ATLANTA - Things can change quickly in the National Football League.
Nine days ago, the Buffalo Bills entered their Week 5 matchup with the New England Patriots as the only undefeated team in the league.
Today the Bills are 4-2, the second-place team in the AFC East, and headed into a bye week on their first two-game losing streak in more than a year facing plenty of questions.
Many of those come from a perplexing loss Monday night to the Atlanta Falcons in which the 24-14 score greatly flattered the visitors.
Where to begin on things that went wrong for the Bills on this night?
Start with 299 yards surrendered to Falcons running back Bijan Robinson and receiver Drake London in the first half – the two players the Bills knew they had to limit in order to come away with a win in Atlanta on Monday Night Football.
Then there were the penalties, which have become an issue for three consecutive weeks, erasing a turnover on the game’s first play by Atlanta and later erasing a sack one play before Robinson ran 81 yards for a touchdown.
The one bit of good news for the Bills Monday night was that their defence rebounded during the second half despite a slew of injuries, opening the door for a comeback.
For a Josh Allen-led offence, that is often all it takes.
But the Bills’ offence looked out of sync for the second week in a row, failing to establish the run during the first half. Allen managed to buy time with his legs on a number of plays, but frequently came away without an open target to throw to.
Allen’s two interceptions happened at the end of each half, and neither was a backbreaker. But after going an NFL-record 26 consecutive games without losing the turnover battle, Buffalo has now lost it two weeks in a row.
But the turnovers are almost the least of the offence’s problems, given how ragged and disjointed the Bills appeared when they had the ball.
Some of this can be explained by injury, with tight end Dalton Kincaid out with an oblique, receiver Curtis Samuel out with a neck issue, and Canadian receiver Josh Palmer exiting during the first quarter with a knee ailment.
That said, consider that the Bills had three drives end near midfield during a second half in which they trailed by just one score and couldn’t execute short-yardage plays on third or fourth down that would have allowed those drives to continue.
One resulted in Allen shot-putting the ball with pressure in his face, one was a fumbled jet sweep to Elijah Moore (the second week in a row that play has failed in similar situations) and one was a pass to Moore along the sideline where the quarterback and receiver were clearly not on the same page.
That’s bad offence – something we haven’t seen often from the Bills in recent times, especially with a game on the line.
If there’s consolation to be found for Buffalo in these two losses it’s that despite losing the turnover battle, despite not being able to stop the other team’s best players on offence and despite multiple mistakes throughout, the Bills were in both games until the very end.
The difference in winning and losing each week in the NFL can be slim, and the Bills have illustrated that in five of their six games, with their only convincing win coming over the winless New York Jets by a 30-10 score in Week 2.
But after a miraculous comeback to beat Baltimore in Week 1, the Bills faced real second-half threats against the Miami Dolphins and New Orleans Saints, making their road to 4-0 a little soft.
Since then, it’s been back-to-back losses to 2-2 teams that exposed the Bills in ways we did not see during the season’s first four weeks.
There are reinforcements coming on the defensive side of the ball, with suspended defensive linemen Larry Ogunjobi and Michael Hoecht eligible to return from suspension after the bye. Hoecht, an Oakville, Ont. native, plays a hybrid role on defence and can serve many roles and could be just what this group needs.
But will it be enough?
The point here isn’t that the Bills are a bad football team. They’re just a team that has played bad football the past two weeks, after – by their own admission – playing less than their best football during their 4-0 stretch to open the season.
In the NFL, the schedule always ensures that those kinds of things will catch up with you.
But the expectations in Buffalo are clear.
This is a team that expects to compete for a Super Bowl, which means playing at an elite level on both sides of the ball. Right now, the Bills aren’t meeting that standard. Not even close.
And while Allen said Monday night the past two weeks will eat at him during the bye, perhaps some time for self-reflection is just what this team needs.
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