FOXBOROUGH n It is perhaps the No. 1 cliché not just in football, but in any sport ruled by the clock.?You have to play 60 minutes,” according to established wisdom.The good teams practice what they preach, though. And even though the nucleus of players from those great New England Patriots teams keeps dwindling as age and contract demands catch up to it, as long as the Patriots still have Tom Brady, you can pretty much be sure that you?ll get 60 minutes of football from them.It would have been easy to walk away from the game with 5:32 left last night, with the Buffalo Bills up, 24-13, and conclude that the Patriots just didn?t have it. Brady was rusty. The defense was reeling from the loss of linebacker Jerod Mayo n the second year in a row a key player in the scheme of things was lost early in the season?s opener (there?s no word on how serious Mayo?s knee injury is). And it looked as if what was left out there on the field out there on defense just couldn?t stop Trent Edwards and the Buffalo offense.But if you thought that ? you were mistaken. Down by 11 with over 5:00 to go, with three timeouts plus the two-minute warning? Bah. The Patriots have seen this before ? and conquered.?We are coached in situational football, and go over it every day,” said veteran running back Kevin Faulk. “Pretty much every scenario coach Belichick brought up and went over came up during a game or in training camp.”A word about the defense. Mayo is the defensive captain ? the caller of signals ? and the vortex through which the other 10 players funnel the play. Losing him was a major blow. Yet, again, the Patriots preach that when something like that happens, everybody else has to step it up and get with it.?You just have to step up,” said Pierre Woods, who was in on the game-changing play just before the two-minute warning, stripping the ball from Buffalo?s Leodis McKelvin on the kickoff after the first of Brady?s two late fourth quarter passes to Benjamin Watson. “Everyone has to play. No mistakes. Correct your mistakes. If you make a mistake, hopefully you can come back and make a big play. That?s what happened, and we came out with a win.”?You just try to go out there and win the game for him,” said linebacker Adalius Thomas. “It?s on your mind, but that?s a part of the game.”It may have taken the Patriots three quarters and part of a fourth to figure it out, but in the end, they did. And they?ve done it before.?Going back to ?01, we were down by 10 against Oakland (in the famous “tuck rule” playoff game), down by 10 or 11, I think, to San Diego (in the 2007 AFC semifinal) n similar, middle of the fourth quarter, down by a couple of scores, and we were able to come back and win those games,” coach Bill Belichick said. “This kind of reminded me of that ? that?s not exactly the way you draw them up, but we?ll take the results.”Of course, after the Patriots recovered that fumble, you?d have to have lived in Mars for the last six or seven years not to know what was going to happen next. And sure enough, bing, bang, boom ? Brady found Watson for TD No. 2 n a 16-yard thing of beauty that the veteran tight end n who?s been under fire periodically for his lackluster play at times n caught at the back of the end zone with defenders draped all over him.?That might his best catch ever,” said Brady. “I hope there are more of them.”It remains to be seen what happens from hereon out. Despite the comeback win, losing Mayo for any period of time is bound to hurt. The defense going into this game wasn?t considered the team?s strong suit, and with Tedy Bruschi retired and Richard Seymour now playing for Oakland, big things have been expected from Mayo.Late in the game, Meriweather began to wonder when the team would start playing like he thought it was capable of playing ? “like we do going against each other every day, play like we play in practice.”He found out. And so did the Buffalo Bills.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.