Heading into the game, any objective analysis had the Buffalo Bills as a clear favorite over the Cleveland Browns. We all know the phrase “any given Sunday” has some validity, but we also know that upsets are called that for a reason.
The Bills traveled slightly West to take on the Browns, and were really close to an upset. What was the reason? At the end of the day, Buffalo’s offense simply didn’t outperform that of their opponents.
Literally, the offenses played to a tie
The headline and heading aren’t clickbait in this case. The Bills’
and Cleveland Browns’ offenses were responsible for 20 points each. But wait, the game wasn’t a tie Skare. You’re right. The deciding points should be credited to Buffalo’s defense. Here’s a drive chart for us to talk about.
This comes courtesy of Pro Football Reference with me making them a little more shades of blue to fit in better around here. To drive my point home before we talk some miscellaneous stats, take a look at drive number six. The final score for the Bills was a field goal. Now, often you can argue that a field goal is still offensive output as you have to get close enough to give your kicker a shot.
In this case however, take a look at the net yards column. Buffalo’s offense gained two yards on this drive. Having just intercepted quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the Bills were already in field goal range. The offense provided zero real support to get this score.
Being fair to quarterback Josh Allen and company, they did put up three touchdowns — which is normally enough to drop 21 points on your opponent. A missed extra point limited them to the same score as the Browns.
Now you might be curious too how the Browns’ offense fared, and I’ll sum it up in one sentence. In their scoring drives, Cleveland gained at least 43 yards in every drive. If you want more than a summary, the other three drives were 65, 67, and 69 yards. Put differently, every scoring drive for the Browns was the result of heavy lifting by the offense.
The Bills started off quite strong as you can see with three straight touchdown drives, all of which were over 60 yards. How futile were the drives after that though? Buffalo’s first touchdown drive needed to move the ball 80 yards for the score. In the seven drives after their three touchdowns, the Bills moved the ball 50 yards total. That’s seven drives accounting for fewer yards than any of their three touchdowns.
I can make it worse if you want? We shouldn’t remove the two drives that went backwards, but for fun let’s contemplate that. If we remove those two, Buffalo still only gained 74 yards on five drives. That’s still less than their first touchdown drive.
The Bills may be able to get away with this kind of production in Week 18 versus the Jets, but if they’re going to win out it likely won’t fly against the Eagles. During the postseason, this kind of output is a near guarantee to be a season ender. Fingers crossed the best of the offense is yet to come.
