In what a lot of outsiders would say was the Game of the Year, the Bills 33-30 lost in overtime to the Vikings. There’s a lot more to it than that, but it was a rough morning and a brutal football week in general.
I’m sure Minnesota fans are flying high and, in all honesty, they deserve to. Bills Mafia likely doesn’t share the opinion on the whole GOTY thing but that’s because this was the second week in a row that the Bills blew a double-digit lead and the third week in a row that they were unable to score a touchdown in the second half.
When I look back at my thoughts following the Green Bay game, my biggest concern was that the win would overshadow some of the glaring mistakes and I was worried they were getting too comfortable with bad habits. I equated it to a good lesson about not playing with your food. Now, here we are, two weeks down the road and the same things that happened in the GB game happened in Week 9 vs the Jets and in Week 10 vs the Vikes.
The Bills jumped out to double-digit leads in all of the games but allowed their opponents to hang around thanks to poor decision-making, play-calling, and situational awareness that all resulted in turnovers. This is the third straight game where Josh Allen has thrown 2 interceptions and what’s more alarming is that he has thrown nearly identical interceptions in the red zone in each of the last three games. All three of the plays I’m talking about have seen Allen under pressure, rolling to his right, and he simply isn’t reading the coverage and keeping track of the underneath defender. These aren’t tipped passes or freak occurrences, he’s just not seeing it and my worry over forming bad habits has come home to roost. His interception in overtime was a little different, but I’ll get to that.
Minnesota struck first, to none other than Justin Jefferson who is spectacular, but the Bills responded well. After the quick 3 & out to start the game, offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey had the Bills offense rolling nicely with a nice mix of the ground game passing attack. Through the first half, Buffalo was up 24-10 on the strength of two rushing touchdowns from Devin Singletary, a passing TD from Allen to Gabriel Davis, and a Tyler Bass field goal.
I always preach balance and Buffalo’s 15 rushing plays and 21 passing plays in the first half were right in my 40/60 Goldilocks zone. They managed to have a two-touchdown lead even with Motor’s fumble sandwiched between the Bass FG and the Davis TD. However, even though the Vikings didn’t score off the fumble and Motor was playing well, Dorsey basically abandoned the run at that moment and it would cost them dearly.
The Bills were winning by two scores, at home, and they even end up getting a turnover on a Kirk Cousins interception to start the second half. So, they even regained the possession advantage. Buffalo was in an excellent position to put the game out of reach.
Things didn’t go so well. The ensuing drive started with a holding call on Spencer Brown (one of two he picked up) and forced the Bills to battle back to a 3rd & 1. Now, the Bills’ short-yardage issues are no secret, it’s something I have been watching since the Titans game, and trying to run between the tackles in those spots has been inconsistent at best. However, the last thing you want to do there is drop back to pass. If you must throw it then at least make sure you’ve got something quick right off the snap. There is no world where Allen should have been in a position to get sacked for a 13-yard loss. Mitch Morse got caught holding, so that play was doomed regardless, but if there was a time to dial up a QB power keeper, that was 100% it.
The teams would trade punts, so I guess no harm no foul. It was still a 14-point game when the Bills would get the ball with 6:12 remaining in the 3rd quarter. So, when they went 46 yards in 4:21 to add a field goal to push the lead to 17, things were still looking pretty good. There were less than two minutes left in the 3rd quarter at that point it should have been over.
Somehow, after almost 3 full quarters where the Bills had completely shut down the Viking’s run game, Dalvin Cook got loose for a 71-yard TD run. Jefferson came up with a great block on Damar Hamlin who has been great the last few weeks, leaving Christian Benford 1-on-1 with Cook and he whiffed. Cam Lewis didn’t get a great angle on it either but he was coming over to try and make a big save. In one play, the Vikings cut the lead to 10.
It wasn’t so much the score itself as it is when the score happened. The TD came on a 1st & 10, the first play after the Bills had made it 27-10, so only 17 seconds had come off the clock and it allowed the Vikings to get into the 4th quarter down only down by 10. If Cook has a similar long TD run, but it doesn’t come until the 4th, I think things do down very differently.
Buffalo obviously felt some pressure that they needed to score and, for what it’s worth, they went on a 13-play, 67-yard drive, all the way down inside the Vikes’ 10-yard line. In fact, they were set up with a 2nd & 2 at their 7 so at the very least Buffalo should have walked out of that with a 13-pt lead. However, for some reason, when this drive got to 4th & 2, rather than kick the FG and make it a two-TD game, BUF decided to go for it. Maybe it was the past two weeks of anemic second-half offense that made them push here, but it wound up with Allen throwing a pick to a defender he didn’t see.
The most worrisome thing is that I had just seen what looked like identical red zone interceptions from Allen in the past two weeks. Rolling right, under pressure, and trying to force something. For the third week in a row, it was intercepted.
Minnesota seized momentum and put together a very solid, 13-play, 66-yard drive that featured a pair of 4th-down conversions. With less than 10 minutes remaining in the game and still down by two scores, a BUF stop on either 4th down would have probably done the trick. But, they couldn’t get the stop and the Vikings punched in the TD to cut the lead to 4.
Buffalo got the ball back with 4:34 remaining, so despite everything that had just recently transpired. All they needed to do was get a decent drive and a couple of first downs and they would be in good shape. Well, apparently they didn’t get the memo because they went 3 & out after a false start by Stefon Diggs and then back-to-back incompletions in his direction.
I am always perplexed by teams that can’t seem to grasp that the clock is their friend when they have the lead late in ball games. They could have pretty easily gotten the game to the 2-minute warning, but they barely took any time off the clock and made sure to stop it for the Vikings too.
