Ah, there’s nothing like old time football.

What do they say National Football League teams want to always do, at least back when football wasn’t some glorified track meet?

Run the ball, stop the run.

Your New England Patriots did both in Monday night’s 14-10 win in windy Orchard Park, and it certainly didn’t come as any surprise.

They’ve been doing it all year.

And that’s why they won – even though they threw the ball just three times.

That’s right, three times. Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who has done some unconventional things before but never this unconventional, proved once again he still has his coaching fastball and it could cut through an incredible blustery wind. New England outran the Bills 222-99.

Did quarterback Mac Jones even play? Yeah, he was the guy in the leather helmet, right?

“Just a crazy game to be a part of,” Jones said. “Just a weird day, but at the end of the day, you just get more points than the other team, and it’s a great day.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a game where we threw the ball three times,” Patriots center David Andrews said. “Maybe when I was six years old.”

That’s how they played long before Andrews was born. What did the late Nashua High football coach Ken Parady and other coaches always say, “When you throw the ball, three things can happen and two of them are bad.”

In last night’s incredible wind, from what could be seen on an often shaky TV screen, nearly three of them were bad.

Last night was an offensive lineman’s dream. The Patriots ran the ball 32 straight times at one point. If the Bills had tried that, the game wouldn’t have been as close as it was. As Patriots coach Bill Belichick said, “We felt confident in it so we just kept doing it.”

These are your Patriots. Run first, pass second, with backs like Damien Harris and Rhamondre Stevenson. This is the team we told you last March, and before the season began, that Bill Belichick wanted. A smashmouth team. The Patriots were pushed off the line of scrimmage too much a year ago, and a bit at the beginning of this season.

But not anymore. Not Monday night. The Bills have foolishly created a finesse team that just didn’t have enough push. When Bills QB Josh Allen had to try to win the game, he couldn’t, because the Patriots put too much pressure on him. They gambled and used an all-out blitz on Buffalo’s final chance in the red zone.

Now the tables have turned. No one would have thought, the way the first six weeks of the season went, that the Patriots (9-4) would be firmly entrenched atop the AFC East and the Bills would be 7-5 and not a sure bet to make the playoffs in the wild, whacky AFC.

And when they come to Foxborough on Dec. 26, they’ll be whacked in a game not this close. Bet on it.

Bills coach Sean McDermott made a mistake we think when he just kicked an extra point rather than going for a two-point conversion late in the first quarter. Two red zone possessions, coming up empty at the end, missing one field goal but they could have had a chance to tie the game at the end with another attempt had they attempted and succeeded in a two-point try early in the game.

But really, it seems like even Mother Nature is on New England’s side. Had this been a game in which Bills QB Josh Allen could sling it all over, who knows?

Block. Run. Block. Run. Tackle. Pressure. While the wind swirled all over, the Patriots had ground control.

And now they have control not only of the AFC East, but the AFC in general.

Yup, the winds are blowing their way.

Tom King may be reached at @Telegraph_TomK on twitter, or tking@nashuatelegraph.com

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