Thad Brown: This the most impressive win of McDermott era
It was reasonable to doubt how legitimately good the Bills 2024 season was.
They won ten of their first 13 games and that included handing the mighty Chiefs their only loss. The next best victory? That was probably in Seattle with the Seahawks missing one of their top weapons. Or maybe 6-8 Miami. The AFC East has been disappointing this year. The NFC West is mediocre. The AFC South is not good after the Texans and even Houston has major flaws. Those teams made up nine of Buffalo's first ten wins. The Bills resume was not dripping with championship validation.
Those doubts vanished Sunday evening in Detroit after the Bills put together the most impressive regular season win of the Sean McDermott era.
Buffalo didn't just win a game. They buried the Lions. Forget the final score. This was an epic whooping. Better yet, the Bills hammered Detroit at their own game.
The Lions are well known as a physical team. Dan Campbell. Biting knee caps. The whole bit. On this day, the Bills were more physical. Decisively. Buffalo threw a haymaker right after kickoff that staggered the Lions. From there, all McDermott's team had to do was lean on Detroit until they finally fell over.
Before Sunday, no team had held the Lions under 100 yards rushing as a team. The Bills didn't let Detroit even reach 50. The Bills themselves ran the ball for nearly 200 yards. The Bills had three sacks. The Lions had none (though they did force an intentional grounding).
I don't think Detroit expected or was prepared for the pounding the Bills dished out at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. Detroit began the week with the third most rushes in the NFL. They gave the ball to running backs only 13 times against the Bills and nearly threw sixty passes.
Success rate is a term that has become popular among the more serious of football analysts. On first down and ten, a play is a success if it gains four yards. The Bills began the game successful on 8 of 11 first down handoffs. The Lions started 2 of 7. One team was constantly in comfortable down and distances. The other spent the day pushing a boulder uphill.
This shouldn't be a surprise with the Bills offense. The run game hasn't been a consistent success, especially lately. It has still been the best non-Josh Allen rushing year for the Bills since they added Josh Allen. James Cook hit his third 40 yard-plus touchdown run of the season. He only had one run of 40 or more in his career before this year. The offense in general and the offensive line in particular has proven this team can win games relying on the run. It's no shock they won the day, even against a top ten rush defense.
The performance of the defense is the drive off the road level revelation.
Buffalo defensive players talked all week about stopping the run. Without much prompting required. A commitment to stopping the run doesn't mean much in words only. Give Bobby Babich credit. He brought more than words. He got the Bills out of their nickel base defense a few times and played a third linebacker. He brought numbers to the run defense throughout the first couple quarters. It wasn't every single snap, but it was more than enough to crank that Lions offensive machine to a halt.
Where have you been Ed Oliver? According to Next Gen stats, he had 10 quarterback pressures against the Lions. That's the most for any defensive tackle this year. Those pressures turned into a drive killing sack-fumble and doubled his sack from one to two.
Oliver has not been a bad player this year. The Bills spent all last week talking about how much impact Oliver makes that don't show up in the stats. That's true to some degree, but it's also true that Oliver has not played up to the standard of his recent seasons.
This game was different. This game was Oliver being a constant terror. Oliver at this level solves a whole bunch of the Bills issues on defense.
He wasn't the only player that raised his game in Detroit. There was also Star Receiver Ty Johnson who now owns 25 percent of all 100-yard receiving games for the Bills this year. This is a well liked depth guy who does plenty of dirty work as a blocker becoming the latest beneficiary of "Everybody Eats". Johnson has flashed his worth as a receiver a number of time this season. His hero game Sunday is as much a credit to Joe Brady as Johnson.
The Lions have three different linebackers on injured reserve. A fourth sat out the Bills game with injury. Detroit was forced to use Kwon Alexander and David Long extensively against the Bills. Both guys arrived in Detroit only last month. Add Jamal Adams to this discussion and that's a good chunk of the central Lions pass defense that's basically brand new.
Brady exploited them. Bills running backs and tight ends had eight(!) receptions of 19 yards or more. Johnson had half of them. Brady's favorite tendency is to find something that works and beat it like a drum until the other team stops it. I'm looking forward to reviewing the film and finding out how thoroughly he undressed the unfamiliar creamy center of the Lions defense.
