01:00 AM EDT on Friday, October 1, 2004

FOXBORO -- The biggest game of the Patriots' season will be played Sunday at Buffalo.

The Pats are 2-0, the defending NFL champions, and winners of two of the last three Super Bowls. The Bills are 0-2 and have scored just one touchdown in each of their first two games.

But Sunday's game looms large for Bill Belichick's boys.

And you think you know why, don't you?

It does, after all, seem as obvious as the fact that Tom Brady is better than Drew Bledsoe.

This, you likely would say, is the biggest game of the season for the Patriots because, by beating the Bills, they would tie the NFL record for consecutive victories -- 18, including playoff games.

Wrong, pigskin breath.

It's the biggest game of the Patriots' season because it's the game the Patriots are playing this week.

Just like their game at winless and woeful Arizona two weeks ago was the biggest game of the season for the Patriots. And just like next week's game against at-least-as-woeful and just-as-winless Miami will become the biggest game of the season for the Patriots.

"What matters to me," Belichick said, "is where we are this week and what we can do this week. We're playing one game (this week). The ones that we have played don't matter. The ones down the road, that will all take care of itself in due time. There's nothing we can do about any of those right now.

"The only thing we can do is prepare for Buffalo and try to go out and win a division game on the road. It's our first division game and, to get anything done as a team, you're going to have to deal with the teams in your division. This is the first one, and it's on the road. It doesn't really get any bigger than than this for us."

There you have it, straight from the coach's mouth: It doesn't get any bigger than Buffalo.

The Patriots have a chance to make history this weekend, but that doesn't interest Belichick, who's only interested in making it back to the Super Bowl.

There is just one section of the NFL record book that matters to him -- the one that lists Super Bowl winners; not the one that lists the record for winners of most consecutive games.

"Our goals this year," he said, "are about what our team can accomplish this year. It doesn't have anything to do with what happened last year, or what the Bears did in 1932, or whatever year it was. What difference does it make?

"You know what?" Belichick continued, answering his own question. "It isn't going to make any difference."

It would be at least a little different if we were talking about 18 consecutive wins in the same season, which would break the record of 17 set in 1972, when Don Shula's Miami Dolphins ran the table, going unfeated and untied.

"This isn't history," Belichick said this week of his Patriots' current flirtation with the record book. "It's a different year. We're talking about (games played) last season. This is a different year.

"This year, we've won two games, and we're going to have a hard time winning the third. Going on the road in Buffalo is going to be tough. Nobody knows that better than we do.

"We got a lesson on that last year. The last time we went to Buffalo, we got beat, 31-0."

That was in the first game of the 2003 season. The Patriots avenged that loss in the final game of last season by reversing the score on the Bills, beating them, 31-0, in Foxboro.

The Patriots haven't lost a game in more than a year -- since Week Four, at Washington. But what happened last year is no more relevant to Belichick than the national debt of Sri Lanka.

He's not interested in games played last year. Or last week, for that matter.

Coaches always say they want their players to focus on one game at a time. And players always insist they're not looking ahead. Nor, they say, do they look back at what they've done, or what might have been.

In most cases, such statements are just lip service, a meaningless variety of sports psycho-babble. For the coaches, it's usually wishful thinking. For the players, it's baloney.

But not in the case of the Patriots, who have bought into the Belichick approach, take it seriously, truly believe in it, and make it work so successfully.

"Last year is over," said The Coach. "I think we've talked enough about that. Right now, a streak of one division win would be what I'm looking for -- one division win."

For a fleeting moment, however, Belichick did allow himself one quick look backward.

When is the last time, he was asked, you were on a team that had a winning streak like this one?

"At Andover," he said with a slight smile, recalling his prep school days. "I think we were 8-0."

Ancient history, apparently, is an acceptable subject.