The Day After: My Thoughts on Bills Stunning Loss to Cardinals
The focus has been – and probably always will be – on how the Buffalo Bills failed so miserably on the final play of Sunday afternoon’s horrific 32-30 loss to the Arizona Cardinals.
And rightly so, because that now becomes the latest play in the NFL’s all-time greatest plays highlight tape and the Bills cast themselves in the starring role as the foiled foe. Sorry Bills fans, but the Kyler Murray to DeAndre Hopkins 43-yard touchdown connection with two seconds left will now become an NFL Films staple.
Not that the Bills aren’t used to this. If there’s one thing the Bills might lead the league in during their 61-year history, its inexplicable losses that wind up with forever nicknames. Wide Right, Music City Miracle, now the Hail Murray. I’m probably missing a couple others.
However, this game was lost nearly as much for what happened during about a 20-minute stretch in the second half as in those miserable final 20 seconds.
“It hurts, it definitely hurts; it hurts bad,” said normally even-keeled coach Sean McDermott, who wore a look of frustration and downright anger he has rarely displayed in public or on a Zoom call. “At the end of the day, that game should have never come down to one play. Unfortunately, it did.”
Here’s why.
The Bills cashed in a turnover five minutes into the third quarter when Josh Allen threw a 22-yard touchdown pass to Cole Beasley for a 23-9 advantage. And then, the Bills’ season-long third-quarter woes struck in a titanic way.
Arizona scored on three straight possessions, two Murray touchdown runs and a field goal by Zane Gonzalez, and when the quarter ended, the Bills were down 26-23. The Bills have now been outscored 76-30 in third quarter this season, which more than wipes out the 73-30 advantage they have in the first quarter.
While the defense was getting rolled, the offense disappeared and never had a counter punch in that critical stretch. Extending deep into the fourth quarter, on Buffalo’s five possessions following the Beasley touchdown, it went punt, interception, punt, punt, interception.
The Bills had 33 net yards on 17 plays with 35 yards in penalties one of the major issues, but also, Allen just didn’t look anything like the quarterback he’s been most of the season. There were bad decisions and ill-fated passes compounded by the receivers not winning on their routes, and another no-show by the run game.
“Throughout the game I put the ball in harm’s way too often; it shouldn’t have come down to one play and I take this very personally,” said Allen. “I think they did a good job of disguising some things and bringing different types of pressures. They got to me a couple times. I have to be better at finding out what they’re doing and going out there and executing the play call.”
Had the Bills offense done anything between their two touchdowns, like McDermott and Allen said, it would never have come down to that final play. In fact, they probably wouldn’t have even needed the tremendous Allen to Stefon Diggs go-ahead touchdown with 34 seconds left.
Here are some other observations:
Mario Addison, what was that?
It’s easy to point the fingers at the three DBs who all failed to get a hand on the final pass and allowed Hopkins to make the catch. Man, it’s really easy to do that. But the guy who was every bit as responsible for the horrible result was Addison, which just added on to an already lousy day for him.
Murray made him look like a fool earlier in the game on his 15-yard read option touchdown run. Addison was unblocked on the play and was in perfect position to blow it up. Instead, he bit embarrassingly hard on Murray’s fake handoff to Kenyan Drake and completely lost edge contain which left a gaping alley for Murray to scoot untouched into the end zone. I can guarantee you, the most oft-used word in the defensive meetings last week was contain, and Addison didn’t do it.
And the on the game-losing play, Addison made another big mistake. At the snap he bull-rushed left tackle D.J. Humphries and immediately forced Murray out of the pocket to the left. That was good. Addison tracked Murray as he drifted further out, but then he made the fatal mistake.
Rather than just continuing to run laterally and stay in Murray’s way, he lunged at the quarterback in an attempt to make a sack, something that he was never going to pull off, not against Murray. Once Addison fell feebly to the ground, that gave Murray the chance to move forward and use that momentum to get everything into his throw downfield. We know what happened next.
The running game is a disaster
This has become almost a standard feature in this day-after space, how the Bills running game was once again non-existent. While the Bills are firmly in pass-first mode with their offense, the continued failure to establish any threat on the ground is going to prove costly.
Devin Singletary and Zack Moss were supposed to be a strong 1-2 punch when the season began. Instead, all they’ve been is punching bags for opposing defenses. Sunday, they combined for 11 carries and 35 yards.
For the season, 10 games worth, they have combined for 625 yards, meaning there are six backs in the league who have more yards by themselves. Singletary’s 401 yards rank him 26th in the league.
In their defense, they’ve had no help and that’s the biggest problem. The Bills offensive line – granted, beset by injuries – has been flat out horrible in run blocking. Three of the RB runs went for 13, 8 and 14 yards. The other eight went for 2, 2, -3, 2, 1, 0, -3, and -1.
