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FOXBORO — Bill Belichick now has 100 victories as a head coach in the National Football League, and he doesn’t rank them in order of importance.

Sunday’s is not likely to be one of his favorites, however.

Struggling both offensively and defensively in the first half, the Patriots needed a pair of big defensive plays — and perhaps some halftime soul-searching — to overcome a 17-7 deficit and emerge victorious in their 2006 opener, 19-17 over the Buffalo Bills at Gillette Stadium.

After all, no one is going to sing psalms of praise to a game that starts with your quarterback almost having his right arm separated from his body, the ball squirting loose and being picked up and run in for an opposing touchdown.

"I’m sure," Belichick said, "that last night, when all of us players and coaches sat around thinking about how this game could go — the scenarios, situations that could come up, what plays need to be made at the key times — I don’t think anybody envisioned it going the way it did. "But that’s Opening Day," he added. "And I was proud of the team for the way they hung in there and fought back from the 10-point halftime deficit."

Indeed, more than 68,000 hearts skipped a beat when Bills’ linebacker Takeo Spikes blasted through the Patriots’ offensive line, ravaged Tom Brady from behind, sent the ball spiraling off toward the right sideline and into perfect position for London Fletcher-Baker to pick it up and waltz the remaining 5 yards for the lead after just 12 seconds of play.

"It was a heck of a way to start off the season, the first play of the game," Fletcher-Baker said. "We work on that drill a lot in training camp and also in practice."

So how do you respond to a sudden, 12-second nightmare in which your golden-boy quarterback nearly meets his maker?

You get back to basics.

That’s exactly what the Patriots did, driving 80 yards in nine plays to tie the score on Brady’s 9-yard pass to Troy Brown with 10:43 left. The drive featured the unveiling of rookie Laurence Maroney (17 carries, 86 yards), who carried twice for 49 yards and displayed an array of electrifying moves to get the Patriots downfield in a hurry. Corey Dillon (16 carries, 73 yards) also contributed a 16-yard gain on a screen pass during the march.

That probably should have been a sign that the defending divisional champions were on their way to a prohibitive victory, despite the hiccup at the start. But they struggled mightily in the first half to execute their offense, and in trying to stop J.P. Losman (15-23, 164 yards) and the Bills’ offense from moving the ball with relative ease.

The Bills mounted a 17-7 lead, and were about to make it 24-7, when situational linebacker Don Davis pulled down Willis McGahee for no gain on a fourth-and-1 carry at the New England 7 with 9:24 left in the third quarter.

"When we get down there, the main thing we want to do is stop the run," said Davis, primarily used on special teams. "So I’ve got to give all the credit to the defensive line, they kept everybody off and all I had to do was make the tackle."

"Fourth down, they went for it, we stuck them, and it felt great," added nose tackle Vince Wilfork. "Ever since then, the fans got into it, we got into it ... right then and there, it was, like, ‘we’ve got to play ball now."’ Rarely do individual plays have such a pivotal impact upon a pro game, but the Patriots took their cue from Davis’ big play and scored the next 12 points to earn victory — fittingly, the winning points coming when Ty Warren dropped Losman in the end zone for a safety-registering sack with 8:33 left in the game. The victory ended the long march of the franchise toward the all-time .500 level, evening their record since 1960 at 356-356-9.

" In this league, big plays will move you on week by week," Wilfork said. "Basically, it came down to a safety. This week we had a huge play with the two points — it gave us the edge."

After the Patriots tied the score at 7-7, the Bills proved they weren’t terribly awed by the championship banners hanging in the end zone. They posted a 53-yard field goal by Rian Lindell with 4:20 left, ending a drive in which Losman survived two fumbles and connected twice for 34 yards with Josh Reed to get them into scoring range.

The lead blossomed to 17-7 with 11:40 left in the half on Anthony Thomas’ 18-yard run through a cleared-out left-tackle lane. That closed an eight-play, 73-yard march in which Losman completed three passes to his backs (20 yards to McGahee, 14 and 2 yards to Thomas), and the Bills’ offensive line kept putting the Patriots’ front back on its heels.

The Patriots’ offense continued to sputter on the next possession, and after two straight incompletions by Brady that forced a punt from their own 44 with 9:06 left in the half, the first hint of boos could be heard from the restless Gillette faithful.

And when the Patriots opted to run out the clock on a final possession that started with 56 seconds left, the smattering of boos became a much more emphatic chorus.

"I don’t blame them," said Brady, who completed just 11 of 23 passes for 163 yards, and only four passes to actual wide receivers. "I don’t think we gave them much reason to cheer. They want to see us do some things offensively, put the ball in the end zone, and we turned the ball over. We can’t complete a pass, and I would be booing up there, too, if I was them."

That all changed, however, when Davis pulled down McGahee. The wave of momentum that passed through the Patriots was tangible and forceful.

They drove 93 yards in 12 plays to trail 17-14 with 2:52 left in the third quarter after Brady found a diving Kevin Faulk in the right corner of the end zone with a 17-yard pass. The big play of the possession was a 34-yard pass over the middle to Benjamin Watson, and Troy Brown contributed a key 9-yarder along the sideline.

Maroney did the bulk of the running in the Patriots’ game-tying drive, carrying seven times for 25 yards to maneuver his team into position for Stephen Gostkowski’s first career field goal, a 32-yarder with 9:33 left. Watson (11 yards) and Reche Caldwell (27 yards past double coverage) made the big catches in the drive, but Brady threw behind an open Daniel Graham in the end zone on the play immediately preceding Gostkowski’s field goal.

Trapped deep in their own territory after the field goal, the Bills reverted to their true form.

Losman threw an incompletion under heavy rush on the first play, Junior Seau (eight tackles) dropped McGahee for a yard loss to the Buffalo 8, and then after Tully Banta-Cain blasted through to send Losman running away in his own end zone, Warren registered the sack that put the Patriots in front.

"You would like to get rid of the ball in that situation if you can," Losman said. "But the game is on the line and you’re trying to make a play. I felt that there was only one rusher that I could get away from, which I did, and then I didn’t see the other guy."

The game almost turned on its axis on the first play after the free kick, as Brady was intercepted by Donte Whitner at the Buffalo 44 on a pass intended for Watson. But an illegal-block penalty negated the runback, another blocking penalty wiped out a 10-yard pass to Peerless Price, and Richard Seymour’s sack of Losman at the 46 ended the threat.

Buffalo never mounted another.

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com