Sometimes winning in the NFL is not sexy. For all the talk surrounding “super teams” and star players, there are plenty of games where the difference between winning and losing comes down to age-old adages.
Take care of the football and force takeaways. Execute in the red zone. Score touchdowns instead of settling for field goals.
Perform well in those areas and the rest should fall into place. It’s not about how many yards or fantasy points you accumulate.
The troubling sign for the Los Angeles Rams
in Week 5 is that the Buffalo Bills tend to be much better in the red zone. The odds currently favor LA by 2.5 points at home.
Bills QB Josh Allen is a cheat code inside of the 20-yard line. He can win with his legs. He’s hard to tackle. He’ll find ways to get the ball into the end zone.
That’s why Buffalo is the NFL’s ninth-best team in terms of scoring touchdowns inside the red zone with a 68.75% rate. It’s not a one-year blip either. On a percentage basis they are performing at nearly an identical rate as the 2025 season where they finished second-best in the league behind only the Eagles.
Meanwhile you must scroll down the list a ways until you come across the Rams. They rank 21st in red zone touchdown rate at 53.33%. It’s a significant drop from last season where LA was scoring touchdowns at a 64.37% clip and ranked seventh.
And then we get to taking care of the football, of which neither Allen nor Matthew Stafford are doing well right now.
Allen puts the ball in harm’s way at the sixth-worst rate according to Pro Football Focus (PFF)‘s turnover-worthy play (TWP) rate. He has thrown three interceptions despite eight TWP’s. That’s a sign of good fortune.
Stafford ranks 14th from the bottom and is middle of the pack in the same metric. He also has eight TWP’s but has thrown twice as many interceptions. That’s not a sign of good fortune.
But While Stafford edges Allen out in terms of turnover-worthy plays, Allen does get the best of Stafford in terms of how often they are putting negatively graded plays on tape. Stafford earns a negative PFF grade on 10.3% of his plays, which ranks 10th-worst in the NFL. Allen is 14th at 9.0%.
Monday night’s game will likely be decided by red zone performance and turnovers. Josh Allen and the Bills have the upper hand based on their track record so far this season. Neither Allen nor Stafford are taking care of the football. Whichever one plays within himself could give their team a better shot of leaving with a victory.
