The New England Patriots defense started the season slowly, but has since developed into one of the stoutest units in football. Despite its recent success, however, it remains focused on one thing heading into a crucial Week 15 matchup with the Buffalo Bills: improvement.
With the AFC East on the line and the playoffs looming in the distance, all sights are set on additional improvement, as team captain Robert Spillane pointed out.
“We’re still at this point late in the year — a few wins under our belt, but at the same time, hungrier than ever,” Spillane, who will celebrate his 30th birthday on Sunday, said at his Gillette Stadium locker on Thursday. ”You look across this locker room, it’s almost like a sense that we have so much left in the tank. We have so much more to give. We we can play such better defense. We’re just striving to go out there and do that.”
The next opportunity for Spillane and company to do that is Sunday’s game against one of the top offenses in football.
Be it the aerial attack or their league-leading ground game, the Bills once again find themselves near the top of the league in several statistical categories. That includes the most important of them all: averaging 27.3 points per game, not including defensive or special teams scores, Buffalo’s offense ranks as the fifth-most productive in the NFL through 14 weeks.
A primary reason for that is — once again — perennial MVP candidate Josh Allen. While not in the conversation for the award thus far this season, Allen continues to play the quarterback position on as high a level as any QB in the league.
“He’s the MVP for a reason,” Spillane said. “He can do it all. He can extend plays, has the arm talent to get the ball anywhere over the field. He challenges your ability to plaster people late in downs. He could be a primary runner on quarterback-designed runs. He could really do it all.”
In order to counteract Allen’s Hall of Fame-level ability, the Patriots will be relying on what got them to this point in the first place: an identity they have been building since Mike Vrabel, and later Spillane himself, entered the building during the offseason.
“We’ve been working on that identity since Day 1 OTAs and it just continues to build,” Spillane said. “I’m proud of the guys that have really stayed the course and continue to believe in the basics, the fundamentals, doing what we do well.”
