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2 of NFL action began with a bang during Thursday Night Football, and the Buffalo Bills opened the new stadium with a 41-31 win over the Lions. Here’s everything I wrote down as it unfolded.
Buffalo Bills insights from 1st half vs. Lions
- Nice opening drive for the new stadium’s 1st drive. Josh Allen ran the entire field and closed the drive with a tush push TD. What a tush push merchant. (Allen finished the night with 248 passing yards, three touchdown passes, 69 rushing yards, and two more scores on the ground — five total touchdowns.)
- Spencer Brown can’t be left alone with Aidan Hutchinson. Brown is good, but Hutchinson is special. He’ll need help. (Hutchinson beat Brown for a sack on Buffalo’s defense opening series.)
- Great 1st drive by the D. Some nice stunt games by the DL. Gregory Rousseau and Deone Walker start on fire again. (Rousseau finished with two sacks on the night.)
- Khalil Shakir lined up outside could beat Rock Ya-Sin deep easily. Josh would like that one back with some pressure on his face after scrambling a bit. Good to see Shakir winning outside, though.
- This offense will be fun to watch. What a change from what we had with Joe Brady under Sean McDermott. I told you the O had a lot of McD on it. He wanted to run the ball, he wanted to methodically march down the field, control the clock, and keep his D off the field. Brady doesn’t really care about that — he has Josh, and he knows what it means. I love it.
- Again, it’s important to have a run game, especially in January. But with Josh Allen as your QB, he’s got to be the centerpiece of the offense. Everything has to run through him. Use the good run game to help him, not to try to win through it and ask Josh to bail the team out of a hole when it doesn’t work. (James Cook topped 100 rushing yards himself, finishing with a touchdown.)
- Groot is looking really good to start the season. Doing what’s expected of him against a backup RT, dominating the matchup.
- Run defense is still a problem, especially in nickel package.
- TD Lions. Defense is a work in progress and will have its ups and downs. O has got to keep the foot on the gas.
- See, after establishing Josh Allen, it’s even easier to run the ball.
- Dalton Kincaid is 100% ready for a breakout season. It’s happening. (Kincaid finished his day with 7 receptions in 8 targets, for 95 yards and a 16-yard touchdown catch.)
- Deone Walker is such a game-changer. His length affects how opposing QBs throw the ball very often. What a stud.
- No reason to bring DJ Moore back today. Hopefully it’s nothing serious, and he can recover with some extra time before Week 3. (Moore left the game with a shoulder injury and did not return.)
- An example of a disadvantage of being extremely aggressive on O on every drive — the bad two-minute drill gave the Lions O an extra shot. Wasn’t anything egregious, but it gave the Lions extra points on the board before they got the ball back in the second half. Something that wouldn’t have happened in McDermott’s days. Different football strategies. (The Lions closed the half with a 31-yard field goal, trailing 27-10 and getting the ball back after the break.)
Buffalo Bills insights from 2nd half vs. Lions
- Bad two-minute drill on O ended up costing a 10-point difference. Again, that’s something that would never happen under McDermott. It’s not like the new and refreshing Brady’s way is always the best way.
- Bills’ O is showing they can also put together a long, methodical drive to rest their D and burn some clock as they score another TD.
- Bills’ D is showing they can allow back-to-back 20+ yard plays and nullify the good job the O just did to help them. (Jared Goff finished with four touchdown passes on the night.)
- Jordan Hancock had some good snaps in for a hurt Dee Alford.
- Davison Igbinosun is very grabby for a man corner. (Igbinosun was flagged for defensive holding on a fourth down that kept a Lions drive alive.)
- Bills’ CBs, in general, are struggling in man coverage for the second consecutive week. Christian Benford also had a bad flag in the end zone.
- Frank Gore Jr. is clearly Ty Johnson’s backup in blocking situations. Great block on a Josh power run.
- Shakir with bad hands? Not common. (Shakir dropped a third-and-8 pass that ended a Bills drive.)
- Defense comes back and, despite a lot of bad, does its job in a moment the Lions could have made it a three-point game. (I don’t know how — just like Simba, they refuse to die.)
- DJ Moore has been missed.
- Keon Coleman with a clutch third-down catch. This game has been a good confidence builder for him.
- Another PA, and Josh finds Coleman for his sixth reception on six targets to move the chains. Amazing how Josh can wait for the absolute last moment to throw it fading away, changing his arm angle, right on the money. It set up two James Cook runs to seal the win with another TD, Bills 41-24.
- Bills have seven more minutes of ball possession at this point in the game.
- Good to see the defense adjust and stop the run during the game and do its job when it was needed. They allowed the Bills to open up an advantage, then stopped their offense when the game was on the line. As Brady said in the interview after the last game, “a lot of ugly in between,” though.
- A little more ugly with a 4th-and-18 conversion, and another TD pass — a 30-yarder from Goff to Amon-Ra St. Brown, with backups already on the field. (St. Brown finished with nine catches for 142 yards and two touchdowns.)
- The Bills’ dominance in this game felt way bigger than the 10-point difference in the final 41-31 score. The end-of-first-half swing made the win a little more difficult than it should have been. It’s important to find the sweet spot between being very aggressive and minimizing the opponent’s chances of a comeback.
- Ball game. Josh Allen with 9 TDs in 2 games. It’s definitely a new era. Great to see the team open the new stadium with another beautiful performance. (Allen’s five touchdowns Thursday made it nine across Buffalo’s first two games.)
1-0. Go Bills!
Catch up on all this and more with the latest edition of Leading the Charge!
