Buffalo Bills in Win-Now Mode After Crushing Week 12 Loss to Philadelphia Eagles
The Buffalo Bills only have themselves to blame for putting their backs against the wall.
On Sunday, the Bills blew a 10-point lead to the hosting Philadelphia Eagles. Despite having the ball first in overtime, they fell 37-34 and have found themselves at 6-6 through 12 weeks of action.
They’ll enter the bye without a playoff spot and a gauntlet of a schedule ahead of them.
Allen being tackled by an Eagles defender in the loss.
© Eric Hartline, USA TODAY
Buffalo will return from the week off to visit the Kansas City Chiefs. In the following weeks, they play the Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Chargers, New England Patriots, and Miami Dolphins. For those keeping track at home, that’s three teams with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations, another with an elite quarterback and playoff hopes on the line, and a matchup with a divisional rival that has already beaten them.
Herein lies the story of Buffalo’s season. A single slip-up against a bad team is excusable—it’s football, it happens every week. But this is a team that lost to the New York Jets, quarterbacked by Zach Wilson.
They also managed to make a porous New England team look competent in its best offensive performance of the season. If Patriots head coach Bill Belichick’s hot seat is any indication, that wasn’t a game playoff teams are supposed to lose.
Of course, their infamous special teams gaffe at the end of the Monday Night Football game against the Denver Broncos is bound to rear its head, especially with Denver playing themselves into the hunt.
The Bills’ late-season schedule wasn’t revealed to them at the trade deadline. They knew the tough games that lay ahead. In losing the games they shouldn’t have, they surrendered the breathing room that comes from losing to a No. 1 seed Eagles team.
Frankly, a 10-point lead at halftime qualifies as a game one should win, too.
The referees undoubtedly had an impact on this one. But miscommunications, untimely decisions, and more special teams struggles did, too.
At 6-6, Buffalo is in dire straits and all but out of the race in the AFC East. A blowout win over a putrid Jets team wasn’t enough to truly get the Bills back on track and, even with a 500-yard offensive performance, it still seemed like a matter of time before quarterback Josh Allen would give Philadelphia a chance to win.
With a fourth-quarter interception and an unsuccessful overtime drive, he did just that. He largely played (very) well, but how many times will Bills fans be subject to the same story? They have a dwindling shot to make the playoffs, and the road ahead won’t help their odds.
At this point, any further mishaps could very well end football season early in Western New York. Appoint blame however you’d like.
