“Ultimately we didn’t make enough plays to win this game,” Moore said. “That’s a really good football team. That team is going to play late into this season. We put ourself in position, I felt like we were competing. We were playing the right way, we just came up short.
“We’ve just got to keep on going. We’ve got to keep going, we’ve got to keep battling. We’ve missed four (opportunities to win games), you’re given 13 more of these and we’ve just got to keep getting better and put ourselves in good position.”
New Orleans put itself in position Sunday by doing much of what it needed to do.
The Saints ran well — 189 yards and a touchdown on 34 carries, with Alvin Kamara (70 yards), Kendre Miller (65) and Rattler (49) combining to average 5.8 yards per carry.
Rattler played another clean game (18 of 27 for 126 yards and a 3-yard touchdown pass to Chris Olave, with no interceptions).
New Orleans controlled its penalty situation, committing just four for 41 yards (after committing 11 last week), and was efficient enough on third down (5 for 13).
But the defense couldn’t hold off Allen forever. The Saints sacked him three times and he was intercepted for the first time this season, by safety Jonas Sanker, but the 2024 Most Valuable Player completed 16 of 22 for 209 yards and two touchdowns, and ran for 45 yards and a touchdown on seven carries.
On the fourth-quarter drive during which Buffalo extended its lead from 21-19 to 28-19, Allen scrambled for 27 yards on third-and-5, then threw a 28-yard touchdown to tight end Dalton Kincaid on the next play, with 7:07 left.
The Saints’ final hope was extinguished with 5:18 left. The Bills were forced to punt from their 44 on fourth-and-7, but with the punt block on, linebacker Nephi Sewell barely missed and was penalized for roughing the kicker.
The Bills used the penalty to help produce the final points of the game, a 35-yard field goal with 2:09 remaining.