Sunderland get rare win as Defoe stun Palace
Perfect 10 as Patriots battle past Bills 20-13
Sunderland striker Jermain Defoe cashed in on a horrendous defensive mix-up FOXBOROUGH: Tom Brady called out Rex Ryan and then he beat the Bills - again. After shouting the name of the Buffalo coach as an audible, Brady led New England to a 20-13 victory over the Bills on Monday night and kept the defending Super Bowl champions on course for their second perfect regular season in nine years.
Brady completed 20 of 39 passes for 277 yards, hitting James White for a 20-yard score that was the first touchdown of the running back’s career. White added a 6-yard run in the third quarter to give New England (10-0) the lead for good.
Buffalo’s LeSean McCoy ran 20 times for 82 yards and a 27-yard touchdown and caught six passes for 41 yards to surpass 100 yards from scrimmage for the fourth straight game. The Bills (5-5) snapped a twogame winning streak and lost to Brady for the 25th time in 28 games.
The game was filled with mistakes, penalties, injuries and turnovers - including two fumbles on a single punt, a rare missed field goal by Stephen Gostkowski and an inadvertent whistle that led to one of many lengthy conferences among the officials.
And New England lost another key player: Danny Amendola, who took over as the Patriots’ No. 1 receiver because of last week’s injury to Julian Edelman, caught nine passes for 117 yards before leaving with a knee injury of his own in the third quarter. to give his struggling side a much-needed 10 win at Crystal Palace in the Premier League on Monday.
The team with the worst away record in the top flight pinched all three points at Selhurst Park to ruin Palace’s best start to a Premier League season thanks to former England forward Defoe’s persistence in the 80th minute. As Defoe tried to pounce on a loose ball, Scott Dann, trying to shield it, made a mess of his attempted clearance, poking the ball past indecisive keeper
With the wind chill temperature at 21 degrees at kickoff, both teams struggled on offense, and the Patriots even failed to score in the fourth - the first time they were shut out in a quarter since the first one of the season.
In the third quarter, both teams fumbled on the same punt. Leodis McKelvin fielded a punt at his own 30 yard-line and made it just 2 yards before the ball was knocked out by Brandon King. New England’s Jonathan Freeny picked up the ball and rumbled 5 yards before he lost the ball and it bounced out of bounds.
The Patriots took over at the Buffalo 30 and took a 20-10 lead on Gostkowski’s 35-yard field goal. Even the referees were sloppy. Early in the third, Brady rolled toward the right sideline before throwing downfield to Amendola. As the receiver broke for the end zone, the play was whistled dead - apparently because the official thought Brady stepped out of bounds.
After a lengthy discussion, the referee announced that there was an inadvertent whistle. The 14-yard reception counted, with a 15-yard penalty for interference from the Bills coaching staff. The drive ended with an even more unusual error: Gostkowski’s first miss in 51 weeks.
Brady threw a first-half interception that was nullified by offsetting penalties. But he did throw one at the Buffalo goal line in the fourth that stuck. Brady took a dig at Ryan in the Wayne Hennessy into the path of the Sunderland striker who muscled through to tap into an empty net. The three points enabled Sunderland to move up to 18th with nine points, ahead of Bournemouth on goal difference and four in front of bottom club Aston Villa. Palace lie 10th with 19. “He is a classy finisher,” Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce said of Defoe. “If you want someone to chase down what looks like a lost cause, it’s him. Defoe not giving up is why the goalkeeper and defender messed up.” first quarter by adding “Rex Ryan!” to his pre-snap signals.
The Bills coach has been a longtime rival of the Patriots. But the Patriots managed just a field goal in
“I got that little bit of luck that you need for the goal and I was just delighted,” Defoe added on Sky Sports. “The lads put in the work during the international break and it paid off.” Palace, for all their second half pressure, missed the chance of a win which would have moved them to sixth in the table and came nearest to breaking the deadlock fleetingly when Bakary Sako’s speculative left-foot strike flew just wide. Sunderland, though, under new manager Allardyce, deserved only their second league the first, then went scoreless for 22 minutes, 16 seconds before Brady led a 33-second touchdown drive to make it 10-3 with 13 seconds left in the half. — AP win of the season defending stoutly and being enterprising on the counter attack. They had earlier come closest to scoring when defender Younes Kaboul’s header from a corner was cleared off the line by Yohan Cabaye.
Allardyce added: “Defensively we were sound, rarely troubled in front of the opposition goal. We frustrated the crowd, we frustrated Palace and then we came out with a fantastic win, our first away win of the season.” — Reuters