FOXBORO -- The day after, there was accountability.

Twenty-four hours after a second-half meltdown paved the way for a Bills 34--31 win over the Patriots, several defensive players who wandered through the home locker room at Gillette Stadium on Monday afternoon didn’t sugarcoat things when it came to talking about their part in a loss that ended New England’s 15-game win streak over Buffalo.

“The game came down to us on the defensive side of the ball, and we just didn’t make the plays that were needed to win the game,” linebacker Jerod Mayo said Monday. “Plays were being made on both sides of the ball. Buffalo just made more.”

Of course, you can’t pin the defeat on just the defense. Quarterback Tom Brady threw as many picks Sunday against the Bills (four) as he did all last season, and Buffalo took advantage, turning those turnovers into 24 points.

“They did a better of job executing some plays than we did defending them,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said of the Bills. “We made some plays. They made some. In the end they made more than we did. We’ve just got to do a better job of coaching and playing.”

The New England offense -- which had been operating at peak efficiency over the first two games -- had a solid afternoon for the first two quarters, but Brady’s picks (three of which came in the second half, and two of which came inside the Buffalo 25-yard line) were absolute killers.

On the other side of the ball, when they were asked to lift things in the wake of some rare errors from Brady, the defense could not make a play with the game on the line. Late in the fourth quarter with the game tied at 31, Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick put together an eight-play, 70-yard drive to win it, with the biggest connection on that drive came when, on a Patriots blitz, Fitzpatrick hit Jackson with a quick slant the running back turned into a 38-yard pickup. On the play, Jackson raced past several Patriots’ defenders, including safety Josh Barrett, before getting hauled down at New England’s one-yard-line. Six plays later, Rian Lindell booted the 28-yard game-winner for Buffalo.

In the locker room on Monday, Barrett issued a mea culpa, saying he should have brought down Jackson. Barrett had a shot at Jackson after he caught the ball -- at the Patriots 32-yard line or so -- but he appeared to slip on the turf as the running back, raced past him.

“Obviously, that last play to set up that field goal was a play where I should have been there to make the tackle,” Barrett said. “I didn’t, and it goes across the board. We’ve got to do a better job defensively as a unit when we need it to make sure that we win games (when) in the position that we were in.”

One of the things the Bills were able to do on Sunday -- similar to what the Dolphins and Chargers were able to do over the course of the first two weeks against the Patriots -- was create difficult matchups for the New England defense by using all their offensive options. That includes the running backs, which have managed to do very well against the Patriots on the ground (275 rushing yards) and in the air. In three games, New England has yielded 30 catches for 271 yards and two touchdowns to running backs in the passing game.

On Sunday, Buffalo’s Fred Jackson ended up with 161 yards (74 rushing yards, 87 receiving yards) from scrimmage.

“I would say that overall, I didn’t think that was a big problem in terms of just our matchups. I think we just need to play a little better technique,” Belichick said. “We’ve just have to do a little better. I’m not saying there aren’t some scheme adjustments we can make, but on the plays that happened, I don’t have a lot of second thoughts on that.”

The question now is how quickly the Patriots can put this game behind them. They will travel to Oakland this week to face a Raiders team that just surprised the Jets, 34-24, and has a running back in Darren McFadden who had 171 rushing yards and two touchdowns in the win over New York.

“I think it’s good for us to get in and watch this,” Mayo said when asked about the film of the loss to Buffalo. “We have a short-term memory, whether it’s a win or a loss. We’re on to the next one.”

“We want to be a resilient group of guys. To lose a game in that type of fashion, you definitely can’t wait to put the pads on again next Sunday. But it’s definitely going to be a long, hard week of practice. We’ll be up for the challenge,” said cornerback Kyle Arrington. “(We’re) extremely confident. We wouldn’t be here if the coaches weren’t confident in us.”