Bills battle back but lose to Rams in highest-scoring game of NFL season

Posted by Admin December 9, 2024 NFL

Spread the love

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Few teams have been as impressive as the Buffalo Bills over the past two months, so it was probably inevitable that it was their turn to lose a game not many people thought they would lose.

It happens every week in the NFL, and this time it happened to the Bills.

Not without a fight, mind you, as they battled back from a 17-point fourth-quarter deficit to make it close, but the defense – as it did all day – failed on the Rams’ game-clinching possession and Buffalo lost a thrilling 44-42 shootout to the Los Angeles Rams Sunday afternoon at SoFi Stadium.

Still, while there was certainly a hushed tone in the locker room afterward, to a man the Bills do not believe this is something that can derail them down the stretch. After all, they had won 15 straight December/January regular season games, and karma would dictate that that couldn’t last forever.

“I think we’re all (ticked) off that we lost, but we’re not sitting here pressing the panic button by no means,” defensive tackle DaQuan Jones said. “How we played got us to where we are, and there’s stuff we can clean up, sure, but I’m not gonna sit here and press the panic button. We’re still a pretty damn good football team.”

That’s true, they are, as Jones said, a damn good football team, one that is a five-time AFC East champion and now sitting at 10-3 which is nothing to sniff at. But they were not a damn good football team Sunday, not by a long shot.

The Bills played as egregiously bad on defense as we’ve seen in quite a while, they mixed in a colossal special teams breakdown that resulted in a touchdown, and not even a magnificent six-touchdown, 424-yard performance by Josh Allen could prevent the 7-6 Rams – desperately needing a victory to keep pace in the tangled NFC West race – from ending Buffalo’s seven-game winning streak.

How crazy was this result? Entering Sunday, teams with at least six touchdowns and zero giveaways in a game were 245-0 in the Super Bowl era (including playoffs).

There was really nothing that would have indicated something like this was coming, especially against a Rams offense that had reached 30 points just once this season, but coach Sean McVay – who is often considered a genius offensive play-caller – had it all working against overmatched Bobby Babich in this one.

It was stunning to watch Rams receivers, primarily Puka Nacua, running wide open all day because if there’s one thing the Bills have always prided themselves on, it’s preventing teams from lighting them up through the air.

“He’s a very good player,” cornerback Taron Johnson said of Nacua, who had 12 catches for 162 yards and scored two TDs. “Contested catches and a strong player. Very good.”

Johnson admitted he played poorly, but so did several other defensive backs, and the Bills also got a complete no show from their defensive line as the pass rush was non-existent. Raise your hand if you noticed Von Miller, Greg Rousseau or Ed Oliver once as they never sacked, nor barely touched, 36-year-old Rams QB Matthew Stafford.

No pass rush, shoddy coverage, missed tackles on too many running plays. Add that up and you get what happened to the Bills.

“Yeah, obviously not good enough,” linebacker Terrel Bernard said. “Didn’t play to our standard, didn’t play well enough to win at all. We feel like the offense kept us in the game the whole way through, gave us the opportunity and we just couldn’t get it done. So we’ll go back, look at it, watch the tape, learn from it, and get better and move on.”

And yet, the Bills were within 38-35 when Allen – who played heroically – hit Mack Hollins with a gorgeous 21-yard TD pass with 8:49 left to play. The defense had a chance to finally contribute by getting a stop and giving Allen a chance for a possession to take the lead.

Instead, Stafford trotted back onto the field and put together an 11-play, 71-yard drive that chewed up 6:55 and salted the game away with a 19-yard TD pass to Nacua, capping an outrageous 12-catch, 162-yard, two-touchdown day for Nacua.

On that drive, the Bills had a chance to get off the field with just under six minutes left, but Ja’Marcus Ingram – on in place of injured Rasul Douglas – was flagged for interference on Nacua.

Later, despite facing third-and-16, the Rams found their way out when Stafford hit Colby Parkinson and Tutu Atwell for back-to-back 11-yard gains. And then on third-and-5, Nacau beat Ingram for his TD, the Rams 11th third-down conversion in 14 tries.

“Yeah, they did a good job up front,” coach Sean McDermott said. “Their run game and then they converted a lot of third downs. We gotta get off the field and get the ball back to Josh. You saw what he can do. So we gotta do a better job. I thought we lost two of the three phases today.”

Even then, the Bills went right down the field in 54 seconds and scored as Allen hit big passes, benefited from a pass interference call on fourth-and-15, and scored on a QB sneak.

However, the Bills made an awful mistake on the play before the TD as Joe Brady called a sneak which the Rams stopped, and that forced McDermott to call one of his three timeouts. That left them with only two, and once they failed to recover the onside kick, the Rams were able to run out all but the final seven seconds.

“You have two options, basically. Neither are great, right?” McDermott said. “So when you’re in that situation with holding three timeouts, felt like with the ball, felt like we (were) underneath kind of a time overall where we felt like we could get the ball back with a legit chance to win the game with no timeouts. Having said that, we used what we thought was our best play all year, which is the one-yard quarterback sneak by Josh. Had to use a timeout. Just felt like that was the best course of action for us right there. Neither of them are great choices in that situation.”

Brady made the wrong call on the first sneak; that had to be a pass play to preserve the timeout, and then McDermott made the wrong call taking the timeout. The Bills should have either hustled to get off the next play, or even spike the ball to kill the clock because it would only have been third down.

“In theory, probably,” Allen said when asked if the Bills should have called a first-down pass play. “But it’s in the heat of the battle and I have to find a way to get into the end zone.”

The AFC East champion Bills have now dropped to 10-3 and are tied for the No. 2 seed in the AFC with the Pittsburgh Steelers who got to that mark with a victory over the Browns earlier Sunday.

And thanks to the Chiefs getting incredibly lucky once again and beating the Chargers Sunday night on a final-play field goal that clanged off the left upright but still found its way to the promised last, the Bills are two games behind Kansas City in the race for the No. 1 seed, and though they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker, time is running out with just four games left to play.

“Yeah, I mean, they’re the top dog in football right now,” Allen said of the Lions. “They’re playing extremely well so we got to have a good week and learn from this one, put it behind us. But that was a good team that we just played with a really good quarterback, and they played with urgency at this point in the season.”

Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades including 35 years as the full-time beat writer for the D&C, and he has written numerous books about the history of the team. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social. Sign up for his Bills Blast newsletter here: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast