Buffalo Rumblings
It’s that time of the year: The Bizarro Bills built an early lead, and held on late to defeat the Cleveland Browns in Week 16. After making late-game surges commonplace over the last month of the 2025 NFL regular season, the Buffalo Bills decided to turn on the jets a little bit earlier in their victory over the Cleveland Browns.
It didn’t necessarily look like that would be the case early on. Buffalo’s defense opened the game by giving up a rookie-to-rookie touchdown to tight end Harold Fannin from quarterback Shedeur Sanders. The Bills’ offense saw early success against Cleveland’s defense on the ground and hit a home run 44-yard touchdown with running back James Cook III. However, the Browns again marched down the field and were averaging over eight yards per play over their first two drives before a pass slightly behind running back Quinshon Judkins ricocheted in the air and landed in the arms of returning Buffalo safety Jordan Poyer.
The Bills may have watched new kicker Michael Badgley miss an extra point, but they took the lead after that interception and held onto it. That led to a less-stressful outing for Bills Mafia as they improved their record to 11-4 on the season.
Sanders, trying to make his case to be part of the Browns’ starting quarterback plan for 2026, started 10-of-13 to open the game, but went 2-of-5 with two interceptions over his next seven throws as the Bills built a 23-10 lead.
Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady engaged the quarterback run earlier than they have over the last few games. Josh Allen’s ankle injury at the end of the first half (in which he only attempted seven passes) put a damper on that for the second half, but the buttons Buffalo had been pressing in the third quarter over the last third of the season were being pressed earlier as part of a concerted effort from the team to get off to a faster start and not put themselves behind the eight ball early. Coming into the game, the Bills were the only team with a winning record with negative point differential in the first half (-29).
Regarding the pass rush, it was a simultaneously a great story and a disappointing one: the Browns were missing four of their opening five starters on the offensive line, and the Bills didn’t generate the type of pressure (against a quarterback known for holding the ball too long) that would give confidence that their slacking pass rush will come to life late in the year. The positives: they did get their hands on multiple passes (two of which led to interceptions) and with the length of players like defensive tackle Deone Walker and defensive end Gregory Rousseau, that may need to be a path to pass game disruption for the defensive line moving forward.
And Rousseau delivered two of Buffalo’s three sacks late in the game in big moments to help the defense hang on. Despite their lack...
