New Route, Same Result

New quarterback, new coach, new general manager, new wide receiver, new approaches on both sides of the ball, even new jerseys (ditching the mystifying lapel-type collar that marred what are otherwise the sharpest duds in the NFL).

And yet, all that newness added up to an awfully familiar ending.

New England 23, Buffalo 21.

Let's be honest. It could have been a lot worse.

Thirteen penalties, 10 enforced, some stalling Buffalo drives and others extending New England's.

Two lost fumbles, leading directly to the Patriots' two touchdowns.

C.J. Spiller, frequently underutilized by the Chain Gailey administration, got 22 touches the first time out in Doug Marrone's system, which produced only 55 total yards.

And still, the Bills led their longtime tormentors by two points when New England got the ball at its own 34 with 4:31 remaining.

Then, as you would expect, Tom Brady completed seven straight very short passes in guiding New England to a Stephen Gostkowski field goal that felt as inevitable as winter.

And, judging from the wailing of some callers to the post-game radio show and the gnashing of teeth dotting my Facebook feed, it was a simple case of of new faces in a new system, but the same old Bills.

Except it wasn't.

Over the previous 12 years of New England's mastery of Buffalo, when the Bills managed to make one of their biennial beatings reasonably close (and even when the Bills actually beat the AFC East tyrants in 2011 and way back in '03), there has always been a fluky feel to the proceedings. Lucky bounces, combined with uncharacteristic lapses by the Patriots, deluded the locals into thinking the gap had closed, or was at least shrinking.

Then the Bills would go out and get splattered by mere mortals a couple times, disproving those illusions of competence.

Yes, Stevan Ridley fell down and fumbled without being touched in the second quarter Sunday, presenting Buffalo safety DaNorris Searcy with the opportunity to get the Bills back into the game with a 74-yard fumble return.

Once there, though, these Bills played like they belonged.

With E.J. Manuel looking very much like a first-round draft choice, the offense capitalized on the short field provided by Justin Rogers' interception of a Brady pass (that, to be fair, bounced off the hands of rookie tight end Zach Sudfeld) in the final minute of the first half, cutting New England's lead to three points.

Manuel hit on two nice throws, the second to fellow rookie Robert Woods, on that drive. He led an even more impressive one to start the second half, capped by a perfectly touched pass to Stevie Johnson in the left corner of the end zone to take the lead in a game that about an hour earlier looked ready to go very badly, very quickly.

While the defense never found a way to keep Danny Amendola and Julian Edelman, Brady's only two remaining viable receivers, from moving the chains with short receptions, it didn't yield a touchdown in the second half.

Instead of sitting back and waiting to get shredded, in keeping with the philosophy of recent defensive coordinators, the Bills generated pressure on Brady, finishing with seven hurries and two sacks.

Rookie linebacker Kiko Alonso was all over the field, getting in on nine tackles and recovering Brady's fourth-down goal-line fumble in the third quarter.

At safety, where the Bills were short-handed due to Jairus Byrd's bout with plantar fasciitis, the replacements held up pretty well. Besides his touchdown, Searcy finished with eight tackles, including a sack. And Jim Leonhard, who re-signed with Buffalo (where he played from 2005 to '07 before spending the next six bouncing from Baltimore to the New York Jets to Denver) just six days earlier, made nine solo stops.

At corner, Leodis McKelvin didn't do as badly as feared with Stephon Gilmore out, getting credit for four passes defensed and taking part in six tackles.

The most heartening part of the loss was Manuel's performance. He showed nice touch on both touchdown throws, an element long missing from Buffalo's passing game. He was patient, using his feet to create additional time to throw more often than to flee the pocket. Most significantly, he did not look overwhelmed by the speed of the game or the complexity of New England's defense.

Buffalo's upcoming schedule is hardly murderous. After hosting the Panthers and visiting the Jets, both of whom looked less impressive than the Bills in falling to Seattle and edging Tampa Bay, respectively, the defending Super Bowl champions come to town.

Normally, Baltimore would come in as a heavy favorite, but the Ravens may take a while to recover from what Peyton Manning did to them in the NFL opener last Thursday. Apparently, they do miss Ray Lewis and Ed Reed at least a little. I mean, Lewis -- whose new job description on ESPN involves making his fellow former-player panelists seem relatively coherent -- would have stood by while a couple of his friends took care of Manning, then agreed to testify against them, then taken a dive on the stand before he'd endure the humiliation of watching seven touchdown passes sail over his head!

Then it's at Cleveland, home against Cincinnati and on to Miami.

Of course, bad teams lose close games, too. The good ones figure it out, eventually.

Not to draw any absurdly premature comparisons, but Buffalo lost four of its first five after Jim Kelly arrived from the USFL, all by six points or less, with seven of the 12 losses in that 1986 season coming in one-possession games.

Before anyone starts thinking about these new Bills winning a bunch of games in a row, though, they have to show they can do it once.