Henderson and Campbell Are Out, and the Team That Was 14-3 Is Unrecognizable
The version of New England that went 14-3 last season was built on a specific structural promise: Drake Maye protected, a ground game that could punish you, and enough offensive flexibility to win ugly when necessary. TreVeyon Henderson rushing for 987 yards and nine touchdowns was not decoration — it was load-bearing. Will Campbell anchoring the offensive tackle depth was not a luxury — it was the frame around everything else. Both are now compromised heading into Buffalo, and the cumulative weight of what this team has lost over the past few weeks is becoming genuinely difficult to overstate.
I wrote two weeks ago that Stevenson going down turned Henderson's backup plan into the whole plan. That calculus has now collapsed entirely. With Henderson's ankle and Campbell's knee both in question, New England is being asked to run an offense against one of the AFC's better defenses with its backfield and its offensive line simultaneously undermined. The depth chart at running back lists Corey Kiner at the top of the current rotation, with Henderson slipping to second. That is not a depth chart built to sustain a ground game against a defense that will be hunting for it.
The offensive line situation is equally uncomfortable. Campbell is listed as questionable, which in practice means New England cannot count on him. Dametrious Crownover sits atop the tackle depth chart, with Caleb Lomu as the fallback behind Campbell. The guard room has already been reshuffled — Jake Kubas stepped into a starting role after the Van Roten injury weeks ago, and that instability hasn't resolved itself. Maye is active, which matters enormously, but an offensive line that keeps shifting around him is an invitation for pressure, and pressure on Maye against Buffalo is not a theoretical concern.
What makes this particularly sharp is the context the numbers provide about last season's close-game record. New England went 7-3 in one-score games in 2025 — a 70% win rate that already trailed their overall winning percentage. That underperformance in tight, high-leverage moments was a quiet warning even when the roster was whole. Now the roster isn't whole. The secondary is depleted, as I laid out on Saturday. The backfield is depleted. The offensive line is uncertain. The margin for error in a close game against Buffalo has essentially vanished, and this team has already shown it doesn't always find a way in those moments even when fully equipped.
The 14-3 record was real. The dominance was real — nine wins in the final ten regular-season games, a point differential that held up across the full season. But that version of this team existed with its pieces intact. What's walking into this Buffalo game is something different: a franchise that built its identity on offensive execution and is now asking a patchwork line to protect a quarterback while a backup running back carries the ground game. The gap between who the Patriots were and who they are right now is the story, and it's wider than any single injury report suggests.