(Photo: Ariana Shchuka for The New York Times)
Hello darkness my old friend… The Bills are once again not going to be playing for a Lombardi Trophy, despite being the preseason favorites. While yes, the Bills have been dealing with a lot of injuries on the defensive side of the ball… Yesterday’s performance against the Bengals was embarrassing. So embarrassing, that I believe it will end up costing Defensive Coordinator Leslie Frazier his job. The Bills defense only held the Bengals to just 2 punts all game (one of which was a garbage time punt when Cinci was just running out clock).
The game started out with Buffalo deferring the opening kick to Cincinnati, and the Bengals would march right down the field with ease for a quick opening drive touchdown. The Bills would respond with a quick three and out, giving the ball right back to the Bengals. Much like the first drive, Cincinnati would march right down the field again and score on a second consecutive drive going up 14-0 in basically the blink of an eye. How would the Bills respond…? Another three and out… Thankfully the Bills defense was able to come up with a stop on the third Bengals possession and forced them into a punt… Buffalo would get on the board finally in the second quarter when Josh Allen would QB sneak into the endzone cutting the lead down to 14-7. The Bengals would add a field goal on their next drive and end up taking a 17-7 lead into halftime.
The Bills would receive the second half kick and would put together a nice opening drive, but would stall out in the redzone and would end up having to settle for a field goal, bring the score back to 17-10… This would be it as far as scoring would go for this “explosive” Bills offense. The Bengals would take their opening drive of the second half down the field and punch it into the endzone for a touchdown, extending the lead to 24-10. They would add a field goal later in the 4th quarter and would end up winning the game 27-10.
There are a lot of raw emotions that still need to be processed, and I will be posting a “2022 Bills Recap” article in the near future… But there will need to be drastic changes in Western NY this off-season if the Bills think they are going to contend for any hardware next season… So disappointing that the season had to end the way it ended… At least after last years loss, we went into the off-season with a ton of optimism and hope… But after yesterday’s performance, we are going into this year’s off-season with more questions than answers it feels like. Buffalo has a handful of players who’s contracts expire after this season (LB Tremaine Edmunds & S Jordan Poyer being the 2 big names)… The feeling in Buffalo is that “All Pro Po” has played his last game for us… But we will get to all that in my end of year review, so make sure to stay tuned for that.
Thanks for following along with me this season #BillsMafia, and even though I did pick the Bengals to win yesterday… This is still my team and I’m riding with them to the end. Go Bills.
-Jason Harris