Well the bills did win, so that’s a positive. Other than that, the game was a clusterfuck of bad plays, poor decisions, stupid penalties and overall luck to end up 3-0. I digress:
What started out as a beautiful day at the brand new Highmark Stadium almost turned into an almost inconceivable loss against a Charger team that is not very good. Over the past few years we have seen year in and year out the Bill's underperforming against teams that they should destroy. Last year it was Atlanta and Miami. Yesterday looked like a repeat of one of those fiascos. Before the game started everything lined up like this should be a pretty easy win for the Bills. The Chargers had not won a game and their offense was putrid. The bills had come off two consecutive games scoring well over 30 points with their offense dominating each defense that they had faced. The game started out just like one would hope, a nice kickoff return and the ball on our own 42 yard line with a first down. Then the shit started hitting the fan. A Cook fumble on first down, Something that is becoming more and more prone to do, gave the Chargers the ball in Bill's territory. A second down incomplete pass was nullified by an absolutely appalling roughing the passer penalty on Chubb. Why a veteran like him would take two extra steps to the quarterback to the ground well after the quarterback had gotten rid of the ball is, to me, inconceivable. He is a veteran. He knows better. He is supposed to be a leader on this team. This gave the Chargers a first down and eventually led to The next fiasco. Herbert, Who may be one of the most overrated quarterbacks in football, through terrible pass into the end zone which should have been intercepted by our second year cornerback Hairston. Instead, The ball floated through his hands. Later faced with a third down and goal to go from the 4 yard line, the Chargers running back ran through the of Dionne Walker and into the end zone. Walker has to make that tackle.
Nothing to worry about right? Bills offense always produces correct? We get the ball back and Josh hits Kincaid on a perfect pass for what should be a 22 yard gain only to have Kincaid drop the ball. We turned the ball over on downs After Josh gets sacked. On our next offensive series, Josh throws a terrible pass which gets intercepted. He clearly did not see the safety and threw the ball to a spot that we remember the old bad Josh throwing to in the past. This interception, however, was by a holding call on Alec Anderson. The Bills had just converted a big 4th down At their own 43 yard line. A 5 yard run by Cook on first down was nullified by the holding penalty. This led to the interception by Josh on a poorly thrown ball.
The Chargers next drive was somewhat of a gift from the referees. Greg Rousseau Was called for a roughing the passer call on a second and 8 which gave the Chargers the ball at the Bill's 20 yard line. The Bills defense tightened and only allowed the Chargers to get three points instead of 7. Two turnovers on offense and we're down 10 nothing. Defense was playing well. Offense was brutal.
The next series Josh again through an ill advised pass which resulted in a fluky interception where the ball ended up landing on the defensive back stomach while he was lying on his back. Lucky for the Bills the Chargers ended up missing a fairly easy field goal On this drive. The drive was highlighted, however, by another stupid penalty by Chubb. He tried guess the snap count based upon the play clock and was offsides. While the declined the holding penalty due to the 13 yard gain, It was again a terrible play by a veteran like him.
On our next series the offense moved the ball down the field. Josh was faced with a third down in goal from the 7 yard line. He scrambled right and had plenty of room to run for the touchdown like he usually does in that situation. It almost looked like he wanted to make sure that his wide receiver got the touchdown instead of him. He threw the ball wildly Over the head of DJ Moore and we were forced to settle for a field goal. This is something that I noticed last week. It's almost as if Josh wants to make sure that he's spreading the wealth period last week there was a situation where he ended up throwing the ball to DJ Moore in the end zone on the play that more got hurt. Josh easily could have run that ball in instead of throwing it. Same situation earlier in the game with Knox. Josh Could have easily for the touchdown and would have gone into the end zone untouched but, instead, through the touchdown pass to Knox. While that didn't come back to haunt us, I starting to worry that he is more concerned about his teammates getting touchdowns than winning. It's always nice to be a great teammate. When you're taking easy touchdowns off the board, however, That starts to look stupid
. The second half was more of the same. An interception in the end zone gets nullified by a holding call. Kincaid fumbles giving the Chargers the ball. Two more times in the second half the defense was offsides. How can a defense be offsides three times in a game?
