ORCHARD PARK - Two games into the 2026 NFL season, the Buffalo Bills’ offense was humming to the tune of 77 points, 36 of those coming against a Houston Texans defense that, at least heading into the year, was considered the most ferocious unit in the league.
Memories of 2024, when the Bills scored a franchise-record 525 points, were dancing in the heads of fans who wondered whether this iteration under then-offensive coordinator and now head coach Joe Brady could break that record.
Since then the Bills have tacked on 50 more points which is nothing to sneeze at, but no one, least of all Brady and Josh Allen, would consider either performance against the Los Angeles Chargers or New England Patriots impressive. They survived five turnovers to somehow
beat the Chargers, but they could not overcome two more killer turnovers and seven of 11 possessions where they made one or zero first downs in their loss to the Patriots.
“There's a standard by which we play, and we're either playing to that standard or not,” Brady said, the insinuation that the standard has not been met the last two weeks. “It obviously wasn't good enough, and we didn't find a way to go 1-0.”
Going 1-0 is going to be even more difficult this week when the Bills have to play the preseason Super Bowl betting favorite Los Angeles Rams on Monday Night Football at SoFi Stadium.
As dynamic as the Rams’ Matthew Stafford-led offense can be, their often overlooked defense is coming off a tremendous shutdown of the Philadelphia Eagles last Sunday, granted an Eagles team playing without four offensive stars in RB Saquon Barkley, WR DeVonta Smith, OL Lane Johnson and TE Dallas Goedert.
On the flip side, though, the Rams did not have two of their future first-ballot Hall of Famers, edge rusher Myles Garrett who is on injured reserve, and Aaron Donald who sat out with a minor back injury.
The Rams gave up 20 first-half points due in large part to a pair of Stafford interceptions and a punt coverage breakdown that gave the Eagles scoring-drive starts at the Rams 28-, 17-, and 35-yard line, but thereafter the Rams obliterated Philadelphia the rest of the way.
In the second half, the Eagles managed four first downs and 72 yards and for the game, Philly had 12 first downs, 172 yards and went 1-for-16 on third- and fourth-down plays.
That domination kept the Rams in it and set the stage for Stafford-led drives of 98 and 79 yards which resulted in two TD runs by Kyren Williams in the final four minutes of the game to pull off a 24-20 victory.
"Our defense was outstanding, getting that stop a bunch of times," Stafford said. "Can't say enough good things about our defense and how resilient they played."
You would expect the Rams will get a much tougher test from Allen and the Bills, provided Buffalo gets back to playing the way it did in the first two weeks.
“I've always believed that great teams don't have to lose to learn, but we lost (Sunday) and it's now what are we putting out there,” Brady said. “We're still learning about our football team. I think everybody in that locker room right now needs to sit there and say, ‘Hey, I've got to be better. If I'm better and I worry about making myself better right now then we'll continue to improve as a football team.’”
Here are three questions for the Bills this week:
Can the Bills’ secondary survive the Rams’ passing attack?
Sometimes what you see on paper when you look at an NFL matchup - be it player vs. player, unit vs. unit, team vs. team - doesn’t become a reality once the whistle blows and the ball is kicked off. You can try to break down the pros and cons of it all, and then the game starts and everything you spent time on becomes meaningless for any number of reasons including injuries, lucky bounces, inclement weather, or simply the flow of the game.
But that doesn’t feel like it’s going to be the case when the Bills’ defense takes the field against the Rams offense. It looks and feels like a mismatch that Stafford and his superstar receivers, Puka Nacua and Davante Adams, can’t wait to dive into.
The Bills’ secondary is coming off a dreadful performance last week against New England. Patriots QB Drake Maye is clearly talented despite his struggles that date back to the postseason, but with a receiving corps that did not have injured A.J. Brown all day and then lost active leading pass-catcher Mack Hollins in the third quarter, he should not have picked apart Jim Leonhard’s defense to the level he did, but that’s what happened.
