Bills -7 vs Patriots: Week 4 preview and best bet
Buffalo is 3-0 and has allowed 78 points. New England is 1-2 and has scored 36. Those two figures explain this spread better than any film study does.
The Bills' three wins: 36-31 at Houston, 41-31 over Detroit, 24-16 over the Chargers. That's a plus-23 differential, and only the Chargers afternoon looked controlled. Buffalo hasn't won a game this season by making the defensive side of it boring, which is why a 48.5 total is not the reach it looks like.
New England's three: a 10-13 loss at Seattle, a 20-3 win over Pittsburgh, a 6-35 loss at Jacksonville. Minus-15. The Steelers win is the outlier and the Jaguars loss is the ugliest single result on either side of this matchup.
The market: Bills -7, total 48.5, moneyline Buffalo -310 / New England +250 (odds via ESPN, captured Monday, Sept. 28). Seven is the top of the range I'll lay in a divisional game, and I'm laying it anyway. Familiarity is a genuine drag on favorites, since the dog has seen the fronts and the coverages twice a year. It gets overrated when the talent gap is this wide, and this one is wide.
Highmark Stadium, Week 4, Oct. 4, 1 p.m. local. The matchup that decides it is New England's offense against a Buffalo defense that has given up 78 points. One side of that equation is a problem the Bills have lived with all season. The other is a problem the Patriots may not be able to solve at all.
New England has not topped 20 points in a game. Our projection asks for 21, which is the honest flag on our own card: the call requires the Patriots to do something they have not done in 2026. Their 36 points through three weeks aren't a slump so much as a ceiling. The 6-35 afternoon in Jacksonville is the version of this offense that gets Buffalo a comfortable cover.
If New England plays the way it did against Pittsburgh, it hangs around, both bets land, and the over gets there on the back of a Patriots offense that finally showed a pulse. If it plays like it did in Seattle or Jacksonville, the Bills cover and the total dies with it.
That asymmetry is why the side is the better play than the total. Buffalo's number doesn't depend on New England showing up. The over does.
The call: Buffalo Bills -7, over 48.5, New England Patriots 21, Buffalo Bills 28. The one thing most likely to break it is a Patriots offense that has scored 36 points in three games and now needs 21 in an afternoon. I'm laying the seven anyway.
