The Patriots enter Week 4 needing help in a lot of places, but one of the biggest pressure points is a name that doesn’t usually grab the spotlight: Charles Woods.
New England’s 1-2 start has been rough enough on its own, but the offense has made the path forward even tighter. The Patriots sit with the last-ranked offense in football, averaging the same number of points as the Miami Dolphins, a rebuilding team now without its only star. If New England is going to have any shot at beating the Bills early in the season the way it did last year, Drake Maye has to play much better than he has so far.
That’s been the problem. Maye has just one touchdown pass this season, the second-quarter score to Eli Raridon in Week 1, and he has already thrown six interceptions. For comparison, he threw eight picks across the entire 2025 regular season.
Even with the offense sputtering, the Patriots still have to deal with Josh Allen and the Bills, which puts even more strain on a defense dealing with injuries. Christian Barmore and Christian Gonzalez are both out Sunday, leaving New England to patch together answers across the lineup.
That’s where Woods comes in.
The Patriots were in a similar situation in their second matchup with Buffalo last season, when they were without Milton Williams and Robert Spillane. Allen, James Cook, and Dalton Kincaid powered a comeback win for the Bills that ended with 35 points on the board. At that point in the year, opponents were averaging just 18.5 points per game against New England, and only the Dolphins had scored more than 23 in Week 2.
This time, the challenge is different, but the math is the same: without Barmore and Gonzalez, the Patriots need depth players to hold up. Cory Durden and Gabe Jacas can help cover for Barmore in pieces, but Gonzalez’s absence is a much tougher hole to fill.
Woods doesn’t need to replace Gonzalez straight up. He just needs to keep Buffalo’s secondary targets from turning into a problem.
Carlton Davis is set to handle D.J. Moore, while Marcus Jones is expected to spend plenty of time on Khalil Shakir in the slot.
That leaves Woods with likely matchups against Joshua Palmer and Keon Coleman on the outside, with rookie Skyler Bell also a possibility.
Those names may not jump off the page, but that’s exactly how trouble starts. Once the third and fourth options get rolling, games can tilt fast. Coleman has already posted 50-plus receiving yards in a game seven times in his career, including Week 2, and the Bills average 34.1 points per game in those matchups.
There’s a reason the Patriots should take this seriously. In 2021, during the Mac Jones era, Buffalo put up 33 points in Foxborough, and Isaiah McKenzie ripped through the game with 11 catches on 12 targets for 125 yards and a touchdown. That outing made up 55% of McKenzie’s catches, 46% of his targets, 70% of his yards, and his only touchdown that season.
So while Maye has to steady the offense, Woods may end up being the defensive swing factor. He’s not being asked to be Christian Gonzalez.
He’s being asked to keep Palmer, Coleman, Bell, or even veteran Greg Dortch from sneaking into a game-changing role. Woods showed in the back half of 2025 that he can handle lower-level receivers, and Sunday may be another one of those days where New England needs him to do exactly that.
In Other News...
Patriots May Have Found A Needed Offensive Bright Spot Up Front
The Patriots 1-2 start has been defined by an offense that has struggled to generate much of anything, which makes any steady development up front worth noticing. One of the few encouraging signs came in Week 3 against Jacksonville, where Jared Wilson handled his work well and gave New England a cleaner look along the interior than it has often had through the first month.
Wilson has been working mainly at center this season, and the progress he has shown from earlier games is part of why his latest outing stood out. He did not allow a pressure or commit a penalty, and that was enough to land him on PFFs Team of the Week, a small but meaningful bright spot for a line trying to help stabilize an offense that badly needs it. [Read more 🡒]
Bills Let Another AFC East Game Slip Away For One Reason
The Patriots walked out of Buffalo with a 29-26 win in a game that had plenty of the usual AFC East friction, plus a few swings that kept it from feeling settled until the final stretch. New England got touchdowns from Romeo Doubs and Efton Chism III, while Buffalo answered with a Josh Allen strike to Keon Coleman, and the game had the kind of back-and-forth edge that has made these matchups so hard to separate in recent years.
What stood out, though, was how often the Bills were able to lean on James Cook on the ground and still never fully take control of the game. Buffalo also had chances fueled by multiple Drake Maye turnovers, but the Patriots kept finding enough offense and enough answers to leave the division rival still searching for what slipped away in another one-possession AFC East result. [Read more 🡒]
Patriots Bills Matchup Just Got More Complicated In The Secondary
The early weeks of the 2026 season have already tested New Englands depth, with A.J. Brown, Mike Onwenu, Christian Barmore and Christian Gonzalez all dealing with injuries. Now the Patriots are preparing for a divisional trip to Buffalo with another familiar layer of uncertainty in the secondary, even as the Bills are navigating some issues of their own on the back end.
Buffalo cornerback Christian Benford is unlikely to play, which adds another wrinkle to a matchup that already looked like it could turn on coverage and communication. For the Patriots, a game that might have been about establishing control in the AFC East now comes with more moving parts in the defensive backfields on both sides, and that could make Sunday feel a lot less predictable than it did a week ago. [Read more 🡒]