If the Bills don’t get injured Christian Benford back for this game, while Leonhard will never admit it, he can’t feel too comfortable trying to defend the Rams boundary monsters with his two young and inexperienced corners, Maxwell Hairston and Davison Igbinosun.
Nacua missed two games with an injury yet he has 14 catches for 199 yards. Adams, still outstanding at 34 years old, has played all four games and his 390 yards (on 22 receptions) rank fourth in the NFL.
“Yeah, a couple gold jacket guys,” Hairston said, meaning potential future Hall of Famers. “Coming into this league, you want to play those guys. I think it would be a great time for me to go against those guys as I'm trying to get myself together, this defense get together. Another opportunity.”
Be careful what you ask for, young Max.
Can the Bills fix their second-down defense?
We spend so much time focusing on third-down defense because that’s where the defense either ends an opponent’s drive or it fails and allows it to continue, and through the years, the Bills’ defense has struggled on third down. In 2025 they allowed a conversion rate of 41.8% to rank 24th and in 2024 it was worse, 44.5% which ranked 30th.
This year there has been slight improvement to 40.7% which ranks 20th, but as Leonhard pointed out, what is hurting the Bills even more is their poor play on second down and that was clearly a problem against the Patriots. Eleven of New England’s 26 first downs came on second-down plays, while a few other successful second-down plays set up third-and-5 or less on which they made three more first downs.
“That was the down, right now it’s our Achilles heel,” Leonhard said. “That down, it's that second down, second-and-long situations. That's the down that has to have the most improvement because we are doing some good things on third down, and again stopping the run on first down to create some of these second-and-longs. So second down has to be the big area of improvement for us, and that'll be one of the main focuses.”
This season, the Bills have allowed teams to make a first down on 23 of 118 first-down snaps (19.4%), and on 22 on 54 third-down snaps (40.7%). But that number jumps to 35 first downs on 93 second-down snaps (37.6%).
Specifically, second down in the range between six and 10 yards to go, the Bills have been terrible. They have faced 52 such plays and allowed 23 first downs, 18 of those through the air.
The Rams’ offense has been very good on second downs, achieving 37 first downs for a conversion rate of 39.3%, and they are averaging 8.8 yards per pass attempt. If you’re looking for a comparison to Allen and the Bills, they have made just 19 first downs at a rate of 26.7% and are averaging only 3.40 yards per pass attempt.
Is Keon Coleman ready to finally emerge?
There weren’t many positives to take away from the debacle against the Patriots, but Coleman’s performance certainly warrants attention.
In the absence of DJ Moore who once again had to leave before halftime, the second time that has happened in the first four games, Coleman stepped up and caught six passes for 116 yards including the go-ahead touchdown with 4:27 remaining on a pretty post where he slow played cornerback Charles Woods and then cut sharply to the post and when safety Craig Woodson was late helping, Coleman hauled in Allen’s perfect throw.
“Some of those balls that Keon caught, some of the balls that Josh (Palmer) caught in the Detroit game, those type of things that might have been balls that - not all of them, but some of them - were plays that were for DJ and other guys go in there and kind of step up,” Brady said.
Coleman has been a polarizing figure ever since the Bills probably over-drafted him at the very top of the second round in 2024. Through two wildly inconsistent seasons, Brady has stuck by him and he made it a point of emphasis as soon as he was named head coach back in January to profess his belief in the player moving forward.
“He hasn’t given a damn about anything but showing up and just going to work,” Brady said. “Not caring about how many targets he gets, what he has to do in the run game, what it looks like in practice. He’s done that since he’s showed up. Josh has a lot of trust in him. Obviously he made some of those big plays at the end of the game.
“That touchdown was obviously a huge, huge component to giving us an opportunity to win the football game. Just him being in that position and being able to be a guy that we can move around and be able to do all those things when some of these situations happen, it speaks to his character and his intelligence.”
Moore’s status is uncertain for the Rams game, and Palmer is looking more and more like a free agent whiff, so the onus will be on Coleman to continue playing the way he did against New England and finally start to fulfill the promise he showed at Florida State, and reward the faith and patience the Bills have had with him.
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 face three pressing questions before showdown with Rams
