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Patriots continue march toward perfection with rout of Bills

Nov 19, 2007 - 6:27 AM By Dave Whalen PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

ORCHARD PARK, New York (Ticker) -- The New England Patriots continued their dominance of the Buffalo Bills on Sunday, rolling to a 56-10 victory.

The Patriots have won nine straight in the series, but none of those previous victories were as impressive as this one.

New England scored on its first six possessions, four of those scored being touchdown passes from Tom Brady to Randy Moss.

It didn't take the Patriots long to jump out on the Bills. On the fourth play of the game, cornerback Randall Gay intercepted a J.P. Losman pass and returned it 21 yards.

Bills right tackle Langston Walker received a 13 yard penalty for hitting Gay out of bounds, and New England started the drive from the Bills' 13. Two plays later Laurence Maroney ran it in from six yards out to give the Pats the early 7-0 lead.

After forcing the Bills to go three and out, New England needed only six plays to pad the lead to 14-0. Brady hit Moss from 43 yards out, giving Moss his 13th TD reception of the year, a team record for a season.

The Bills responded with a big play of their own as Losman hit Roscoe Parrish for a 47 yard TD pass, cutting the lead to 14-7 with 4:26 left in the first quarter.

Brady and Moss again connected, this time from 16 yards on the first play of the second quarter.

On their next possession, the tandem again lit up the scoreboard, this time from six yards, giving New England a 28-7 lead with 6:33 left in the first half. That gave Brady 183 career TD passes, passing Steve Grogan as the team's all-time leader in that category.

"I try to throw it to the open guy", Brady said. "If (Moss) is the open guy then he gets it. I thought we spread it around pretty good tonight. They have to account for everybody. I know the play, I know the protection, I know the routes we got called and I try to go to the guy who I think is going to be most open." They weren't done as Moss made a pretty catch to the right of the end zone with just 10 seconds left in the half. Moss' fourth TD reception gave him a team record for most in a game and the Patriots led 35-7 at the half

"I don't consider myself as selfish", Moss said. "Tommy has always said he's going to the open receiver but sometimes the coach does call plays for individuals. The whole offense executed and it started with the offensive line. They gave Tommy some time to throw and we had to catch the ball."

Brady's first half numbers were 22-of-28 for 287 yards and a QB rating of 149.0, while Moss had eight catches for 112 yards and four touchdowns. New England continued the deluge, going for it on 4th-and-1 from the Buffalo 3. Brady found Ben Watson in the right corner of the end zone. Kyle Eckel added a TD run and corner Ellis Hobbs returned a fumble for a TD to cap the scoring.

"I thought the team was ready to go early", Coach Bill Belichek said. "We had to get on top, get off to a good start. Offensively of course we scored on those possessions and threw the ball pretty well. We put our defense in a good spot, turnovers helped as well there. We had pretty solid play all the way around."

The Bills suffered their worse loss in team history, surpassing a 43-0 defeat to the Baltimore Colts on October 10, 1971.

"We have to put it behind us to move on", Bills S Donte Whitner said. "We play Jacksonville next week. We're 5-5 right now. We have an opportunity to go up to Jacksonville and win a football game, now that's our focus. We're going to put this game behind us. We're going to go in and watch this game tomorrow, it's going to be painful."