A deeper dive into Buffalo Bills’ first-half woes against Tennessee Titans in Week 8

A tale of two halves: It was the worst of times before the best of them followed.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the age of play-calling wisdom, it was the age of coaching foolishness, it was the epoch of disbelief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was hopefully the season of light.

At the risk of modifying too much of Charles Dickens’ seminal work “A Tale of Two Cities” — I will simply note that it was a tale of two halves for the Buffalo Bills against the Tennessee Titans on Sunday afternoon. The Bills stumbled their way to a 10-0 deficit early in the game, with their offense mustering a pitiful three consecutive three-and-outs before a broken play to Keon Coleman help set up their only touchdown of the half.

And then the second half happened. The Titans (in what can only be described as a hilarious ode to their namesake film) didn’t score another point. Buffalo, on the other hand, scored 27 of their 34 total points. Quarterback and current MVP candidate Josh Allen threw for 258 yards in the second half after throwing for just 65 yards while going 4-of-11 in the opening two stanzas.

So what happened?

Allen took the the podium and said on two occasions that “first- and second-down efficiency” was a key contributor to the rough start and that he had to do a better job cleaning it up and getting the team into the right plays.

With all due respect to every single player and coach in the NFL, we can’t really trust what they say at a press conference without any Ronald Reagan-esque follow-up verification. So let’s do just that.

We’re going to dive into all the offensive play results in the first half throughout the game to see if it really is as simple as not being effective on early downs as a main cause of the offensively slow start for the team. We’ll manually track success rate (defined as “40% of the necessary yards for a conversion on first down, 60% of the necessary yards for conversion on second down, and a conversion on third/fourth downs”):

First drive

• 1st & 10 — James Cook run over the left guard for five yards. (SUCCESS)
• 2nd & 5 — James Cook run up the middle for four yards. (SUCCESS)
• 3rd & 1 — Josh Allen throws to Amari Cooper; dropped pass. (FAIL)

Second drive

• 1st and 10 — Josh Allen out route to Dawson Knox; complete, gain of five. (SUCCESS)
• Penalty on left tackle Dion Dawkins for a false start.
• 2nd and 10 — Josh Allen incomplete short pass to Curtis Samuel; deflected at the line. (FAIL)
• 3rd and 10 — Josh Allen throws deep to Keon Coleman during a scramble. (FAIL)

Third drive

• 1st and 10 — James Cook rush over left guard for 5 yards. (SUCCESS)
• 2nd and 5 —...