There’s been a lot of finger pointing already this week with the Buffalo Bills losing in embarrassing fashion to the New England Patriots. I don’t give Josh Allen a pass with at least two incredibly bad decisions (though the backwards pass did work as intended which is insane). He’s not alone on the offense either. That said, if I have to pick a primary concern, it has to be the defense.
It’s bad enough that they allowed two fourth-down conversions as well as 42% of the Patriots’ third-down conversions.
It’s badder enough that, of the six stops that weren’t “end of game” related; two of them were the result of the Patriots gifting the ball back with two of the flukiest turnovers I can imagine.
What we’re for though is that it’s baddest enough that the offense had the team up by five points late in the fourth quarter and all they needed was one stop to seal the win. That did not happen. Let’s find out what went wrong.
Game-Losing Drive
For the short version, the game-losing driving was not entirely the Buffalo Bills crapping the bed. There was some adequate to excellent play by the Patriots to go with it. Going through each play:
- On the first play of the drive Deone Walker gets some penetration and a hand up to where it’s reasonable to think he was close to a tip. Hunter Henry though has slipped out in a very soft spot where three defenders were all slow to respond and gets an easy completion.
- Play 2 is what we were hoping to see all day from Drake Maye. Pursued by Greg Rousseau he bails on the play and quite literally trips over himself trying to ditch the ball into the turf. Had he stayed upright there might have been a play to be had a half second later.
- Play 3 shows Cole Bishop one-on-one with Romeo Doubs and is late to recover on the change of direction. The result is a wide open Doubs. Maye doesn’t even start his throwing motion until he sees Doubs come clear, but Bishop has no shot of recovering in ime.
- On Play 4 they go right back to Doubs who has a half step on the defender. Credit to Maye who throws this one with anticipation of coming open and the ball is placed pretty well, with Doubs not being able to run under it.
- Efton Chism finds a soft spot in the zone on Play 5 and Maye delivers the ball. Similar to Play 3, Maye is not anticipating the throw and waits until it’s nearly too late. Look how Chism is waiting and has to jump for the ball. Not a great throw, but good enough for this.
- Play 6 was a pretty standard run. Five yards is a good pickup on first down, but not insurmountable for Buffalo by any means.
- On Play 7, the pass from Maye needs to be perfect. It isn’t.
- I’ve ripped on Maye’s ability to time a play but there won’t be any ripping on that for the touchdown. It’s by far the best timing pass of the drive and a miraculous catch by Efton Chism III doesn’t hurt.
- On the two-point try, the coverage by Terrel Bernard looks a little late to pursue, leaving Rhamondre Stevenson wide open for the two-point try.
