21 points with some assistance isn’t bad. Let’s look at the Bills’ defense against the Patriots.
Leading up to the Buffalo Bills hosting the New England Patriots, I penned a semi-controversial article indicating that perhaps we should be worried about the Bills’ defense if they didn’t bounce back against a dismal Patriots offense. Well that dismal offense kept it close against Buffalo and scored three touchdowns. Was it the bounce-back I was hoping for?
Objectively speaking, the Bills defense was okay on Sunday
If we’re looking at numbers, we should be pretty satisfied with the Buffalo Bills defense. The three turnovers were great, 21 points isn’t a ton to allow, I could go on. But let’s take a look at some of my favorite stats to drive the point home even further.
The Patriots scored 2.1 points per drive which is higher than their overall rate of 1.59, but 2.1 would be considered average. They scored on 30% of their total drives which is actually pretty dang bad for an offense. For context, their overall rate is 31%, which includes this game and it’s the third-worst in the league.
When looking at plays per drive, the Bills either forced New England off the field quickly, or made them work like heck to get anywhere with very little in between. Four of the ten Patriots drives were less than a minute (includes end of first half) and another was under two minutes. The first scoring drive was pretty quick at about three minutes. The final one was similar in time but took 13 plays which is wild. The Pats had drives of 4:10 and 6:13 which ended with an interception and punt, respectively.
The Bills may have been pulling their punches against the Patriots
Slightly less objectively speaking, Josh Allen hinted after the game that perhaps the Buffalo Bills weren’t using their full bag of tricks. While he would be speaking for the offense, I’d assume it would apply to the defense as well if true. That’s way less objective for sure and we’ll never know but Allen hinted at it so here we are.
This lands in semi-objective territory but there’s no way around this game without bringing up penalties. I know I have a full article on them already this week, so let’s approach it from a slightly different angle.
The recap focuses on what happened, but our level of concern should be focused on what we expect to happen. Personally I don’t expect that many penalties per game. Further, five defensive pass interference flags in one game is preposterous. Three in one drive is even more insane. By the way, that was the last scoring drive which featured nine goal-to-go attempts before they got into the end zone.
The Bills did bounce back against the bad Patriots offense
By no means am I attempting to say the defense is lockdown or the best we’ve ever seen from the Sean McDermott era Bills. After allowing 40+ points in back-to-back weeks I think some worry was bound to happen. Allowing 21 to one of the worst offenses in the league may not seem like the rebound I was hoping for, but in context it seems like a Bumble-like performance to me.