I mean, they are absolutely trying to send a message, I think, to the whole NFL, and here it is again.

Wayfenglaw blind-open touchdown on Big Bantini, the offensive lineman, Tommy Doyle, brings him a one-yard touchdown, it's 46 to 10.

Thursday edition of Pro Football Talk Live, week 13 is upon us. Chris Sims will be joining momentarily from his home.

He was ill yesterday. Miles Simmons pitched in. Chris is well enough to do the show, but apparently not well enough to jump into his very expensive Tesla and drive to the studio.

He's doing it from his house. I showed up at my usual time a minute or two before air, and we learned that Chris couldn't hear me.

It's kind of hard to have a conversation with Chris when he can't hear me the moment he can hear me. You will see and hear from Chris who looks pretty good, at least as good as he possibly can, despite the fact that he was sick yesterday, but he's fine, and we're fine, everything is fine.

So is PFT Live, presented by Google Pixel, learn more at Google store.com, hello to our audience watching and listening, both presumably on peacock listening on serious XM 85 can't watch it that way.

Sky Sports NFL are good friends in the UK and Ireland and also anyone listening via podcast, however you get your podcasts, I'm getting emails from all these people who get their end of your report on Spotify, and we're in their top five.

Some guy has 17,000 plus minutes of listening to PFT Live this year, which on one hand, I guess it makes me feel good on the other hand.

Maybe want to expand your horizons just a little bit, 17,000 minutes, I don't know that I could handle listening to this show for 17,000 minutes, I can barely handle doing it for the 17,000 minutes, or however many it is that we do it two hours a day, five days a week, hashtag no days off, except of course.

When we take a day off, the Patriots defense took a day off last season in the wildcard round and really it was two straight games against the bills, the vaunted Patriots defense, and I'm going to get into the discussion of tonight's game while we wait for Chris, and hopefully Chris will be with us soon, hopefully they iron it out and he can hear me because I heard him fine, it's got to be frustrating for him, and I know.

Well, he always handled the technical challenges of this job that come up from time to time so well, never gets irritated, never gets frustrated, probably hears me saying this and it's soothing to him, it just makes him feel like he's slipping into a nice warm bath as he waits to hear me so we can get him involved in the program, but the last two times the Patriots and the bills met.

We're disasters for the England defense, and you rewind to early December of 2021 that Monday night game where it was very windy and Bill Bellicech rope adoped bills coach Sean McDermott into run the ball punt, run the ball punt very late in the game when the cause was as a practical matter to lost for the bills, they realized, oh wait, Josh Allen can still throw through the wind and the bills tried to pull it off when they got together later that year in Foxboro for the regular season.

And then back in Buffalo for the post season, the bills didn't punt once and Bill Bellicech got a little discombobulated earlier this week when he was asked about it on WEI's Greg Hill show, he said, well, we put him in punt formation once, but they ran a fake punt, well, that didn't happen in any of the 2021 games, that happened back in 2020.

In one of the games there where they had a fake punt, there wasn't even a fake punt, there wasn't a punt formation, the punt team was never on the field in either of those two games where the Patriots and bills got together last year after the Patriots won round one and think back to the vibe in the aftermath of that Monday night game.

I remember we did the show the Tuesday morning and the sense was emerging that these Patriots may be back on track in year two post hashtag Tommy that they could emerge as a super bowl contender that they could make a deep run into the post season now between then and the wildcard round.

Not so much.

4717 was the final chapter of the New England book last year and it created the impression that they failed again and look anybody who doesn't win the Super Bowl technically fails, but the Patriots were better than the last of what we saw of them.

We're still trying to figure out where they are and who they are right now on defense, hey, they had stifled a couple of teams held the Colts to three points and got the coach fired, held the Jets to three points.

And got the quarterback benched gave up 33 to the Vikings last Thursday night and we do have Chris, here he is without further ado, yo, yo, yo, thank you, how was that five minutes for you, very calming and peaceful, I'm sure, yeah, nothing better than, you know, like stuck it up, not feeling good and trying to do the show and get up for nothing.

And nothing works at first, but we got it. So I was calm, Mike, I really was, I am still hearing myself in my ear, everyone, if we could fix that, but at least I see you, I hear you, that's good.

The old mixed minus, there's nothing like hearing your own voice on a half second delay and I, I had no worries for powering through it. Oh, it's absolutely the worst. The first time it ever happened, I ripped the IFB out of my ear because you can't think straight, you hear yourself.

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