It’s not all on the backs. According to Pro Football Focus, all 20 of Moss’ yards came after first contact, the clear indication the line is getting blown up at the point of attack.
With the defense getting torched for 217 rushing yards by the Cardinals to drop to 30th in the league against the run, the Bills have been outrushed by their opponents 1,350 to 976.
Penalties remain a problem
The Bills are now No. 1 in the NFL in penalty yards with 641 and are No. 2 in accepted penalties with 68. Granted, heading into Monday night they are one of only five teams who have played 10 games, but you get the point. Sunday, there were some killers.
In the second quarter, third-and-13, Jerry Hughes jumped offside. The Cardinals went on to convert the third-and-8 and eventually drove to a field goal when they probably would have been punting without the penalty.
Third quarter, leading 23-19, a 21-yard pass from Allen to Singletary to the Cardinals 40 was wiped out by a brainless illegal block penalty by Dawson Knox. The Cardinals had already jumped offside so it was a free play, and then Knox committed a completely unnecessary penalty downfield. Offsetting penalties, scoring chance wasted when Allen’s next pass was picked off.
Fourth quarter, now down 26-23, a comedy of errors on one drive when the Bills committed four penalties for 35 yards. The two most glaring: Singletary’s personal foul as Allen was throwing the ball away to avoid a sack which created third-and-23. And on the next play, John Brown made a great catch for 24 yards and a first down, only to have it wiped out by a Brian Winters hold.
Those are the kinds of plays that add up and cost you games. Again, maybe it never comes down to the final play.
Quick hitters
Let’s not forget the Bills prevent defense approach on the three plays before the Hopkins lightning bolt. Murray completed three passes for 32 yards to give himself a chance at the end. Why teams give up easy yards like that simply makes no sense to me, ever. Ever. The Bills almost never get beat for the deep ball, so why were they so fearful there, enough to want to play prevent defense? Play the way you play for 60 minutes.
Singletary had a brutal day. In addition to his 15 rushing yards and penalty, he also dropped a second-quarter screen pass that looked like it could have been a big gainer. The sophomore jinx seems very real for him.
Cornerback Daryl Worley was forced to make his Bills’ debut when Dane Jackson got hurt. Let’s hope the 15 snaps he played are the last we’ll see of him. This is a guy who got cut by the Cowboys, who have one of the worst defenses in the NFL, but hey, he’s a former Panther, so there’s that.
Speaking of former Panthers, A.J. Klein had a pretty good game once again as he led the Bills with 11 tackles and had a sack. That said, Matt Milano better be healing well and ready to hit the ground running when his IR stint is up in early December.
Rookie WR Gabe Davis had a nice four-catch, 70-yard game against the Seahawks, but in the other four games since the loss to Tennessee, he has a combined two catches for 18 yards. He was blanked by the Cardinals and Patriots.
With Tyler Kroft sidelined because of COVID-19 close contact with Josh Norman, Knox had another opportunity to get his lackluster season going in the right direction. Instead, Allen attempted 49 passes and only three were targeted for Knox. Again, he’s just not helping the offense at all. His two catches were for 16 harmless yards, while his penalty cost the Bills 21 yards.
With Allen catching a TD pass, the Bills now have 11 players who have caught at least one this season. That’s a team record.
Tyler Bass, take a bow. That was one heck of a performance. Now, the big tests are coming as he will likely be confronted with kicking in cold, windy weather at home, and then under increasing pressure as the games get more and more meaningful. And make no mistake, after blowing this game, the final six are all going to be huge if the Bills hope to win the AFC East.
If there’s a silver lining for the Bills, unless these teams play in a Super Bowl, or Murray or Hopkins gets traded (unlikely), the Bills won’t have to deal with either one until the next time they play the NFC West in 2024. Good.
At RIT, Just a few weeks earlier, the Yankees had lost a heartbreaking American League divisional series to Seattle when the Mariners walked it off in the bottom of the 11th in the cacophonous Kingdome, Ken Griffey Jr. motoring home from second base with the second and deciding run on Edgar Martinez’s double into the left-field corner off Jack McDowell.
The Red Wings turned a 5-4 deficit into a 6-5 victory and sent the Yankees home in shock as they’d lost all three games in Seattle after winning the first two in New York.
The Amerks, this was someone who, in 18 years as a player had cobbled together a strong career and won the 1971 National League MVP, but he never made it to the playoffs, not even once, playing for the Braves, Cardinals and Mets.
Geneseo High School, as a manager he’d produced a mundane record of 894-1,003, a winning percentage of .471 with a lone postseason appearance in 1982 when his Braves won the NL West and then were swept out in three games by the Cardinals.
