{"id":199647,"date":"2025-07-11T20:24:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/199647\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T20:24:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:24:14","slug":"buffalo-bills-have-serious-concerns-to-address-in-second-straight-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/199647\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffalo Bills have serious concerns to address in second straight loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very few people were ready to claim the Buffalo Bills<\/a> would field the same sort of dominant team everyone had become accustomed to the prior four seasons. Losing so much talent called for patience of outsiders. Then they went out and began the season 3-0 against teams with bigger flaws \u2014 and they looked dominant. <\/p>\n

Immediately after the game, the team here at Buffalo Rumblings had a spirited conversation in Discord about how head coach Sean McDermott and the Bills went about their final drive of the game. It was essentially a no-win situation, but one I implored McDermott not to waste clock in exchange for overtime. <\/p>\n

I thought the right move was to give Josh Allen the chance to get the team in position to finish the game on offense. What went unsaid by me however, was that operating that way should always include a proper pivot if things go wrong, but not disastrously so. Thus, when wide receiver Keon Coleman was flagged for offensive pass interference (a wise penalty by him), the next move should have been to take their lumps and run clock to play for overtime. Force the Houston Texans<\/a> to use their timeouts after clock-killing run plays, so that if they get the ball back via punt, they\u2019d have no timeouts to work with.<\/p>\n

Instead, Bills Mafia watched another unlikely end-game field goal try soar through the uprights. All the Texans needed were seven seconds to get into position to let Ka\u2019Imi Fairbairn attempt and convert the game-winning 59-yard field goal. Seven seconds, which the Bills could have easily run off by calling even one running play before punting away their final possession.<\/p>\n

I still hold that going for the win there was the right mindset and decision to begin. They should have known the passing game struggled all afternoon, and had a parachute-in-emergency backup plan. Yet, they didn\u2019t, or at least chose not to deviate from the original plan. Stick to your guns, even in defeat. <\/p>\n

Playing without wide receiver Khalil Shakir did them no favors, and it\u2019s clear they need an additional, different receiving complement. That\u2019s clearly not Curtis Samuel \u2014 not right now, at least. Is it the turf toe injury, a lack of chemistry, or something else? Why hasn\u2019t offensive coordinator Joe Brady done more to get tight end Dalton Kincaid into clear mismatches as a diverse and unique receiving threat?<\/p>\n

Allen claimed \u201cthis isn\u2019t a defining moment in our season,\u201d yet it certainly feels that way now that the Bills have lost back-to-back games against some of the AFC\u2019s best competition. And in both of those losses, Josh Allen didn\u2019t look great, and the offensive line even worse. How bad were things? Allen finished with a 30% completion rate, going 9-of-30 for 131 yards and a touchdown. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for One Bills Drive to address the elephant in the offensive room. The receiver corps isn\u2019t scaring opponents and the group continually fails to make defenses pay for blitzing. That\u2019s all led to Josh Allen struggling like we have seen since his rookie season.<\/p>\n

While we\u2019re constantly told that everyone eats at One Bills Drive, there\u2019s a lack of profound on-field chemistry that appears to tell the story of a starving group. As Sean Murphy pointed out early in action: \u201cWhen teams don\u2019t respect the receivers lined up across from them, the defense can bring extra rushers with impunity.\u201d Until someone wins on routes early and the Bills beat that added pressure, it will happen over and over again.<\/p>\n

That quick underneath game so potent in training camp has all but disappeared. Having wide receiver Khalil Shakir on the field likely doesn\u2019t greatly alter that narrative, but he makes those catches at the end of the game and operates as a more efficient receiver between the sticks. <\/p>\n

For a second game in a row Buffalo\u2019s first-half play was a disaster across the board, but a severely limited defense did enough to keep the game within reach for Josh Allen and company. The defense\u2019s second-half play was inspired, and they held Houston to six points the last 30 minutes. No matter, as the damage had been done, and climbing out of a two touchdown hole meant there would be less opportunity to produce lead-changing drives. <\/p>\n

People will call for more plays to running back James Cook, but the early deficit eat into his opportunities to make the Texans pay. Despite that, Cook finished with 20 carries for 82 yards and a touchdown. Buffalo needs to get things holistically figured out so they can properly leverage Cook\u2019s full ability. <\/p>\n

Leaving the field with a total of six points off two 1st & Goal situations is unacceptable. The Bills won the turnover battle, but didn\u2019t do enough with the football when they had control of it. <\/p>\n

The season isn\u2019t over, and they\u2019re still in fourth place in the AFC no matter how the rest of Week 5 unfolds. Things could unravel quickly if they refuse to make significant adjustments to their current offensive scheme. <\/p>\n

If the offensive line continues stink, Josh Allen\u2019s going to get severely injured. The goal was to build a team that complemented Allen and didn\u2019t ask him to do it all. Instead, it feels like he\u2019s never been asked to compensate for more since entering the league in 2018.<\/p>\n

Sean McDermott took full responsibility for the end-game miscues on offense and defense. That\u2019s noble and great to see from Buffalo\u2019s chief leader, but the required move is to learn from it and ensure it doesn\u2019t happen again. <\/p>\n

Yet here we were, faced with yet another complex decision on offense, the results of which felt doomed from the start. McDermott must figure out how to lead his players to victory in the toughest situations. Until he does that, the Buffalo Bills will remain an over-hyped and often cast aside team led by a generational quarterback. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Very few people were ready to claim the Buffalo Bills would field the same sort of dominant team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2056],"tags":[1645,215,214,4424,18563,1622,12044,7,29,3546,221,253,2368,723,1911,6,835,1621,1145,5813,18362,222,528],"class_list":{"0":"post-199647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-address","9":"tag-bills","10":"tag-buffalo","11":"tag-buffalo-bills-discussion","12":"tag-buffalo-bills-game-information","13":"tag-buffalo-bills-opinion","14":"tag-concerns","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-front-page","17":"tag-have","18":"tag-houston","19":"tag-houston-texans","20":"tag-houstontexans","21":"tag-in","22":"tag-loss","23":"tag-nfl","24":"tag-nfl-news","25":"tag-rumblings","26":"tag-second","27":"tag-serious","28":"tag-straight","29":"tag-texans","30":"tag-to"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114836476043374894","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}