Bills lead Eagles at halftime despite mistakes and weird coaching decisions
The Buffalo Bills are considered to be one of the NFL's best teams, even if their record says otherwise. The team has been plagued by bad mistakes, questionable coaching, and awful injury luck all year long and it's all played a big role in the dysfunction.The Bills have been their own worst enemy many times […]
The Buffalo Bills are considered to be one of the NFL's best teams, even if their record says otherwise. The team has been plagued by bad mistakes, questionable coaching, and awful injury luck all year long and it's all played a big role in the dysfunction.
The Bills have been their own worst enemy many times throughout the year and that characteristic showed up multiple times during the early portions of the Philadelphia Eagles game.
Two examples are coaching decisions that center around leaving Bills wide receiver Stefon Diggs off the field during two third down plays. One was on a 3rd and 16 in the first quarter and the other was a 3rd and 9 during the second quarter.
It's a strange decision to leave one of your best players off the field for not one, but two plays in what was less than the first 30 minutes of play. Tony Romo even made a joke on the failed 3rd and 9 that the targeted receiver, who couldn't come up with a tough catch, would've been Diggs in that situation.
It's definitely more than fair to say the Bills made the wrong decision on both occasions.
Diggs both made the decision look even worse, yet really helped his team out, when he came up with a clutch 23-yard reception on a 3rd and 6 later in the game. Romo, again, made light of the situation during the broadcast. Then, he caught a key touchdown on 3rd and 6 right before halftime.
We'll see if the Bills coaching staff involves Diggs during key plays more often or if they continue to make strange decisions.
Penalties have really hurt the Bills, too
The Bills also need to cut it out when it comes to the penalties. The Eagles' lone touchdown of the game was the result of key third- and fourth-down penalties by the Bills defense that helped extend the drive. The Eagles punt the ball in the third-down situation instead of driving down the field and scoring a touchdown.
The Bills also cost themselves three points with back-to-back false starts that pushed them out of field goal range. The score could be much, much different than the 17-7 game we have, now.
The refs also robbed the Bills of a horse collar flag that should've been called on the Eagles. The play was unreviewable, so there was nothing Sean McDermott could do in terms of challenging the play.
It's simple: If the Bills have another half with even five penalties -it doesn't have to be the hilariously bad 10 they had in the first half- they won't win this game.
It hasn't all been bad, however
Josh Allen is playing great and the defense has done a really good job outside of the penalty-filled drive that led to the touchdown.
The unit has allowed some chunk gains on the ground and there was a really bad missed tackle against A.J. Brown on the first play of the Eagles' two-minute drive, but things have been really solid, overall. The forced fumble/recovery before the half was absolutely crucial and gave the team the shot in the arm it needed after the blocked field goal attempt.
The Bills just have to stop beating themselves. If they can do that, they should win this game. So far, they've been the better team and the score reflects that.
But, as with all teams that commit a lot of self-inflicted wounds: only time will tell what actually happens.
