Patriots wide receiver A.J. Brown’s ankle injury is expected to keep him out for an extended period of time.
According to multiple reports, an MRI on Thursday confirmed that Brown suffered a high-ankle sprain when he was injured during Wednesday night’s 13-10 loss to the Seahawks. Those reports also say that Brown is expected to miss at least four weeks while he recovers from the injury. That time frame would make him a candidate for injured reserve, but there’s no word on the team’s plans at this point.
The Patriots face a run of 2025 playoff teams during the first weeks of Brown’s expected absence. They host the Steelers in Week 2 before traveling to Jacksonville and Buffalo for their next two games.
Navigating that stretch without Brown will be tougher and it’s not an ideal start to the wideout’s tenure with the team. Drake Maye is coming off a three-interception fourth quarter in Seattle on Wednesday that also featured a crucial drop by Romeo Doubs. Doubs was the most prominent addition to the receiving corps for most of the offseason and the team will need him to thrive in a prominent role to get the offense on track without Brown.
A perusal of the many published predictions for the 2026 season finds a lot of support for the Bills and Texans as two of the strongest teams in the AFC.
One of them is likely to exit Week 1 with an 0-1 record, however. The two teams will meet in Houston on Sunday afternoon in a matchup that Texans defensive end Will Anderson believes will be a preview of one of the games that both teams hope to be playing in come January.
“This is an AFC Championship matchup,” Anderson said in a Wednesday press conference. “Two really good teams. We have a ton of respect for them. Josh Allen leading the way, really great offensive line. James Cook, best running back in the league. . . . The type of atmosphere that I’m feeling like it’s gonna be on Sunday is gonna be that AFC Championship-type feel.”
The Texans pass rush got the best of Allen and the Bills last November. Anderson had 2.5 sacks in that game and the Texans will be looking for something similar as they try to get an early leg up in the race for the actual AFC Championship Game.
The Buffalo Bills will be opening their new home with a special welcome to their neighbors from the north.
Yes, near the shores of Lake Ontario, an American football team will play the Canadian national anthem before kickoff of a game.
The Bills have announced that both anthems will be played prior to the start of next Thursday night’s showdown with the Lions. It comes at a time when tensions are high between the respectve governments over trade issues, but when the citizens of the two countries have little or no real animosity between them.
Canada has been our next-door neighbor for a very long time. And most Americans are wired to act neighborly. In this specific instance, the Bills are making a very neighborly gesture.
Still,it’s just a matter of time before someone who once wanted to buy the Bills has something to say about this. In all caps. Perhaps with a dash of AI slop. Before thanking us for our attention to this matter.
The Bills fired coach Sean McDermott two days after an overtime loss to the Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs. That’s not stopping McDermott from rooting for his former team — or from believing that they can get farther in the first year after his exit than McDermott took them in nine seasons on the job.
“With what they’ve done, the moves that Brandon Beane has made, and the activity they’ve had on the roster, just so over the last, you know, ‘X’ amount of months has, I think, been very important,” McDermott told Rich Eisen on Friday. “And so I think, if you’re betting on the Super Bowl contender, they’re certainly one of them. I don’t see why, you know, why you wouldn’t bet on them? Because the games, at the end of the day, have to be played, right? It’s one thing on paper, but it’s another thing to play the gams.”
Eisen asked whether this means McDermott envisions a Rams-Bills Super Bowl, which would be a rematch of their Week 5 Monday night showdown.
“It';; be Bills-Rams,” McDermott said. “It’d be a great Super Bowl. Those Rams. Listen, people ask me all the time, ‘Hey, do you still root for your old team?’ And I said, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Right? Of course I do. I mean, the impact that you want to have as a head coach on a team and a community, that’s one thing. But, man oh man, the impact that that team, that building, and that community had on me and my family, we’ll remember that for the rest of our lives, Rich, and that’s part of sports, right? The wins and the losses are important, but it’s, like, the impact you leave, or that is left on people and the fan base and them on you, and that’s the real part of sports.”
In the NFL, the real part of the game is that plenty of coaches are shown the door, after every season. McDermott was one of 10 who left, voluntarily or otherwise, after the 2025 season. And he’s clearly hoping that, after the 2026 season, he’ll have a chance to fill one of the inevitable vacancies to come.
Which means that his freedom to root for the Bills and only the Bills may be short-lived. Come 2027, McDermott could be coaching another team in the AFC — and possibly another team in the AFC East, if there’s eventually an opening with the Jets.
Carl Spackler is having his day.
With the Bills ripping up the grass at their new stadium after only two preseason games and installing a new one for the regular-season home opener, various grass experts have sounded off. Tim Graham of The Athletic has collected and published their comments.
The legendary George Toma said this as to the failed field: “That hurts me. That’s terrible to happen at all, but so soon? Somebody fell asleep.”
Another “award-winning sports agronomist” with extensive experience installing pro and college surfaces, but who requested anonymity for apparent fear of Big Sod, said that it was “the worst sod I’ve seen in the NFL in my career. I can’t even imagine how that could have happened.”
Added Tony Dick, sports management professor at Baldwin Wallace University and former Cleveland Browns assistant head groundskeeper: "[N]atural turf is safer in a perfect setting. But if you have the situation like you have in Buffalo — and I went back and watched the film — you cannot tell me that field was safer than the artificial turf they just left. . . . I’m never putting Josh Allen on a field in that condition.”
The Bills had this to say about the issue, via Graham: “We have consulted with the NFL and an independent expert who works with multiple NFL teams. These consultants recommended utilizing this three-week window before the home opener to install the sod. The NFL inspects every field and determines whether it meets league standards. We are confident that they are the appropriate group to ensure the field performs at the necessary level.”
Still, the unnamed agronomist is skeptical. “They will have a difficult time,” he said. “There’s so much going wrong, and there’s so little time. If that field makes it through the second game, I’ll be shocked.”
Professor Dick offered a prediction: “You might have artificial turf back in there within three years, just because it’s safer than whatever that was.”
The first test of Sod 2.0 is only 13 days away. That’s when the Bills host the Lions, the first of three Buffalo games in three weekends.
