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.
Stat of the week
13. That’s how many consecutive years the New York Jets have missed the playoffs, a streak that officially grew by one when the Jets lost to Tagovailoa on Sunday and the rest of the AFC playoff picture failed to break their way. One consequence is that quarterback Aaron Rodgers seems even less likely to return this season. Rodgers has made noise since his Week 1 achilles tear about mounting a shocking early return and playing this season, out of either a desire to help the Jets, burnish his credentials as a master of healing, or both. But Rodgers has also hinted that he might not return if the Jets are not in playoff contention, and Sunday’s loss took care of that. The 5-9 Jets will probably want to try again with Rodgers in 2024, but in any event, they’ll need a better backup than the miserable Zach Wilson. Rodgers’ immediate injury may not have doomed the franchise to such a lousy season if his bosses had put a better insurance policy in place behind him.
Video of the week
Justin Fields’ three years in the NFL have been up and (more frequently) down, but the Chicago Bears’ young quarterback has put together a lot of nice plays of late. The story of a 20-17 loss to the Cleveland Browns was Fields making incredible plays that his pass-catchers (usually) failed to turn into anything. Case in point: a game-closing Hail Mary heave that fell into the arms of receiver Darnell Mooney, before Mooney literally kicked the ball away for a game-ending interception. There was good news, however: Maybe the finest touchdown pass of Fields’ career came in the first half, when Fields found himself under immense pressure, ran off to his right, then back to his left, and delivered a strike in the corner of the end zone to tight end Cole Kmet. The Bears must soon decide whether to pick up the fifth-year option on Fields’ rookie deal, which would extend his time under contract through 2025. With so much of the league in need of passable QB play, Fields will have value whether the Bears keep him or jettison him for a rookie like North Carolina’s Drake Maye or Southern California’s Caleb Williams.
HOLY OH MY GOD pic.twitter.com/l6fbNhvmW8
— NFL (@NFL) December 17, 2023
Elsewhere around the league
• With impending Rookie of the Year quarterback CJ Stroud out with a concussion, the Houston Texans went on the road and beat the Tennessee Titans 19-16 on a last-second field goal in overtime by Ka’imi Fairbairn. The Texans improved their playoff position in an astonishing comeback season under first-year coach DeMeco Ryans, and their fans got a measure of revenge, too: The Titans wore throwback Houston Oilers uniforms, nodding to the identity the franchise had before it packed up and left Houston for Nashville. On Sunday, the Titans lost to the expansion franchise that replaced the Oilers in their old city. Football can, at times, be poetic.
• The Atlanta Falcons slipped further into disappointment. Playing a miserable Carolina Panthers outfit that brought in a 1-12 record, the Falcons couldn’t gain traction in a Charlotte rainstorm and mustered just one touchdown drive in a 9-7 loss. Carolina’s rookie quarterback, No 1 overall pick Bryce Young, struggled immensely as usual in front of a nearly nonexistent crowd. But the Panthers’ franchise player did lead a slogging 17-play, 85-yard touchdown drive as time was winding down. Eddy Pineiro’s 23-yard field goal as the clock expired was the difference. The Falcons moved to 7-7, squandering a major chance in the race for the awful NFC South division. With the loss, head coach Arthur Smith, who went 7-10 in each of his first two seasons, made it less likely that he’d get a fourth year in the job.
• The Pittsburgh Steelers, just three weeks ago, looked to be pulling off an astonishing tightrope walk. The club’s offense had been miserable, and the defense had its own problems, but the Steelers were 7-4 after a litany of mostly inexplicable victories in close games. Better yet, quarterbacks around the AFC North were dropping like flies, with only the Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson joining Pittsburgh’s Kenny Pickett among healthy starters. But everything has gone to hell in a handbasket for the Steelers, who lost back-to-back games to the last-place Arizona Cardinals and New England Patriots and then, this weekend, got out to a 13-0 lead at the Indianapolis Colts before getting outscored 27-0 the rest of the way. Much of Pittsburgh’s media and fanbase now advocate for an outcome that seemed unthinkable earlier this year: splitting with future Hall of Fame coach Mike Tomlin, who won a Super Bowl in 2008 and has still never had a losing season in 16 years on the job and counting. At 7-7, that streak is in danger.
