If the Bills needed to be reminded “the NFL is a week-to-week league,” the Jaguars provided one last Sunday in Jacksonville.
Buffalo went into TIAA Stadium as a 14½-point favorite over the then-1-6 Jags and endured an embarrassing 9-6 defeat.
All week long, coach Sean McDermott’s 5-3 team has maintained it has been slapped back to reality.
We’ll see come Sunday afternoon at MetLife Stadium (1 o’clock CBS-TV, 95.7 FM, 100.1 FM, 550 AM) when the Bills face the 2-6 Jets in East Rutherford, N.J.
But, while Buffalo is favored by 12 points, the longest odds on this week’s schedule, New York’s AFC team is a bit of a cautionary tale.
Those two wins?
On their home turf, the Jets have beaten Tennessee (7-2), 27-24, and Cincinnati (5-4), 34-31, and two of their losses have been by a touchdown or less, Carolina (19-14) and Atlanta (27-20).
NEW YORK, which has started three different quarterbacks this season due to injury, will play backup Mike White, who beat the Bengals by throwing for 405 yards and three touchdowns, but then was replaced by No. 3 QB, Josh Johnson, when he was hurt early in last week’s loss at Indianapolis.
The season starter, rookie first-round draft choice Zach Wilson, is nursing a knee sprain and isn’t quite ready to return.
In assessing the Jets, McDermott allowed, “You watch that Bengals game against a good football team and a good defense and they went right down the field multiple times at the end. (White’s) a good player.”
STILL, the statistics paint a divergent picture of these two AFC East rivals.
Buffalo, after mustering only two field goals against the Jaguars, fell from its position as the NFL’s top-scoring team, and now ranks fourth at 29 points per game, but it remains first in both fewest points surrendered (15 per game) and yards given up (263 a game).
The Bills also have the league’s leading takeaway/giveaway ratio (+11) and have surrendered the fewest passing yards (177 per game).
By contrast, the Jets are last in the NFL in points (31) and yards (408) surrendered per game and have both the league’s worst turnover ratio (-12) and starting field position.
And, oh yeah, they’re 27th of 32 teams in scoring (18 ppg) and 30th in rushing yards (77 per game).
And even without injured Bills middle linebacker Tremaine Edmunds (hamstring), hence, the spread.
BUT THE Bills have issues of their own.
Last Sunday, in Jacksonville, they committed season-highs in penalties (12) and yards penalized (118), numbers that give them 61 accepted infractions, tied for eighth-most in the league, but five of the teams worse than Buffalo have played one more game.
That number is particularly galling to McDermott.
“The ones that are pre-snap and post-whistle which we had a few of last week … too many, those are non-negotiables, they don’t fly here,” he said of the penalties against the Jaguars. “The ones that are aggressive penalties I can at least deal with as long as I see us working, moving our feet , trying to get in position, straining with our hands inside. I can live with some of those … they’re going to get called because we’re trying to play aggressive.
“Players know there’s great clarity in what I expect in that area. To me that’s a reflection on me and that’s not how I got about my routine in terms of the discipline part.”
STILL, McDermott prefers not to dwell too long on last week’s major upset.
“There’s adversity every year and every team gets tested,” he said. “It’s a test every year of how long a group of people can stay together when whatever it is tries to pull you apart.
“As coach (Marv) Levy said, ‘Each week you’re trying to cross another river and how do you go about it this week.’ No season is clean, you want it to be, but the reality is, no season is clean in a straight line. You’ve got to stay with it.”
McDermott added, “This team is running its own race. Last season was last season … that team ran its own race, 2017 ran its own race. The challenges might be a little bit different than the challenges last season. But as coaches we’re paid to adjust … try to stay out in front of things the best you can.”
Quarterback Josh Allen, who hasn’t played up to his 2020 standards when he finished second in the NFL MVP voting and struggled mightily against Jacksonville, agreed.
“You can’t dwell on one loss … we used those (24) hours (after the loss) to focus on what we need to change,” he said. “ We’re 5-3, not where we want to be, so we’ve got to turn our attention to (the Jets) and try to go 1-0 this week.
“That’s been our mindset since we stepped on the field in training camp. We have to find a way to win football games and stack wins and it starts Sunday against the Jets.”
