Last week I said the Monday night trip to Minnesota would tell me more about the Bills than the Baltimore game did. It told me a little. Buffalo won 23-6, moved to 7-1, and held a team that came in 6-1 to two field goals. The catch is the same one as last week: the other team’s starting quarterback didn’t play.
Kyler Murray hurt his hamstring on a run late in the Vikings’ loss at Detroit, and Minnesota decided not to risk it, so Carson Wentz started. It went about as badly as it could have. Wentz finished 8-of-25 for 81 yards with two interceptions, and Max Brosmer came in for the final drive with the game long decided. The Vikings had 178 total yards and ran 46 offensive plays to Buffalo’s 79. They came in averaging 20 points and around 280 yards a game.
The defense still deserves real credit, because it took the ball away three times. Greg Rousseau recovered a Wentz fumble in the first quarter after Buffalo challenged a call that had been ruled an incomplete pass, and that set up a field goal. Dorian Williams picked off a deep ball at the Buffalo 11 early in the third quarter, and Terrel Bernard intercepted Wentz at the Buffalo 34 later in the quarter. Minnesota never got closer than the Buffalo 25 until the last two minutes.
Now the context check. Before this game, the Bills defense was allowing almost 26 points a game. Its two best performances of the year have now come in back-to-back weeks against a third-string rookie in Baltimore and a backup in Minnesota. I’m happy about both. I’m also not ready to say the defense is fixed until it does this against a starting quarterback who can move the ball.
The offense is the part that tells me something. Minnesota’s defense had been giving up about 13 points a game, and the Bills put up 23 on the road. James Cook carried it 31 times for 107 yards, and the fourth-quarter drive that iced it went 15 plays and finished with Cook running it in from 5 yards out. Allen went 21-of-31 for 234 yards and hit Keleki Latu for a 25-yard touchdown with under a minute left in the first half to make it 10-3.
It wasn’t clean. Allen threw an interception on a third-and-23 that Byron Murphy returned 54 yards, and he got sacked four times. One of those sacks looked like a fumble that Minnesota recovered at the Buffalo 1, and only a replay review saved the Bills from giving up a cheap touchdown. The offensive line was flagged for a pile of false starts, and Buffalo finished with eight penalties for 62 yards. The red zone was a problem again too. The third-quarter drive reached the Minnesota 6 and ended with a 25-yard Tyler Bass field goal. Bass made all three of his kicks, including one from 52.
Last week I said field goals wouldn’t be enough up there. Against Wentz they were. Against Murray, I’m not sure they would have been.
The Bills are 7-1, and the only loss is still that Week 4 game against New England. Next is the Jets on the road, and New York is 2-7, so anything less than a comfortable win would bother me. Speaking as a Lions fan too, I appreciated the Bills knocking Minnesota back to 6-2 and into a tie with Detroit. That made for a good Monday night on both counts.
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