Written By: Bobby Greco
In what was only the second-ever Tuesday Night Football game in NFL history, the Buffalo Bills show they are not immortal. In a very lopsided game, Tennessee came out firing and was the fresher team on every side of the ball. Buffalo had three big inactive players in Matt Milano, John Brown, and the big surprise of Tre’Davious White. That ended up being a huge issue because Josh Norman proved to be no match for AJ Brown and certainly no match for Derrick Henry… Yikes! Missing Milano opened up the middle of the field and Ryan Tannehill took advantage. Buffalo’s opening drive started fine, but after a really difficult interception for Josh Allen, Tennessee was awoken and took off with a victory.
Offensively I think the game plan was good, but I just think after the first INT Tennessee got the juice and was propelled for the rest of the game. Missing Brown definitely made an impact, but I think Buffalo was very surprised by how fresh the Titans were. That being said, for only having two actual practices, I was also a bit surprised how good they looked. Allen did lead the offense on a great response drive to tie it at 7-7 but just couldn’t seem to keep the ball rolling. Gabe Davis did a good filling in for Brown, but you could tell he didn’t have everything down for that position. There were a few times when he ran a clean route, just didn’t quite know where the route would open up. That is something that will come with time and I think Davis is going to be a big piece for Buffalo’s future. Diggs had another 100-yard game and is proving to be worth every bit of that trade. Tennessee clearly spent their downtime studying the Bills offense, because they were giving Allen a hard time and it was the first time this season he looked shaky.
As I mentioned before Buffalo was missing Tre’Davious White and Matt Milano, so I thought there would be a little bit of a drop off with the defense. However, I did not think it was going to have such a major impact, as the defense really struggled in this one. Having to take Josh Norman from playing nickel cornerback to being the number one guy, did not work out and AJ Brown took advantage of the matchup. Not having Matt Milano made the biggest impact to me because it left the middle of the field wide open all night. Milano is underestimated as one of the best cover linebackers in the league and unfortunately, the LBs filling in for him weren’t getting the job done. I think Dodson and Klein are both linebackers, but coverage is most definitely a weakness for both of them. The bright side of things though, the defense did a very good job stopping Derrick Henry, well maybe we should exclude Josh Norman from that statement. Though Henry scored two TDs, the first one came after Buffalo’s opening drive INT and the ball was already at the 1-yard line. Hopefully, the team can get healthy before their next game, because the Super Bowl Champion Chiefs are coming to town and we all know they are looking to put up some points. However even if everyone on the defense is healthy, the team still has some things to clean up before Monday. If the Titans can score 40+ points on them, then KC will have a huge day.
This is still only one loss and I think it was a wake-up call for the team because it brought them back down to Earth. Thankfully for Buffalo, they have great leadership and I think they will use this as a big learning experience. Monday is going to be a huge challenge for them and I can’t wait to see how they respond.