EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – The Buffalo Bills won. Yippee.
They beat the New York Jets, and while there are a few circumstances to make the Bills happy with a 23-20 victory at the Meadowlands, the Jets are awful and fired their head coach a week ago and still probably should have won Monday night.
The game was a dog’s breakfast.
The Bills offered an Alpo-grade performance, but they tried their darnedest to hack up their third straight defeat with uncharacteristic lapses in discipline and situational awareness. They gave up an inexcusable Hail Mary touchdown at the end of the first half. They committed an unconscionable number of penalties. Tyler Bass missed more kicks.
Jets kicker Greg Zuerlein clanged a pair of go-ahead field-goal attempts off the left upright in the final 16 minutes. Bass finally made one – barely – from 22 whole yards away with 3:43 to play.
Bills coach Sean McDermott called the win “gritty.” Much of the night could be described with another word that rhymes.
“A lot to clean up,” McDermott said, “and a short week to do it.”
Lindy Ruff, the head coach of owner Terry Pegula’s other team, said Saturday of winning for the first time since returning to the Buffalo Sabres that the moment was more “like a stress reliever” than cause for celebration. The Sabres desperately needed a victory, and so did the Bills, trying to avoid their first three-game losing skid in six years.
Bills quarterback Josh Allen still hasn’t lost three in a row as a starter. After last week’s disastrous display against the Houston Texans in which he completed nine of 30 throws, he went 19 of 25 for 215 yards and two touchdowns. Rookie tailback Ray Davis, in for injured Pro Bowler James Cook, helped work through the kinks with 97 rushing yards and 152 scrimmage yards, game-highs for any Buffalo player this year.
But one bounce in the other direction and Fireman Ed is strutting around the station today in a good mood.
For example, big-play receiver Mike Williams was wide open but slipped to the MetLife Stadium turf at Buffalo’s 18-yard line, letting nickelback Taron Johnson intercept Aaron Rodgers to seal the game with 1:52 to play. Perhaps Zuerlein would’ve missed a third field goal, but you could almost hear the Bills’ sideline exhale all the way in Orchard Park.
“It’s easy to review tape when you win,” Bills cornerback Rasul Douglas said. “When you lose, that’s when it’s hard.”
For the third straight week, the defense surrendered an absurdly long touchdown.
With 8 seconds left until halftime and the Jets on the Bills’ 48-yard line, McDermott and defensive coordinator Bobby Babich decided to attack Rodgers with only two defenders and guard the sidelines to prevent the Jets from getting out of bounds so Zuerlein could attempt a field goal on the last play.
Rodgers threw an arching spiral into the middle of the end zone, where receiver Allen Lazard leapt among Bills safeties Taylor Rapp and Damar Hamlin and Johnson for the 52-yard touchdown to pull the Jets within three points.
“At the end of the day, they executed better than we did,” McDermott said, declining to elaborate on his strategy. “We’ve got to go back and re-examine, making sure we’ve got the right number of rushers for that situation as well as the right number of cover guys.
The Bills didn’t yield a single touchdown over 50 yards last year, but they’ve surrendered one each of the past three games. Derrick Henry sprinted 87 yards on the Ravens’ first snap, followed last week by Texans receiver Nico Collins injuring his hamstring on a 67-yard touchdown strike from C.J. Stroud in the first quarter. At least Rodgers waited a little while to exploit Buffalo’s deference.
A couple years ago, I coined the phrase “derble derp” to describe the flipside intention to winning the coin toss and deferring. A double dip is when that team manages the clock and scores on the last possession before halftime, then receives the second-half kickoff and scores again.
So instead of scoring on consecutive drives, Buffalo allowed another embarrassing touchdown and Bass missed another field goal, this one wide left from 47 yards with 11:06 left in the third quarter. He now has converted only two of his five attempts between 40 and 49 yards. Bass also missed an extra point in the second quarter after the Bills drove 90 yards on 10 plays, concluding with Allen’s pinpoint dart to Mack Hollins from 8 yards out.
No NFL game this year featured more penalty yardage, with referee Adrian Hill’s crew calling 22 that were accepted for 204 yards. Both figures were the most in a Bills game since 2018. The Bills were docked 11 times for 94 yards, the Jets 11 times for 110 yards. Six more penalties were offset, while two were declined. That makes 30 flags.
“I’m not one to blame referees,” said Bills right tackle Spencer Brown, “but when they start interfering with the game and calls that can go either way, that heats up this side and then comes back and heats up the other side.
“It’s like we’re a bunch of wasps in a jar. We’re kind of calm, doing our own thing, but once you start shaking the jar, we all get pretty pissed off.”
McDermott counted six penalties against Buffalo before the snap or after the whistle. Brown was called for unnecessary roughness on a third-and-6 in the third quarter, offsetting a defensive pass interference call that would have moved the Bills about 30 yards downfield in a tie game. Instead, they punted.
“Those are non-negotiable,” McDermott said. “We don’t tolerate that stuff. We’ve got to do a better job in that category, for sure.”
Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins basked in the victory at his locker stall, donning sunglasses and a green jacket he made sure to tell reporters he wore to taunt the Jets some more. The Rahway, N.J., native has been trash-talking the Jets for months and took a costly penalty for taunting defensive tackle Quinnen Williams between the third and fourth quarters. The unsportsmanlike conduct put the Bills into a third-and-21 situation from their own 11-yard line and led to a punt.
But, as Douglas noted, mistakes are less stressful to digest when you win.
Rather than dwell on three straight losses and slip into second place behind the Jets in the AFC East standings (imagine that), the Bills remain unbeaten in the division and can rationalize they learned more about themselves Monday night than they knew through five games.
“Our No. 1 goal is to make the playoffs, and you do that by winning in your division,” Allen said. “So we understand the gravity of this type of game. Us being 4-2 with a two-and-a-half game lead with the head-to-head win, as opposed to being 3-3 and being second place.
“In the grand scheme of things, though, it was the next one, and that’s why it was the most important.”
(Top photo: Lucas Boland / Imagn Images)
