As good as Josh Allen had been through the first five halves of football in 2020, it all unraveled in the second half at home against the Rams. Fortunately, the Bills managed to escape with a win thanks to a defensive pass interference call on 4th & 9 that set up the game-winning TD pass to tight end Tyler Kroft. In the NFL, a win is a win, but not all wins are created equal and this one felt a lot more like a loss.
On the opening possession, the Bills received the kickoff but quickly went 3 & out. The Rams went down the field with relative ease but missed a long field goal try. At that point, it looked as though it was going to be a long day for Buffalo. They turned things around in a hurry, as Josh Allen threw for a pair of touchdowns and ran for one more to put his team up 21-3 at the half. Looking impressive on both sides of the ball, the Bills got the second-half scoring started with a TD pass to Stefon Diggs who beat Jalen Ramsey on a highly contested route in the back of the end zone. Up 28-3, about halfway through the 3rd quarter, things were firing on all cylinders but that’s where this game really got started.
The Rams finally reached paydirt on a Jared Goff keeper to make it 28-10 and then things got really interesting. For some reason, Buffalo’s offensive coordinator Brian Daboll felt like continuing the aerial onslaught rather than prioritizing ball management and clock control. It’s hard to blame him with the way things were going, but up 18-points with just over four minutes left in the 3rd quarter seems like a good time to start burning clock. After Devin Singletary picked up a nice chunk on 1st down, Josh Allen dropped back and heaved an ill-advised pass into downfield coverage on 2nd down. Needless to say, that’s didn’t go well as Kroft was forced into offensive pass interference to prevent the interception as he went up and made the catch.
Let me reiterate, he made the catch. However, as he had two hands on the ball and brought it to his body, Rams’ defensive back John Johnson III reached in and put his hands on the ball as the two players crashed to the ground (essentially the same situation as the infamous Fail Mary game between Seattle and Green Bay). Somehow, the officials awarded Johnson with the interception even though Kroft gained possession first and came off the turf with the football at the end. Even if the players gained possession simultaneously, the tie goes to the offense or so I thought. However, thanks to the ruling on the field, the replay office wasn’t able to overturn the call. Perhaps there was something the replay didn’t show that would have warranted the INT but I never saw any of it. It should have been a catch for Kroft, with an offensive PI call that would have set the Bills back but not resulted in a turnover. Less than two-minutes later, Robert Woods scored on a great catch and run to cut the lead to 28-17 and seize momentum for Los Angeles.
When Buffalo got the ball back, Daboll still didn’t seem to think ball management or clock control was too important as he dialed up passes on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd down. Allen completed one before getting sacked on 3rd down to go 3 & out in less than two minutes. At this point, the Rams had scored 14 unanswered points and the 3rd quarter hadn’t even ended yet. So when they got the ball back, the Bills’ defense hadn’t gotten a break. Ten plays and 97-yards later, LA had scored again and Buffalo was desperately clinging to a 28-25 lead. You could feel and see the pressure mounting for the Bills.
They started moving the ball again to start the next drive but, after a first down pass to Stefon Diggs, Allen took a bad sack for a loss of 12-yards. Two plays later, a false start. Now 3rd & 22, Aaron Donald did his thing and got into the backfield. While he was whipping Allen around by the collar, the Bills’ QB thought it was a good time to look to the referees for help rather than protect the football. Well, apparently there’s no protection for horse-collar tackles on the quarterback while in the pocket so it went down as a sack-fumble for Donald and Allen took an additional unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for chastising the refs. Within 10-minutes, he had gone from playing the best football of his career to exhibiting the kinds of decisions I’ve been quietly fearing. I can understand his frustration but, regardless of the rules, Josh Allen has to be more responsible in those types of moments. He has to be better if this team is going to do big things.
With Matt Milano and Tremaine Edmunds back in the lineup, you’d think the Bills’ defense would look better and they did for a while, but they couldn’t slow down the Rams’ offense once it got rolling. On the ensuing Rams’ drive, Darrell Henderson Jr. capped of his monster day with a touchdown to take a 32-28 lead late in the 4th quarter. His whopping 5.7-yards/carry is exactly what scared me about this matchup, but his 120 scrimmage yards made some fantasy managers very happy.
This is a good Buffalo defense that had supposedly gotten better along the D-line during the offseason, but they’re currently giving up a very concerning 25+ points-per-game. The Bills’ defense isn’t looking like the elite unit from last season and the numbers have them around the middle of the pack. Leslie Frazier dials up blitzes at the 5th highest rate in the league (32%) and the Bills are near the top of the heap in sacks and QB knockdowns, but in the bottom third in QB hurries. So, even though the pressure is above average, opposing QBs are still making their preferred throw more often than not. Buffalo has been playing from ahead by multiple scores for most of the season and they tend to run a fast paced offense that scores quickly, which leaves the defense to play a lot of minutes. They have looked good early in all three games so far but have struggled to close games out. It’s a troubling trend that almost came back to bite ‘em in this one. Against the elite teams of this league, they will pay for it.
Anyway, needing a touchdown to win it, Allen and the Bills’ offense was back on the field with a lot of recent mental scar tissue to get through. At this point, he had thrown for 3-TDs already but all the questions that needed answering were still on the table. This was the first real test of the season and he didn’t look too poised under pressure. On the second play of the drive, he got sacked trying to scramble and throw the ball away resulting in a 12-yard loss. He did find Cole Beasley to convert a very clutch 3rd & 22 but found himself in trouble again a few plays later and wound up facemasking a defender with his throwing hand to put Buffalo in a 2nd & 25 situation. After repeatedly pleading with my TV: “Oh my god! WHAT is he doing?”, I was fully prepared for a disastrous ending. An incomplete pass and 17-yarder to Diggs later, the Bills were facing a 4th & 9. Allen zipped a pass by rookie wide receiver Gabriel Davis before he even turned his head, but a flag came on the Rams’ Darious Williams for pass interference. Buffalo scored the game-winning TD on the next play.
Wins aren’t easy to come by in the NFL so I’ll take it, but that was an incorrect penalty call on LA. The correct call would have been illegal contact or defensive holding, which is a 5-yard foul and an automatic 1st down. Pass interference is a spot foul and automatic 1st down, which put the Bills at the 3-yard line instead of the 8. Either way Buffalo gets a new set of downs and probably scores but from where I was sitting, it kinda looked like a make-up call for the blown interception call and horse-collar plays from earlier. They still had to convert the game-winning score and did so with a nicely designed route to the tight end, so they deserve credit for that but it also felt a little bit like they deserved to lose.
Performance Grade: B-
As good as they looked in the first half, they looked equally as bad for the majority of the second half. The offensive numbers looked good and Singletary played his most effective snaps of the season, which is refreshing, but this is still a young team trying to find their footing and it shows. Beating bad teams like the Jets and the Dolphins is one thing, but a win over a solid team that pushes you is a positive sign. It’s a long road to being a good team, a legitimate contender, and this was the kind of win that showed resolve under pressure. The road trip to Vegas next weekend will be another one of these kind of games.