By Mary Paoletti
CSNNE.com
Add Buffalo to the list of Tom Brady's NFL casualties.
"I haven't seen anybody slow them down offensively," Bills coach Chan Gailey said of the Patriots last week. "They're just like a machine out there. It's been quite a show.''
After New England beat Buffalo 34-3 on Sunday, you almost had to wonder if Gailey felt like shrugging about the points allowed. Did he believe his Bills would be the team to shut Brady down? Probably not. The Patriots quarterback is having another MVP-caliber season.
On Sunday, Brady threw three touchdown passes and set the record for attempts without an interception.
Gaily was aware of the tally before the Patriots rolled into Buffalo. "It's very amazing," he said of Bradys streak.
Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick -- who, by comparison, went 18-for-37 with three picks and zero touchdowns -- was equally awed.
New England Patriots
"It's unbelievable,'' he said. "It's mind-boggling."
Hear that, Terrell Suggs?
Brady now has 319 straight passes without a pick, surpassing Bernie Kosar's previous mark of 308. And he's doing it in one season.
Kosar made his mark in Cleveland from 1990-91 and Bart Starr tallied 294 pickless pass attempts in Green Bay from 1964-65. Brady's thrown his total in a span of nine NFL weeks.
"The work he puts into it is second to none,'' teammate Logan Mankins said after the game. "He's a competitor and he just wants to get better and he just wants to win. You can tell that with how he prepares."
That's why it's not strange that the Bills sounded like they wanted to carry him into Ralph Wilson Stadium on a litter. Touting the talents of TB12 isn't about kissing butt or exchanging pleasantries, it's about numbers.
The Patriots scored 21 points off seven Bills turnovers.
Brady has thrown two or more TD passes with no interceptions in eight consecutive games, an NFL record.
New England scored 24 (or more) first-half points for the third time in four games, and the fourth time this year.
With 31 points against Buffalo, the Patriots have scored 30 or more points in seven straight games. This streak is the NFL's longest since 1970.
The Patriots have committed zero turnovers in those seven games, an NFL record.
The landscape has changed. There's no Corey Dillion, no more Brady-to-Moss, no Kevin Faulk on third down, and this Sunday there was hardly any Welker.
Wes Welker -- "Brady's Binky" as some call him -- had as many dropped balls as he did receptions against the Bills. He lost his grip on a short second-and-six screen pass the first time. The second, Brady looked short left but Welker bobbled the ball at the Buffalo 11 when crossing the middle on third-and-six and killed the drive. He had another in the third quarter.
And so Brady's quarterback rating dipped this weekend. That's right, he no longer leads the NFL with a 109.9 score. He now leads it at 109.8.
No matter. New England got it done in different ways.
Rookie tight end Rob Gronkowski had a big day, catching two of Brady's three touchdown passes on the day. The second score, on a beautiful back-shoulder grab, was Gronkowski's ninth TD of the season, tying Ben Coates (1996) for most TDs by a Patriots TE in franchise history. (Yes, another record for one of Brady's boys.) Fellow TE Alge Crumpler had the other touchdown.
The ground game was gaudy: 217 rush yards largely gained from former free agents BenJarvus Green Ellis (104) and Danny Woodhead (93). Even there, Brady's teammates saw his fingerprints all over the ball
"Days like today when he's handing off a lot, he's making the right checks and all that, so . . . there's more to quarterback than just throwing," Mankins said.
The yardage might have been a gimmie against Buffalo's 32nd-ranked rush defense, but consider this: Brady and his offense are 7-2 against top 10 scoring defenses (fewest points allowed) this season. The Patriots are averaging 29.6 points per game when playing the league's stingiest defenses when the rest of the NFL is averaging 16.7 points.
"I don't think as a lineman we have any comprehension,'' center Dan Koppen said. "I know it's a tough job, what he has to do, how many reads he has to make and get the ball out. What he does to this point in his career is nothing shocking."
Imagine creating a standard so high that setting records is pedestrian. It's not that nobody's impressed as each throw carves Brady's name higher into the All-Time QB totem pole. It's that they've come to expect their quarterback to play at a Hall of Fame level every week.
"He's definitely what you expect, I mean what everyone says,'' Danny Woodhead said. "He does everything well and he pays the attention to detail that he has to. He's a great quarterback, like everyone's seen."
Would New England be 13-2 if Brady wasn't near-perfect? Think about that.
Would this offense have blood-lust if he wasn't screaming about penalties though padded with a 30-point lead? Would the 2010 Patriots have clinched the division and home-field advantage in the playoffs if Brady wasn't its nucleus? If he wasn't so boringly brilliant?
"It never gets old, I'll tell you that,'' the quarterback smiled postgame. "We never get tired of winning.''
Good thing. With the way he's playing, the Patriots aren't done winning yet.
Tom E. Curran contributed to this report.
Mary Paoletti can be reached at mpaoletti@comcastsportsnet.com. Follow Mary on Twitter at http:twitter.comMary_Paoletti