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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - So, it all comes down to this.

"It's a one-game season," Patriots' coach Bill Belichick said Friday. And for once, it wasn't that middle-of-the-season nonsense that he cooks up to remind his team to maintain its focus on just the next opponent ahead.

This time, he speaks the plain truth.

It's a one-and-done situation for the Patriots, possibly even if they defeat the Buffalo Bills today at Ralph Wilson Stadium (1 p.m.; Ch. 4, 12). Lose, and there's no way they can avoid missing the playoffs for the first time since 2002. Win, and they're still alive, although barely so, needing the intervention of the New York Jets or Jacksonville Jaguars to prevent them from becoming the first 11-5 team not to participate in the postseason.

As much as Belichick might prefer to minimize the stakes and his team's awareness of them, he admitted Friday that it just wasn't possible. This week, he said, is different. "Nobody can clinch anything in the second week of the season," he said. "I don't care what your record is. Or in the fourth week of the season. The last three or four weeks, I think we have been in the same situation. I do think it is a little bit different."

Perhaps it will be a little easier for the Patriots to take if they play well today, beat the Bills, finish 11-5 in spite of a horrific onslaught of injuries that stripped them of most of their best players, and are left out of the playoffs because of factors that they couldn't control.

Or perhaps it will be unbearable to have gotten to this point, within a whisker of the playoffs despite all they have been through, and to be shut out. Certainly, the Patriots are familiar with high levels of disappointment. Nothing may ever match going 18-0 last year and then losing to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII to rob them of sports immortality.

Life is easier on Dick Jauron, the coach of the Bills. It's been a long while since "playoffs" was spoken in Orchard Park, so at least his team has known its fate for some time.

But being out and being in definitely create different emotions, he said.

"It's always disappointing in our business when you don't get into the playoffs," Jauron said Wednesday via conference call. "That's what you're aiming for. It's what everybody wants but there is nothing you can do to change it. Certainly it's a disappointment.

"I said all year our guys have done a nice job of working at it in practice, working in games and keeping their attitude going no matter what," he added. "When we were getting the bounces when it started - and let's face it, we won a number of very close games to start it off - and then we've lost a number of very close games as we've gone on through the season. You have to accept both sides of it because that's who we are, but sure, it's disappointing."

His Bills, however, haven't mailed it in. Last Sunday they went to Denver and fell behind 13-0 to a team that just needed to finish the job to win the AFC West and earn the No. 4 seed in the playoffs. The Bills came back to win, 30-23, and now the Broncos are at risk of surrendering the division title and playoff berth to San Diego today in a head-to-head meeting.

"It was a tremendous win for us because things had not been going very well at all," said Jauron, whose Bills had lost three straight prior to the Denver game. "To go out there and beat a pretty good team that could have sealed a playoff spot ... they were very into it and it certainly didn't start well for us, so give our guys a lot of credit. They just kept battling and hung in there and made enough plays in the end to win the football game."

Belichick always seems to want to make each opponent sound like the reincarnation of the 1972 Dolphins, but there is genuine reason for concern today. The Bills have a decent running attack (even though Marshawn Lynch was listed as questionable on Friday with a shoulder injury), they have excellent special teams and are ranked fourth in the NFL in red-zone defense, they are the second-least-penalized team in the league (the Patriots are No. 1) and they have the added incentive of wanting to avenge 10 straight losses to the Patriots and keep them out of the playoffs in the process. "They are a mentally and physically tough team, well disciplined," Belichick said. "They are good in all three phases of the game, not just one thing. It's a collective toughness and collective intensity that they play with and they play a smart football game - penalties and situation football.

"Last week against Denver is a good example of when they had a couple red area stops at the end of the game to win for them," he added. "They have done that all the way through the year. Like all of us, they've had plays that I'm sure they would've liked to have back, but when I'm watching them play I see a smart, tough, disciplined football team."

Jauron, meanwhile, knows his team will have its hands full with a motivated, purpose-driven team led by the quarterback who only needed a chance to prove what he could do, Matt Cassel.

"I'm very, very impressed with the way he's played the game," Jauron said. "Clearly it's been an advantage to him also to be in the system, to be with Tom (Brady) and to watch how it's done. To study it, to look at it, to help in it, all the things that quarterbacks do and they've had time to bring him along and he's viewed success. All he's ever seen there is success. Everybody fits right into it.

"He's done an outstanding job and he's clearly a very good athlete on top of all of that. You have to take your hat off to him," he said.

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com. Read Farinella's blog, "Blogging Fearlessly," at thesunchronicle.com/farinella.