Buffalo Humbled in Baltimore

Buffalo’s defense has been missing their three best players for the majority of the season. On Sunday Night Football, the absence of Matt Milano, Terrel Bernard, and Taron Johnson was evident. From their first offensive play, Baltimore showed that they had the ability to take advantage of the mismatch in the middle of Buffalo’s defense. Pair this with self-inflicting offensive decision making, and you get a blowout in favor of the Ravens.

King Henry Punishes McDermott

Buffalo faced an early 4th and 1 to start their drive, but a QB sneak from Josh Allen moved the chains. Four plays later, facing 4th and 2 from the 50 yard line, head coach Sean McDermott opted to punt despite the analytics showing that was the wrong decision. Baltimore’s first offensive play was an 87 yard Derrick Henry touchdown run, and it all seemed to go downhill from there.

Struggles on Both Sides of the Ball

Buffalo began moving the ball downfield, but two 10 yard holding penalties forced them to kick a 50 yard field goal, which Tyler Bass drilled. Baltimore’s offense ran right through Buffalo’s defense, with a 15 yard unnecessary roughness penalty moving them into the redzone. Lamar Jackson found Henry wide open in the flat for an easy five yard score, who once again found the endzone untouched. Down 14–3, the Bills faced 4th and 1 from the 39 yard line, where McDermott once again opted to punt.

Both sides of the Bills continued to struggle, with the Ravens once again marching down on the Buffalo defense for their third straight touchdown. Jackson found tight end Isaiah Likely for a gain of 26 to start the drive, and connected with Nelson Agholor down the middle for a gain of 12 on 3rd and 11. Justice Hill ran for a gain of 11 and caught a pass for 15 yards, moving them into the redzone. Then, Jackson found Hill wide open down the sideline for a 19 yard score after he beat Dorian Williams in man-to-man coverage.

Can’t Capitalize on Turnover

Following another three-and-out from the offense, Buffalo’s defense was able to generate a turnover. After taking off to scramble, Jackson was stripped by Williams, with the ball recovered by Spector. The two linebackers combined to make a big play despite getting torn up for the majority of the first half.

Baltimore taking back-to-back timeouts (resulting in a delay of game flag) gave the Bills a free first down on 4th and 2, but three straight incomplete passes from Allen forced another punt. On 2nd and 10, Allen threw a beautiful deep ball to Keon Coleman down the sideline, hitting him in the hands, but the rookie receiver was unable to come up with the big play.

Second Half Momentum Swing

A completely different Buffalo Bills team came out of the locker room to start the second half. The defense forced a three-and-out thanks to intentional grounding when Jackson was nearly sacked by WIlliams. The Bills responded with a quick touchdown of their own. Facing pressure, Allen rolled to his right and chucked a pass downfield just before stepping out of bounds. Honestly, I was expecting to see two or three Ravens in the area as the camera of the TV broadcast panned to the other side of the field. Instead, a wide open Khalil Shakir stood awaiting the pass. Shakir took the ball to the three yard line, with the play going down as a 52 yard completion. On the next play, Ty Johnson found the edge and ran to the pile-on for the three yard score.

Another three-and-out from Baltimore suddenly gave the Bills life. Greg Rousseau met Henry in the backfield for a loss of one, and Spector sacked Jackson as he tried to escape the pocket on 3rd down.

Bills Trick Themselves

Allen connected with Coleman on a 24 yard back shoulder completion down the sideline, and three runs from James Cook moved the offense into Baltimore territory. Then, Joe Brady called a trick play. With Curtis Samuel lined up in shotgun, and Allen lined up as a boundary receiver, Samuel took the snap and began running towards Allen, pitching the ball back to him before he was tackled. Kyle Van Noy, who nearly blew up the whole play by tackling Samuel, chased down Allen from behind. As Allen wound up to launch a pass deep downfield, Van Noy knocked the ball loose and it was recovered by the Ravens. All of the momentum from Buffalo was gone in an instant.

Henry would run for 30 yards on the ground while Hill added nine on the ground and 17 through the air, before Jackson took it himself into the endzone for a nine yard touchdown run. Buffalo went from having a chance at making it a 3 point game to down three possessions just like that.

