INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Tyler Bass turned out to be the end-of-game hero for the Buffalo Bills Monday night, but it just as easily could have been his kicking counterpart for the Los Angeles Rams, Harrison Mevis.
But fate, and Greg Rousseau’s big hand, intervened and the reason Bass raised his arms in triumph after drilling a 45-yard walk-off overtime field goal is because Mevis was unable to do the same thing a few minutes earlier.
This could have ended in a gut-wrenching, not to mention damaging 37-34 loss for the Bills, but that score was flipped in their favor because Bass was rock solid in the game's biggest moment.
“Just trust in my routine and going out there and doing my 1/11th,” Bass said on a night where he could have also been the goat because
his missed extra point in the third quarter, in a game that ended up in overtime, would have been heavily scrutinized.
In victory, Bass admitted that he felt bad for Mevis because the kickers’ club is a small and exclusive one, and those guys stick together.
“I've been there, it's tough, but Mevis is a good guy, and he's gonna be just fine,” Bass said. “But being in that situation, kind of just keep going, put your head down, keep working, and go from there.”
Bass was watching when Mevis attempted the kick, but he also said that he had to remain locked in on his process just in case Mevis missed, knowing that he was most likely going to get the chance to win it.
When Josh Allen positioned the Bills at the 27 with two dynamic runs they were facing a second-and-10, but Joe Brady decided to go ahead and kick right there, and Allen explained the rationale.
“You can hit your head into a wall and hopefully get yardage, but you put the ball at risk every time you do that, even with good ball security,” he said. “There’s potential penalties, potential turnovers, and we felt very confident about the left hash and T-Bass wanted it there. Felt like it was within his range, within his safety range, so Joe made the decision to kick it and he did his job.”
Here’s how I graded the Bills:
PASS OFFENSE: C
It’s a mess without D.J. Moore, plain and simple. And for as non-impactful as Joshua Palmer has been, not having him hurt, too, because at least he runs routes well and can occasionally draw coverage away from someone else. The Bills were helpless trotting out Trent Sherfield and Skyler Bell to join Khalil Shakir and Keon Coleman.
The Rams have the NFL's second-ranked pass defense (145.5 per game) and it showed as their defensive backs dominated as the only catches by wideouts were three by Shakir for 80 yards and one by Coleman for a seven-yard TD. Ex-Chiefs star CB Trent McDuffie probably couldn’t believe what he was seeing after so many games where Allen and the Bills put up big numbers against him and his former team.
Allen had just seven completions entering the fourth quarter and finished with only 12, but four big completions produced 154 of his 210 yards. And yet for all the struggles, the Bills scored 37 points and won.
RUN OFFENSE: A+
James Cook had another excellent game, crossing the 100-yard mark for the third time this season, and he tacked on two touchdowns to give him five. But his fumble in overtime was almost calamitous and it would have wiped away all the good carries he had.
When Cook wasn’t gashing the Rams, Allen got back to being the maniac that he can be when he scrambles as he ran for 121 yards, the second-highest total of his career. He saw that nothing was happening downfield and he knew the only way the Bills were going to drive the ball was for him to run and 100 of his yards came in the second half and overtime.
The offensive line lost Spencer Brown in the second quarter so Tylan Grable came on, and while he had a holding penalty, he meshed with the unit and the Bills finished with 234 yards and 6.3 average.
PASS DEFENSE: F
It was embarrassing. Buffalo was so overwhelmed in the secondary, it was downright laughable. As expected, the Bills had no answers for Puka Nacua as he toyed with them all night on short, irritating, death by a thousand cuts routes on his way to 17 catches on an incredible 24 targets. I was surprised the Rams didn’t attack more down the field against the depleted Bills’ secondary, but part of that may have been to possess the ball and try to keep Allen off the field as much as possible.
C.J. Gardner-Johnson got beat one-on-one by Davante Adams for a TD, Davison Igbinosun was beaten by Nacua, and Dorian Williams lost track of Adams for his second TD.
The pass rush did not affect Stafford enough, though that was partly due to him working underneath so much. DeWayne Carter had the only official sack while Greg Rousseau had six pressures, but as a team, the Bills had only 15 individual pressures per Pro Football Focus which is pretty low.
RUN DEFENSE: B+
The Bills did a nice job limiting Kyren Williams and Blake Corum, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that Stafford knew he could pick apart the pass defense. All those short passes he threw worked effectively like a running game, with more tangible results.
Up front, TJ Sanders made his season debut and he made several noticeable plays including a sack of Stafford on a fourth-quarter two-point conversion that kept the score at 20-19 Rams, while Deone Walker had the only run stop for lost yardage.
SPECIAL TEAMS: A-
Ray Davis, who has had almost no role this season because he hasn’t been used on offense, and Greg Dortch has returned the majority of the kickoffs and all of the punts, exploded through a gap and returned the opening kickoff 70 yards to set up Bass’ 49-yard field goal.
Davis and Dortch combined to average 31.3 yards on seven kickoff returns, and Dortch had one punt return for 14 yards. On the coverage side, the Rams averaged 27.7 yards on seven kick returns, but they had no punt returns because the only time Tommy Doman was on the field, he boomed a gorgeous 52-yarder that was downed at the 7.
Penalties were a huge problem for the Bills as they had 13 for 112 yards, but only one came in the kicking game, a hold by Keleki Latu.
COACHING: C-
The Bills’ defensive staff, led by Jim Leonhard, has a huge amount of work to do because right now, the entire unit is struggling. The secondary is a disaster, and that was with Christian Benford back in the lineup. The linebackers don’t ever seem to make meaningful plays, and the pass rush was not productive.
Brady had a couple management problems crop up, but he did nail a challenge when the officials thought Nacua caught a ball on the sideline in bounds, which he was not. Brady leaning into Cook and the running game was smart, but Allen improvised almost all of his runs because Brady was not able to scheme the passing game targets open, particularly Dalton Kincaid who, other than catching a two-point conversion, was a ghost again.
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for more than four decades including 37 years as the full-time beat writer/columnist for the D&C. He has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bills report card: Monday night thriller reveals heroes, glaring weakness
