ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Confident after the Buffalo Bills' convincing win Sunday over the Indianapolis Colts, coach Rex Ryan turned his focus Monday to the Bills’ next opponent, the New England Patriots, saying his staff has long been preparing for the game.
“Shoot, I’ll go home early [this week],” Ryan said. “I’m ain’t [not] gonna be ready. That plan’s been ready for a long time.”
Ryan called Bill Belichick a “Hall of Fame coach” and Tom Brady “a Hall of Fame quarterback” and called on Bills fans to replicate the crowd-noise problems that Colts quarterback Andrew Luck faced in Sunday’s 27-14 win for the Bills.
“I can’t wait to see what our fans are going to be like when you have the hated Patriots -- I mean, this kind of rival -- coming into our stadium,” Ryan said. “I don’t think our fans need any more prompting. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m just so glad that we play the game here. So that’s gonna be fun.”
Brady has a 23-3 career record against the Bills but praised their crowd in a radio interview Monday on WEEI in Boston.
“I know we've had a pretty good record over the years against them, but it's always tight games and certainly playing in Buffalo, it's a very, very loud stadium,” he said. “It's an old stadium, but it's surprisingly very, very loud. It's a great environment for football and we'll be tested. There's no doubt they have a real good football team."
Ryan has a long history of tweaking the Patriots and Brady. As the New York Jets' coach, Ryan went 4-9 against the Patriots, including a playoff win at Gillette Stadium in January 2011.
“I don’t know if a whole lot has changed,” Ryan said. “The fact that they’re kind of the hunted in my eyes, because they’re the world champions. So they obviously won our division every single year that I’ve been here. So obviously they’re the ones that you want to knock off. That probably hasn’t changed a whole lot.”