Buffalo Rumblings
This couldn’t have ended any other way, right? In becoming the oldest person to play a game for the Buffalo Bills, it was the newly signed Matt Prater who gave Bills Mafia the win they had no idea was possible. Buffalo just won a game down 15 points with less than five minutes in regulation. How is that even possible?
I’ll be honest, I was ready to write about why losing Week 1 wasn’t the end of the world; that championships aren’t decided in the first game. I was prepared to say that losing this game was actually the better outcome for the Bills. Why? Quite simply because the alternative was that by winning, the team might not feel the same urgency to address the defensive gorillas in the room.
To be clear, everyone paying attention understands there are demons hiding in that defense of Buffalo’s. But there’s time to discuss that and other misgivings in another space. Well most of them, anyway. We’ll get to the two-point decisions below.
Buffalo is now 1-0, with 16 single-game regular season scenarios left to play into January. The Bills won a game they had zero business winning. But someone forgot to tell Josh Allen. I’d been asking the team about Allen’s biggest comeback win, wondering why we hadn’t often discussed the subject before that point. The reason is because the Bills haven’t often found themselves in dire straights since Allen took over.
Never, ever… ever count out Josh Allen. That was his message to the fans during the postgame interview with Melissa Stark, imploring those who left Highmark Stadium early while Buffalo was down 40-25 to “Have some faith next time.”
The Ravens just lost their first game when scoring 40 points, now sporting a 25-1 record. Baltimore’s certain Hall of Fame running back, sir Derrick Henry, did everything he could to remind the Bills that they weren’t going to stop him. Yet when it mattered most, Henry forgot to take the football along for the full ride. He allowed Ed Oliver to give the ball back to Josh Allen.
Where the Bills couldn’t stop anything the Ravens did offensively through almost 56 minutes of play, and offensive coordinator Joe Brady looked like he was hiding the playbook for another week — suddenly everyone woke up. Or perhaps more likely, Josh Allen just decided to turn off his COMM unit, and used the fans’ exit as fuel to power a win. Josh Allen did Josh Allen things.
Remember, Allen knows well what it means to be doubted, to be the underdog. Allen also understands all he’s capable of doing on a football field; that nothing is impossible with time on the clock. Think about all the unbelievable plays that were made, including rookie third-string blocking tight end Jackson Hawes’ huge catch, and Keon Coleman’s tipped-pass touchdown.
The truth is that winning this game was massively important for both teams. To the winner goes the spoils, and also a potentially different trajectory leading...
