Orchard Park, N.Y. -- For the first two weeks of the NFL season, all the talk around the Buffalo Bills was about how great their offence looked. How much in sync it was with Joe Brady as head coach and play-caller, and how it might just be unstoppable this season.
Then came the first quarter of Sunday afternoon’s home game against the Los Angeles Chargers. Buffalo eventually won 24-16, but things started far from smooth.
The Bills had won the toss and opted to take the ball first during their opener at the new Highmark Stadium 10 days earlier against Detroit, which is a no-no in the analytics world that dominates today’s NFL. So on Sunday when the Chargers won the toss and opted to defer, you could argue they were playing right into the hands of Brady’s desire to set the tone on offence early on.
Except that tone was off-key when James Cook fumbled the game’s first carry and the Chargers quickly went up 7-0 on a drive where Maxwell Hairston dropped an interception and Deone Walker missed a third-down tackle-for-loss that would have forced the Chargers to attempt a field goal.
A Josh Allen interception, a holding penalty and two more infractions for roughing the passer compounded things. The Bills looked like a team unprepared for the 1:00 p.m. kickoff, even though it was the Chargers who were playing when their body clocks said it was 10:00 a.m.
No wonder Allen called it “a dream” to get to the locker room at halftime tied 10-10 after the Bills managed to score late in the second quarter, leaving no time for the Chargers to enjoy a “double-dip” by scoring before the half and then accepting the opening kickoff of the third quarter. That’s especially key in game where you’re trailing in the turnover margin 3-0 after two quarters.
Los Angeles used nine minutes for its opening drive of the second half which is what you want to do when you’re a road underdog against a high-powered offence.
Except that coming away with a field goal meant that even when Buffalo turned the ball over on their first two possessions of the second half on two more fumbles – one by Allen and one by tight end Dalton Kincaid – the Bills still had a path to a comeback.
Not only did the Bills’ defence manage to keep them in the game while the offence was sputtering, they did so with a pair on spectacularly-timed plays.
The first came after the Bills’ second turnover after halftime — widening the turnover margin to 5-0 — with the Chargers driving towards trying to make it a two-score game from the Bills’ 28-yard line early in the fourth quarter.
Bills safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson said after the game he thought Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert was making a lot of “risky” throws and he managed to pick one of them off in front of the Bills’ goal line and return it to midfield.
Once the Bills took the lead 17-13, outside linebacker Greg Rousseau registered his second sack of the game, putting the Chargers in third-and-long which led to a turnover on downs from which Los Angeles never recovered.
Rousseau, a former first-round pick who has never had more than eight sacks in a season, now has six in three games (two in each), which is more than any player in team history through the first three games of the season.
As part of the Bills’ transition to a new scheme on defence, Rousseau has benefitted from going from a 4-3 defensive end in a three-point stance to a standup outside linebacker with eyes in the backfield, providing what has been a longtime missing pressure element for the Buffalo defence.
Speaking of pressure, Allen saw lots of it on Sunday, as he was sacked four times and hit or moved off his spot repeatedly.
In just his third NFL game as head coach, Brady said afterward that he didn’t fret or raise his temper at halftime. Instead, he saw it as a way to learn how his team would respond to mistakes and see whether it could win a game when the offence was off-key.
“Let’s see what we’re about,” he said.
And he got the answer he wanted despite being unsatisfied with much of what took place on the field over the course of the game, including taking 10 penalties for 88 yards.
This NFL season has provided lots of surprises from week-to-week, full of upsets and teams that look very different from one game to the next.
Sunday it was the Bills’ turn for that, with an offence that looked nothing like the one that had run up 76 points on Houston and Detroit and a defence that stiffened considerably from the first two weeks.
It all added up to the imperfect Bills being one of just five 3-0 teams across the league as of Sunday night.
In Buffalo’s case, they are just the 10th team since the merger to open 3-0 against opponents that were all better than .500 a year ago.
Another awaits next week.
But with a limping New England Patriots team coming to town, it’s a perfect opportunity for Buffalo to get some things right and exact a little revenge on the team that a year ago got to the Super Bow, a place this edition of the Bills haven’t yet been.
And Brady can head into that game knowing his team is capable of winning football games more than one way.