Still, all the Bills needed was a stop and that was the game and boy were they close. Boogie Basham and Von Miller came up with sacks on 1st and 3rd down to put the Vikings in a 4th & 18. It’s basically a hail mary type situation and they even got the desperation heave. However, that guy I mentioned earlier, Justin Jefferson, made the goddamn catch of the year, easily one of the best regular-season grabs of all time.
Cam Lewis, who was in for Poyer, had the ball in his hands for the interception, and Jefferson, with one hand, somehow managed to wrestle the thing away from Lewis and keep it from hitting the ground. It was jaw-dropping, I respect it, but the Bills didn’t need a pick there. Lewis just needed to make sure it wasn’t a catch but you can see him trying to secure the interception. I know it’s easier said than done, but that’s bad situational football again and all I could think was “how did they not drill these situations in practice after the Hail Murray?”
Minny was still at the BUF 41 but Benford decided to help them out with an unnecessary roughness penalty on Adam Thielen that moved them to the Bills’ 17-yard line with a little more than a minute left. I remember not liking the call and thinking it was soft, but I haven’t watched it again. Minny still had to score the TD to win it, so despite the circumstances, the Bills would have a chance to get the W.
On a 3rd & goal from the BUF 6, Cousins hit Jefferson on a slant for what looked like the go-ahead TD, but it was overturned to down by contact at the 1-yard line, setting up a 4th & goal. Cousins was rushed on the play and the ball fell incomplete, game over right?!? Wrong. Jordan Phillips was offside (naturally) setting up another 4th down from the half-yard line.
Cousins tried to sneak it in and it looked like he may have got there but he was ruled short and the replay officials didn’t see anything to overturn the call, so the Bills took over on downs. Awesome! Game over right? Wrong again.
I have been critical of game management situations by the coaching staff and this game was chalked full of them. Because of where Cousins was marked down, the BIlls would be playing from the doorstep of their own end zone but up by 4. The only thing you can’t do is turn the ball over. The smart thing to do there is to take the safety, surrender the 2 points, kick the ball away, and for the Vikes to drive back into FG range with no timeouts…what looked like snow late in the game. It’s no gimme.
What does Dorsey come up with? A QB sneak. The best case scenario is you get a yard or so, worst case scenario is what happened. Allen was a bit too eager to execute the sneak and Morse was antsy to snap the ball and pick up his block in a telegraphed situation, but that snap was fumbled, Allen kinda fell down and the Vikings recovered for the go-ahead TD. Are you kidding me? What else could go wrong?
Buffalo had no timeouts left and only 40 seconds left, now trailing 30-27. They wound up getting gifted a catch ruling on a play that should have been reviewed and overturned. The 20-yard gain to Davis got them into long FG range and buffalo smartly went hurry-up to avoid the review. They would hit the FG to force OT after a defensive pass interference call gave them another 14-yards.
Minnesota won the coin toss for overtime, because of course they did, and they put together a solid drive down to the Bills’ 15-yard line. However, Ed Oliver and Shaq Lawson split a sack and helped force the FG.
At that point, I’m thinking that every single thing that needed to go wrong for the Bills in order to give the Vikings a chance had happened. Still, all I want is the ball in Buffalo’s hands with the game on the line and a chance to win and that’s exactly what I got. But that other thing I said about everything had already gone wrong, well that wasn’t exactly true.
Buffalo drove down the field, taking what the defense was giving. Allen hit two big runs for 38 yards to start things off and a couple of quick connections with Diggs set the Bills up with 1st & 10 at the Minnesota 20, with 1:25 left in the game and both timeouts. On 1st down, Allen looked off the flat route and saw he had Dawson Knox 1-on-1 in the end zone and took his shot. The defender made a nice defensive play to break it up but, heading into second down, the ball doesn’t have to go to the end zone.
Facing that 2nd down, the route concept worked but Allen looked frozen and indecisive. He’s looking right at it, but he waits to pull the trigger, tries to throw a laser rather than putting it up high where only Davis has a chance, and Patrick Peterson jumps the route from underneath and picks him off again. Not only was it a bad throw after hesitating, but he also completely overlooked Quentin Morris who was open underneath Davis. Maybe he wouldn’t have scored, but he would have had a chance to and would have set up a 3rd down inside the 5-yard line where they have a lot more options.
As I heard Allen talk about the play afterward, he seemed to know full well that he couldn’t throw that ball there, especially after Peterson had already gotten him in a similar spot earlier in the game, but he did it anyway. In rewatching the play, it looks like he’s hesitating on purpose to let Morris clear the passing lane before the throw because of a multi-level route concept.
So, I am ultimately curious if Dorsey was concerned about the short-yardage red-zone problems and wanted to avoid playcalling those spots. Ultimately, Allen had the ball in his hands with the chance to make the play the defense was giving him but he tried to force it. I know he wants to win and hates himself for making these kinds of mistakes, and appreciate that he’s a tough critic of himself but, at some point, he’s gotta allow his guys to help and not play hero ball.
That’s easier to do when your OC isn’t sending in 50+ pass plays. The Bills’ winless streak in games where they call a minimum of 50 passes continues and coincides with them giving up more than 100 yards rushing in a loss. I will also say that even though people like to talk down Tremaine Edmunds, the defense took a major hit with him out in the second half. With not a single secondary starter from last season on the field, the linebacker’s absence was more alarming.
Thanks to two straight losses, it’s going to feel like a short week as the Bills take on the Browns. Cleveland has the kind of run game that can present problems and a defense that hasn’t lived up to its potential yet. If the Bills don’t get some of their issues fixed for that one, it could be a big problem.
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