That wasn't all the good for Brady in this game. He's had a few fourth down winners this year that were so open, Allen could have completed them left handed. The deep ball to Johnson in this game was another. I also loved the inside flip to Khalil Shakir at the goal line. It wasn't a perfect day. If this game got away from the Bills, I'd be spending 50 percent of my column space discussing the decision not to QB sneak on the goal line at the end of the first half. Fortunately for Brady and the Bills, the good far outweighed the bad.
It always helps when you have Josh Allen. Especially Josh Allen playing at this level. McDermott said it was the best he's seen Allen play. I'd agree. I've already said I think this is the best season Allen has had. This was the best game of that best season.
My favorite ridiculous Allen stat--for this game--was that he had 116 yards passing in the first half alone throwing balls from right next to the sideline. Outside the solid, but unspectacular runs in the first half, the Lions actually did a nice job defending the Bills conventional offense. There wasn't a ton of drop back and fire winners for Allen early. It didn't matter. He extended the play until he could turn it into a winner.
This was 430 total yards and four combined touchdowns and it was the bad game of the last two. More to the point, a pretty good defense--albeit somewhat beat up--had absolutely no answer for Allen. The Bills opened the game with three touchdown drives and only even went to third down twice. The run game kept the offense on schedule and Allen did the rest. If this were pee wee football, Allen would have needed to be moved up an age group after the game.
All this was without having much need for wide receivers. Top wideout Amari Cooper did not even have a single target. Shakir did his thing, but it was a fairly mundane six catches for 39 yards. Keon Coleman's return was just making sure not to drop Allen's 60 yard heave. Mack Hollins and Curtis Samuel combined for only eight yards. Allen is playing so bleeping well, Brady can burn an entire chunk of the playbook and the Bills still nearly put up 50.
It's a bit silly that the Allen part of this space was so many paragraphs deep. He's going to be the MVP and even the term "MVP" feels undervalued to describe this Allen game. His impact is always going to be at a paragraph one level.
This was almost a top to bottom roster win for the Bills. No doubt the leaking dam of yards and points at the end of the game tarnishes things a bit. Sure, the Bills were in prevent defense and holding on to a win and missing three pieces of their starting secondary, but the Lions ended the game with four touchdown drives and only needed more than 122 seconds for one of them. If you're going to run prevent defense, it should at least prevent something.
The Bills talked in the locker room extensively about needing a response to the Rams loss. David Edwards specifically complimented McDermott on his ability to ease player minds. Whatever the method, McDermott had a team that's often started slow ready for bear this week. The Bills opened this game forcing two quick punts and scoring two touchdowns. It's a hole from which Detroit never recovered.
That was no small task. This was a team that got back late from the west coast, which mandated a walk through only on Wednesday. Then, the Bills had to cancel practice Thursday due to the snow. After a week with zero full practices, Buffalo was still prepared to handle arguably the NFL's best team. Dawson Knox said the lack of practices actually did leave the team feeling fresher. He even joked that "Zoom Thursdays" might be something he'll push McDermott to continue.
After this game, the argument for NFL's best team will likely land on the Bills. This is an offense that's now scored 40 points in back to back weeks after scoring 30 in five of the six games before that. In fact, they've only been held below 30 points three times all year. This is a defense that maybe, finally figured out a formula for stopping the run. It's a defense that should get healthier after missing Rasul Douglas and both safeties for this Detroit pasting. Matt Milano is another major cog where the arrow should be pointed up.
The next three weeks might be glorified preseason. The Patriots and Jets are no where near Buffalo's class. Division games can get weird, but Allen appears at a level too incredible to let any of them slip away. The door is certainly open to Buffalo landing the 1-seed thanks to Patrick Mahomes' ankle injury. Even if that happens, the drama could easily be more watching the scoreboard waiting to see if Kansas City drops two of their last three than anything on the field with the Bills.
The heavy lifting for the regular season appears over. The Bills have proven all they can about their Super Bowl potential without actually getting there. They have dominated a litany of good and bad teams alike. They have showed they can win the biggest of games against the toughest of opponents. Home and away.
All that's left is to do it three times in January.