Coming into Sunday’s divisional round game, the Buffalo Bills ranked third in Football Outsiders’ Defensive Adjusted Line Yards metric, which is to say that their run defense has been quite good all season. They’ve stuffed opposing runners on 25% of all plays (stuffs are tackles at or behind the line of scrimmage), which leads the league, and they’ve been one of the best teams in power situations — they haven’t allowed a ton of runs on third or fourth down, two yards or less to go, that achieved a first down or touchdown.
So, it stood to reason that even though Cincinnati Bengals running back Joe Mixon is a top-quality player, the Bills would have Cincinnati’s running game on lock. Through the first two Bengals drives of the game — both of which ended in Joe Burrow touchdown passes — Mixon had five carries for 34 yards, and it was the ways in which Mixon was able to make big gains on two specific plays that should have Buffalo’s defense worried.
