listed his top five teammates: Dennis Johnson, Cedric Maxwell, Bill Walton, Reggie Lewis, Sonny Parker.
⋅ Michael Cooper, the great Laker defender always in Larry Bird’s face during the 1980s Boston-LA hoop wars, has a book out: “Coop — The Making of a Showtime Lakers Legend,” with Jake Uitti. Turn to Chapter 9, titled, “I Hate the Color Green,” where you’ll find plenty about the 1984 Finals, when the Celtics bullied the Lakers and won in seven despite having a lesser team. Cooper targets “legendary jerk, team president Red Auerbach,” and flashes back about the final seconds of Game 7 at the Old Garden, when Boston fans stormed the court as the clock wound down. Cooper says that in the following season, the Lakers ended practice with, “Keep those [expletives] off the floor.” Mission accomplished. LA won the 1985 Finals in Game 6 at the Garden, the professional highlight in the careers of Pat Riley, Abdul-Jabbar, and Magic Johnson.
⋅ Rick Fox does it all. The former Auerbach draft pick played six seasons with the Celtics, won three NBA championships in seven seasons with the Lakers, then starred on the silver screen, most recently in Denzel Washington and Spike Lee’s latest, “Highest 2 Lowest.” Now Fox is running for a legislative seat in next year’s general election in the Bahamas.
⋅ Brockton’s AJ Dybantsa, projected as the No. 1 pick in next year’s NBA Draft, had a great night for BYU at Madison Square Garden Tuesday, scoring 28 points with nine rebounds and six assists in a Jimmy V Classic win over Clemson.
⋅ UConn women 102, DePaul 35. Way to go, Geno. Oddly comforting that some things in life don’t change.
⋅ The Gordie Howe International Bridge — connecting Detroit with Windsor, Ontario — is scheduled to open in 2026. It promises to be a rugged, humble bridge that’ll last forever.
⋅ Quiz answers: 1. Andre Tippett (100), Julius Adams (80.5), Willie McGinest (78), Tony McGee (77); 2. Stephen Curry (six times), James Harden, Anthony Edwards, Malik Beasley, Klay Thompson.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him @dan_shaughnessy.