The Buffalo Bills suffered a very tough loss on Sunday, losing 44-42 to the Los Angeles Rams despite Josh Allen totaling an NFL record three rushing and three passing touchdowns. The final two minutes of the game were particularly painful for Bills Mafia, as several blunders caused the team's already-slim win probability to plummet into the abyss.
First, Josh Allen was stuffed on a quarterback sneak at the goal line with one minute left and the Bills down two scores. The play call (and failure to score) forced them to use a timeout, which cornered the Bills into attempting an onside kick—an entirely avoidable scenario if Buffalo had merely chosen to call a pass play instead.
The Bills, of course, fell victim to the numbers and failed to recover the onside kick. The Rams ran three plays to force Buffalo to use the final timeouts remaining and were faced with a fourth-down with seven seconds on the clock. Los Angeles elected to punt to waste the last moments of the contest and successfully did so, with punter Ethan Evans booting a high kick that bled the clock dry.
Before the punt, though, the Bills confused everybody one last time by appearing to line up in a standard return formation instead of going all-out to block the kick, which was their only chance to win the game at that point.
Afterwards, Sean McDermott was asked why his team didn't go for the block and the win. He revealed the costly substitution mistake that sealed the Bills' fate: Buffalo failed to get 11 men on the field for the last play of the game.
Bills coach Sean McDermott on why they didn’t go for a punt block or return on the final play of the game: “We didn’t have enough guys on the field.”
— Alaina Getzenberg (@agetzenberg) December 9, 2024
It turns out the Bills only had nine players to try and block the punt. While it does not explain why those players didn't try to block the punt anyway, it does illuminate the disastrous final moments of Buffalo's loss. With the game on the line the team couldn't even get a full unit on the turf.
A tough one to swallow for the Bills in every regard.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Sean McDermott Reveals Costly Substitution Error That Sealed Bills' Loss to Rams.