The 3-on-3 tournament, more than 30 years in the game, Torre had not enjoyed a single playoff victory. Meanwhile, Showalter had taken over a Yankees team that had reached a near all-time low in the early 1990s with three straight losing records including a last-place abomination of 67-95 in 1990.
All Len Dawson Needed Was Chance to Succeed
Five years is a long time to sit around doing nothing, so it stood to reason that when Len Dawson joined the Dallas Texans for the start of the 1962 AFL season, he wasn’t going to be very sharp.
“I was shocked at how bad he was at first,” said Texans coach Hank Stram, who only remembered Dawson as a star passer for Purdue when Stram served at that school as an assistant coach in the mid-1950s. “But I couldn’t help but realize that five years of sitting on the bench or manning telephones didn’t make a man sharp. It took him a couple years to get back into the groove. He was like sterling silver, the silver was there, but he had to be polished.”
Dawson had been a first-round draft choice of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers in 1957, but he spent his rookie season backing up Earl Morrall and then the next two years he was behind legendary Bobby Layne. He was traded to Cleveland in 1960 but all that got him was a seat on the bench behind Milt Plum.
After asking for and receiving his release from the Browns, Dawson cleared NFL waivers and called Stram, who had inquired about his services back in 1960 when the AFL first started operations.
“I wouldn’t say I spent five years in the NFL, I would say that I wasted them,” said Dawson, who attempted just 45 passes in those five years.
Dawson signed with the Texans and over the next 14 seasons he became one of the games’ greatest quarterbacks as he produced three AFL championships and a victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl IV which cemented his enshrinement into the Hall of Fame.
“I was terrible,” Dawson said of his first few weeks in the AFL. “If my coach had been anyone but Stram, who knew me from the past, I’m sure he’d have cut me.”
Stram stuck with Dawson and in that first year and Dawson went on to lead the AFL in completion percentage (61 percent) and TD passes (29) as the Texans won the Western Division and outlasted Houston in a classic double-overtime 1962 championship game.
He led the AFL or NFL eight times in completion percentage, and he is the AFL’s all-time leader in completion percentage (56.8) and TD passes (182). All the while he guided Lamar Hunt’s team — first in Dallas and then in Kansas City — with a calming influence and intellectual approach to the game that made him one of football’s most respected players.
“He keeps a lot to himself, he doesn’t have a lot of emotion, he keeps his cool,” said Chiefs safety Johnny Robinson.
Added offensive guard Ed Budde: “I’ve never heard him raise his voice. When you do something wrong, he just gives you that look and you know you better shape up.”
Dawson’s teammates called him Ajax, not after the Greek warrior, but after the cleanser. Dawson had this thing about keeping his uniform clean, and playing behind a line that included Budde, Jim Tyrer, Dave Hill and later in his career Jack Rudnay, he often remained spotless.
Never was Dawson’s clean uniform more in evidence than on the afternoon of Jan. 11, 1970 in New Orleans. That was the day Dawson and the Chiefs proved that the AFL was not a fluke and that the New York Jets’ shocking upset of Baltimore in Super Bowl III was indeed a sign that the two leagues were on par with each other. With Dawson completing 12 of 17 passes for 146 yards and a touchdown, the Chiefs throttled Minnesota 23–7 to win Super Bowl IV.
Another nickname his teammates bestowed upon him was Lenny the Cool, and that day he was like ice. The fearsome Minnesota defense led by Alan Page, Carl Eller and Jim Marshall couldn’t figure out what Dawson was going to do as he called a masterful game.
Dawson’s precision performance was all the more impressive considering the turmoil he had endured during the week. Just five days before kickoff, NBC reported that Dawson, Joe Namath of the Jets, Bill Munson of Detroit and Karl Sweetan of the Rams — all quarterbacks — were going to be called to appear before a Federal grand jury in Detroit which was investigating sports gambling.
Dawson’s involvement stemmed from his casual friendship with Donald Dawson (no relation), a known gambler and bookmaker who had been arrested a few days earlier. Dawson had been looked at by investigators as far back as 1968 due to his ties with Donald Dawson and he had been summoned by pro football commissioner Pete Rozelle to take a lie detector test. Dawson passed, and the league’s independent investigation exonerated Dawson of any wrongdoing, so when NBC aired its report, Rozelle was livid and called it, “totally irresponsible.”
“The entire week was an ordeal for me,” Dawson said following the game. “Unfortunately, it put a great deal of stress on me, and more so on my family, but I asked the good Lord to give me the strength and the courage to play my best.”
Afterward, it was left for losing coach Bud Grant to say that Dawson was, “underrated among so many stars.”
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