Waiving the White Flag

Down 28–10 late in the third quarter, at this point the game felt out of reach. Allen would connect with Dalton Kincaid for 25 yards, and find Coleman on another back shoulder throw for 21, but a 16 yard sack on 3rd and 4 forced a long field goal attempt. On the first play of the 4th quarter, Tyler Bass shanked his 48 yard attempt wide left. Jackson would run for 19 yards, and Henry followed that up by taking his next two carries for a combined 41 yards. A holding penalty moved Baltimore to the goal line. Two plays later, Henry fumbled as he tried to reach the endzone, but Patrick Ricard recovered the fumble in the endzone for another Ravens touchdown.

Allen threw three incomplete passes on his next drive, and that would be his last, with Mitch Trubisky entering the game for the final seven minutes of play. At this point, both teams were simply looking to run out the clock, with the score ending 35–10 in favor of the Ravens.

Overview

Injuries obviously played a role in this game, with the Ravens run game exploiting the holes in the backbone of Buffalo’s defense. However, I do think this game could’ve been more competitive at the very least with better coaching decisions. Punting twice on fourth and short should not be a reality when your QB is Josh Allen, and despite McDermott’s decent track record when it comes to aggressiveness on fourth down, he failed in that category on Sunday.

The offense looked like a shell of its former self, putting up just 10 points against a Ravens defense that has struggled against the pass and was missing their starting nose tackle. There was a noticeable lack of pre-snap motion, something the Bills greatly utilized to their advantage in the first three games, while the third down efficiency was horrible (3/13). The offensive line did not look good, with Allen pressured on 15 of his 34 dropbacks according to Nate Tice (@Nate_Tice) on X.

We’ve all analyzed the trick play enough to know it should never have been called, but I am still left wondering what the ‘trick’ was supposed to be. If Allen is getting the ball, why is Samuel running towards him and therefore, bringing the entire Baltimore defense towards Allen? Furthermore, it didn’t appear that Allen even had someone open downfield, despite the body language of his wind up suggesting otherwise. Seeing the play was blown up from the start, Allen needed to tuck and run or simply slide down.

Overall, I didn’t think it was a horrible game for Allen. It’s not his fault they punted twice on 4th and short, and he hit Coleman in the hands just before halftime. The fumble and 16 yard sack that led to the Bass miss are on him, but he was constantly under pressure and wasn’t getting much help from his teammates or coaches. Yes, there were some throws that could’ve been intercepted, and some that he’ll want back, but that’s normally the case for most QBs in every single game.

Defensively, the team had no juice in the first half. Baltimore moved the football with ease, similar to what Buffalo did against Jacksonville just last week. The defensive line was silent in the first half, and only flashed in the second half on blitzes. Taylor Rapp left the game with a head injury, but prior to that, his play was less than impressive. The same could be said for Damar Hamlin and Cam Lewis as well. I’d love it if Buffalo gave Cole Bishop and Mike Edwards some more looks at safety, because I believe they should be our starting safeties by January.

Special teams also struggled, with Bass missing a field goal and Brandon Codrington muffing a punt, although he was able to recover it.


Silver Lining

I know many fans are freaking out right now, calling the Bills frauds or claiming they can’t beat good teams, but this simply isn’t the case. No team in the NFL is going 17–0 this year, I will guarantee you that. Baltimore is a good team that matches up extremely well against Buffalo, especially with the defensive injuries. Super Bowls aren’t won and lost in September, and every team has bad losses here and there. In fact, the Bills had gone 43 games without losing by more than six points, the longest streak in the NFL. They had a bad night, but they’re still 3–1 with the rest of the AFC East looking less than intimidating, and the opportunity to get healthier as the season progresses.

What’s Next? Bills @ Texans 10/6

In a rare 1:00 matchup between two strong teams, the Bills look to bounce back against the 3–1 Houston Texans, where all eyes will be on Stefon Diggs in his first game against his former team.

Editor’s babble: Losing is always ugly. But sometimes we lose sight of how wonderful winning ugly can be. Curious to see what adjustments are made this week before the Texans game. Many thanks to Colin Richey for his terrific game write -ups. You can also find Colin @whatthef00tball.