Buffalo Bills’ rout of Miami Dolphins send major statement around NFL
NFL Overreactions: Bills “squish the fish”, Bears are the worst team?
Sports Seriously’s Mackenzie Salmon ‘overreacts’ to the biggest storylines from Week 4 of the NFL season.
Now is not the time to declare the Buffalo Bills as destined to finally get over the hump this season and fulfill their promise for a Super Bowl mission.
As much a 48-20 beatdown of the Miami Dolphins on Sunday might have provided a glimpse of that – Josh Allen was amazing, Stefon Diggs was incredible, Sean McDermott’s defense was spectacular – it’s way too early to predict what will happen in January and February.
Yet it’s not too early to declare this: The Bills are still very much the kings of the AFC East.
That was the takeaway statement attached to the complete and dominating victory that puts Buffalo (3-1) back at the top of the division the franchise has won for three years running.
Yes, as previously unbeaten Miami (3-1) can attest, the road to winning the AFC East still goes through Orchard Park, New York. And it’s a treacherous road, indeed.
The Dolphins went up north on the heels of a historic victory that was stamped with 70 points, seemingly poised to win at Buffalo for the first time with Tua Tagovailoa. Uh, not so fast. They left town with a reality check.
Not here. Not now.
“Every week’s a different week,” said Allen, who threw for 320 yards and four touchdowns while posting a perfect 158.3 passer rating. “It doesn’t matter what you did last week or what you’re going to do next week.”
It’s certainly a week-to-week league, especially this time of year. It’s also striking to consider the perceived threats to the Bills status at the top of the hill in the AFC East.
Remember, the New York Jets looked positioned to make a Super Bowl run after dealing for Aaron Rodgers. Then Rodgers tore an Achilles tendon.
The Dolphins, meanwhile, averaged 43.3 points per game over the first three weeks, with Tagovailoa emerging as an early front-runner for MVP honors. Then Sunday happened.
“With a team that just scored 70, you know there’s going to be lot of hype,” Bills defensive end Greg Rousseau told reporters after the game. “You’ve got to go out and do it every week. This league kind of renews itself every week.”
The Bills have lived that theme, too. A few weeks ago, they were undone with opening-night jitters and one Allen pick after another in falling to the Jets. On Sunday, a week after clobbering Washington, they demonstrated a completeness that illustrated what can be achieved when they are at their best.
Allen? He threw just as many touchdown passes as he did incompletionson a 21-of-25 day, with no turnovers. He ran for another score and threw on the run a few times to show something about how to expertly extend a play.
Diggs? Another day wrapped in clutch moments. The stats: six receptions, 120 yards, 3 TDs. The sizzle: Nothing was sweeter than his 55-yard score in the second quarter, when he turned a basic stop route into something magical by spinning out of a would-be tackle and racing down the sideline.
The Bills even had more of a running game than usual (29 rushes, 104 yards), which is what they need consistently to support Allen and those championship visions. This time, they ran well enough early to set up the play-action passes, then ran well enough late in closing it out.
For all of offensive firepower, though, the defense may have been even more impressive.
All week, the Bills defenders heard about the prolific Miami offense. They saw the film, too. Then they went about the business of containing the designs of Mike McDaniel’s offense.
As prolific defensive tackle Ed Oliver noted, “Something we were doing was right.”
Indeed. That was reflected with the pressure on Tagovailoa, who was sacked just once and took just five quarterback hits during the first three weeks of the season. Buffalo sacked Tagovailoa four times and registered nine quarterback hits. He was also hurried at least a dozen times, had two passes deflected at the line of scrimmage and was intercepted on a hurried pass that sailed over the middle.
Buffalo, which entered the game by allowing the lowest passer rating in the league and ranked second in the NFL for scoring defense, added two more takeaways to its league-high total (11). Although the rushing yards were a bit much (19 carries, 142 yards), 55 came on one run by blazing rookie De’Von Achane. For the bulk of the game, the Bills defense was able to live up to its reputation for keeping big plays to a minimum. Miami’s longest passing play went for 23 yards.
By keeping the explosive plays in check with a mix of zone and man coverages and a tendency to disrupt patterns with contact on receivers at the line of scrimmage, Buffalo threw off Tagovailoa’s rhythm. It forced the quarterback to hold onto the football longer, which in turn fed Buffalo’s pass rush – especially after the Bills opened up a 17-point lead late in the second quarter.
No, this wasn’t the Broncos defense that Miami blistered a week earlier.
“We’re trying to wake everybody up and make people talk,” Oliver, who had a sack and two tackles for loss, said during his postgame news conference. “This defense is for real.”
That’s as good as any statement. At least for this week.
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