The Bills put together perhaps the most impressive win any team has produced all season: a 31-10 demolition of the Cowboys. Can they ride the momentum into a January run?
One of the most vexing questions of this NFL season has been: “What is the problem with the Buffalo Bills?”
Maybe there isn’t one. The Bills, who started sluggishly and couldn’t quite put it all together for much of the early season, have rounded into form of late. And on Sunday, they put together perhaps the most impressive win any team has produced all season: a 31-10 demolition of the Dallas Cowboys, who entered with a 10-3 record and had been humbling the competition week after week with their high-flying quarterback-and-receiver duo of Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb. But when the Cowboys got to western New York, the Bills greeted them rudely: Prescott was under duress all afternoon, Lamb had no separation from the Bills’ defenders, and the Buffalo defense was suffocating against an offense that had looked impossible to stop. Dallas finished with 10 points, but all of them came in garbage time. For Buffalo, it was as good as a shutout.
The Bills’ offense had no such trouble, and the home team moved to 8-6. They will need to win at least two of their last three games to get into a playoff spot that once seemed a lock and then seemed highly unlikely. But Buffalo, at last, are on the same solid footing they seemed to be on all the time when they made the playoffs each of the past four years. Maybe there’s a future for this team yet.
Perhaps the most striking part of the Bills’ dominance was that it came on a day when Josh Allen, the franchise quarterback, could not get much going with his arm. Allen only threw 15 passes and completed seven of them for 94 yards. It didn’t matter much, because the Bills’ offensive line was serving as a battering ram for talented running back James Cook. His big men blew open running gaps with abandon, and Cook ran through them with authority en route to 179 yards and a touchdown on 25 carries. It was Cook’s first 100-plus-yard rushing game since 13 November; he had been an efficient option in recent games and had a career outing in this one. The second-year man from Georgia paced the offense on a day when Allen didn’t do much (and, in truth, wasn’t needed much).
The Bills’ season has changed dramatically in eight days. Heading into last week’s game against the defending Super Bowl winners, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Bills were 6-6 and reeling from embarrassing revelations about coach Sean McDermott’s leadership. (Among other things, McDermott was revealed to have praised the teamwork of the 9/11 hijackers in trying to make some sort of point to his players.) But the Bills outlasted the Chiefs with some help from KC receiver Kadarius Toney, who lined up offside on what would’ve been a game-winning touchdown. And they needed no such good fortune to dismiss the Cowboys.
The Bills are unlikely to win the AFC East, as the high-flying Miami Dolphins have 10 wins to their eight. And as games wrapped on Sunday, they remained, via tiebreakers, on the wrong side of the wildcard playoff picture. But they would make the playoffs if they won out, and two of their remaining three games are against the horrid Los Angeles Chargers and New England Patriots. (Both are on their second quarterback of the year, for reasons of injury or performance.) The Bills look to have cured their biggest ills, so the operative question about them is no longer what is wrong. Instead, it’s more forward-looking: How far could they go?
MVP of the week
Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins. Tagovailoa has developed into one of the league’s most productive passers over the past two years, but his naysayers have stayed loud anyway. Tagovailoa, detractors assume, is a mediocre quarterback who looks better because of coach Mike McDaniels’ scheme and the supernatural ability of his skill position players – mainly wideout Tyreek Hill, the league’s fastest player. Hill sat out Sunday with an ankle injury, and Tagovailoa put together a dominant effort anyway in a 30-0 rout of the woeful New York Jets. He completed 21 of 24 passes for 224 yards and a touchdown, that one to Hill’s partner-in-speed, the lightning-fast Jaylen Waddle. Tagovailoa was masterful and continued to look like a franchise quarterback on his own terms, one who certainly benefits from the greatness around him but is by no means dependent on it. If he plays half this well in January, the Dolphins are a playoff threat. He’d have had gaudier numbers on Sunday if McDaniel hadn’t shown the Jets mercy in light of the lopsided margin.
