Nancy Armour

USA TODAY Sports

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Anyone who’s listened to Rex Ryan for, oh, 30 seconds or so over the last eight years knows this win was big for him.

Maybe not big enough to change a tattoo. Or get a new one.

But big.

“God, it feels good to finally win here. Been close about six times,” Ryan said after his Buffalo Bills beat the Patriots 16-0, handing New England its first shutout since Dec. 10, 2006, and first ever at Gillette Stadium.

Added Ryan, who wore a Clemson hat to celebrate his son Seth's win against Louisville in a top-five clash on Saturday: “I can say this for sure, that was about as good a weekend as you can have.”

Ryan freely admits that the Patriots weren’t nearly as formidable without Tom Brady, who was serving the last of his four-game Deflategate suspension on Sunday. Nor were they as tough with rookie Jacoby Brissett as they would have been with Jimmy Garoppolo.

But he doesn’t much care. When Bill Belichick and the Patriots are your personal Moby Dick, you savor the win and let others nitpick the details.

“Feels pretty good right now,” Ryan said of whether the win was cheapened at all because Brady didn’t play.

Ryan has made no secret of his obsession with Belichick and the Patriots. Brash by birth – he is Buddy’s son, after all – he’s talked a whole other level of smack about his AFC East rivals since arriving at the New York Jets in 2009.

And it goes well beyond the “kissing rings” quote.

Ryan got the best of Belichick early on, upsetting the Patriots in his second game. His first two years in New York, in fact, Ryan and the Jets beat the Patriots three times in five games, including a win in the AFC playoffs.

Since then, however, not so much. Those struggles have only fueled Ryan’s fixation.

“Obviously coach doesn’t like the Patriots,” linebacker Zach Brown said, grinning broadly.

How many other coaches would hop on a conference call with an opposing receiver in hopes of gleaning some info, as Ryan did this week when Julian Edelman talked to Buffalo reporters?

Edelman, who could have been forced into emergency duty at quarterback with Garoppolo inactive and Brissett nursing a thumb injury, didn’t give anything away. But the Bills didn’t need it. Building on their solid win last weekend against Arizona, the Bills came out swinging against the Patriots.

Literally.

Safety Robert Blanton and New England receiver Malcolm Mitchell got in a shoving match during warm-ups after Blanton pushed Brissett as he was running down the sideline. Safety Aaron Williams appeared to shove a Patriots assistant as he tried to break up the scuffle.

“It’s part of the game,” Williams said. “A lot of alpha males on the field.”

Bills, Patriots clash in shoving match before game

That fiery attitude comes directly from Ryan, as Patriots president Jonathan Kraft pointed out. Not so kindly, I might add.

Ryan didn’t disagree. Didn’t apologize, either.

The NFL is often knocked as the No Fun League, and Belichick might as well be Exhibit A. He doesn’t waste words – watch his news conference after the game, you’ll see – and he sure isn’t going to spend the few he uses on trash talk.

Ryan is the polar opposite, wearing his emotions proudly and openly. This, remember, is the guy who got a tattoo of his wife in a Mark Sanchez jersey when he was hired by the Jets. And then had to change it after he was fired in New York.

He wants to win – badly – and that means going through the Patriots in the AFC East. So, yeah, this one meant a lot to him.

“Every week, you try to have a plan to put your players in a position where they can be successful and I’ve always tried to do that, time in and time out. Just a lot of times we came up short,” Ryan said. “Today it was great to be on the other side of it.”

And nothing, or no one, is going to spoil it for him.

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Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.

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