Eventually the offense came around as we all thought they would. Josh had two rushing touchdowns, cook had a great game other than his fumble, and the bill's defense held when they needed to. A couple lucky plays here and there Help the bills immensely. A drop on a 3rd and 10 by Johnston Led to a turnover on downs. A terrible pass by resulted in an interception by Gardner-Johnson. Lucky for the Bills the Chargers offense is inept.
While the offense did come around, there were still numerous instances where this team just looked like it wasn't ready to play. A holding penalty on Knox nullified a nice run after catch touchdown by Ty Johnson. An offensive holding call on Dawkins nullified a 16 yard run by down to the Chargers 4 yard line. That was followed up by another holding on Anderson. Faced with a Second Down and 26 At the Chargers 32 Josh scrambles, gets hit and fumbles. He has to protect the ball better. We saw what happened last year in the playoffs in the Broncos game. The fumble was overturned by the referees and the Chargers were called for holding on the play. Two big breaks which ultimately L to a Bills touchdown.
The Bill's lack of readiness to have their head in the game yesterday was never more apparent then in the Bill's last drive. Up 17-13 and knowing That a touchdown puts the game out of reach, The Bills had a first at the Chargers 19 yard line with three minutes and 38 seconds left in the game. For some unknown reason, Josh decided to kneel down and take a 7 yard loss rather than merely throwing the ball away on a and 10 from the Chargers 19 yard line. That just made no sense whatsoever. They weren't trying to run out the clock. They were trying to score a touchdown to Give the Bills an 11 point lead with very little time left. Why he didn't throw that ball away and why he merely kneeled down and took the 7 yard loss boggles my mind. It makes no sense whatsoever. To me it was just another indication that Josh's head was not in the game yesterday period from bad passes to fumbles to poorly executed throws, he looked like the Josh of a few years back that just made some very poor choices.
Overall the Bills defense played great. But for the stupid penalties, especially the ones by Chubb, they did what needed to be done to pull out a win. Lucky for the Bills they were playing an inept Chargers team that just can't get out of its own way. Herbert is not a good quarterback. Their offense is terrible. They made the Bills defense look good. Thank God for that. That is not gonna fly against the Chiefs, the Rams, the Jaguars and other good offenses. We saw how bad our defense was the first two weeks of the season. Just because they held a bad Chargers offense to 16 points doesn't mean that they are back as a quality defense. They have a lot of room to grow. I thought the young cornerback played very well. While Hairston didn't come down with that interception he did make some very nice plays on the ball. As did IGB. Both looked more confident then Christian Benford who has been torched most of the season. After Benford went out with his injury the Bills defense looked much better. We need cornerback help and hopefully our brilliant GM Beane We'll figure something out before the trade deadline.
Lastly, this game is what many people call a trap game. A game between two big games where you are heavily favored to win and don't produce as well as you should. In my mind trap games are BS. It's the coach's job to get the team ready. This team was not ready to play coming out of the tunnel at the beginning of the game. To win a game with five turnovers, multiple penalties, multiple miscues is extremely rare. Again, the Bills were lucky to be playing a very bad Chargers team. If they expect to win in the future against teams that have good offenses and good defenses, They need to come out and play right off the bat like they can. The first two weeks of the season, in my humble opinion, made the Bills seem a bit invincible. Last week's rant questioned whether or not any team could stop our offense. I still do not believe that any team can stop our offense. Only our offense can stop our offense. We need to make better choices with the ball and stop with the stupid undisciplined penalties. The coaching staff needs to figure things out. When a guy like Chubb is called for blatant roughing the passer call early on in the game he needs to sit. We can't allow these prima donnas to take shots like they did and hurt this team.
Next week we're home against the Patriots. Drake Maye has looked Terrible this year. The Bills can't afford, however, to come out looking like they did against Herbert and the Chargers. Maye has a lot of talent. Right now it looks like his confidence is shattered. All it takes is a couple big throws and a couple big plays like you did last year against the Bills To turn that around. We need to come out strong and get to 4 - 0 With the road game against Super Bowl favorite Rams on the horizon.
Bills 34 Patriots 10. Go Bills