By: Rachel Xue
October 18 was yet another home game loss. The Bills have been consistently losing at almost all of their home games. The season has just been so inconsistent, just like this week’s game against the Bengals. The game started out great, as the Bills scored the first touchdown five minutes into the game. As the game progressed, the Bills slowly began to fall behind the Bengals. Both offense and defense were not playing their best, which is what they needed to do to beat an undefeated team.
EJ Manuel was substituting for Tyrod Taylor, who was out with a knee injury, which some fans did worry about. Some of them did recognize this as a bad thing, but nothing more could be done. Although the fans predicted that it would possibly be a bad game, it wasn’t as bad as they thought.
Beginning of the first quarter, the fans cheered, hoping for the Bills to win, of course. The Bills did start out strong. The Bills scored the first touchdown in the game, the first time in three games that they have scored the first. Manuel ran a two yard touchdown run. The Bills were up 7-0, but the Bengals came back. The Bengals tied the game at 7-7 with a catch by Jeremy Hill, thrown by Andy Dalton. Neither team scored for the rest of the first quarter.
The second quarter was where the Bills began to fall behind the Bengals. The Bengals took the lead in the game when Gio Bernard scored a touchdown early in the quarter. The Bengals lead 14-7. The Bills defense continued to not do enough to stop the strong Bengal offense. Midway through the second quarter, the Bengals were able to score a field goal, scored by Mike Nugent. The Bengals continued to lead the game 17-7. The Bills tried to come back. Sammy Watkins caught a 22 yard ball and scored a touchdown. Unfortunately, Watkins suffered an ankle injury and didn’t return for the rest of the game. The second quarter ended with the Bengals ahead 17-14.
The third quarter was when the Bills began to fall really behind. Early in the quarter, Bengals’s wide receiver, Marvin Jones, caught a ten yard touchdown, which pulled the Bengals farther away from the Bills. The Bengals lead 24-14. The Bengals later scored another touchdown. Tyler Eifert caught the second touchdown ball that quarter, pulling the Bengals up 34-14. At this point, the Bills fans really began to lose hope. The fans knew that with only one quarter left, the Bills would have to perform a miracle to catch up to the Bengals.
The fourth quarter was when the Bills knew what they had to do, but they still couldn’t catch up to the Bengals. Bills’s LeSean McCoy scored his first rushing touchdown, which brought the Bills up 21-34, but that one touchdown wasn’t enough to even out the game. McCoy’s point was the final touchdown of the day.
Sadly, the Bills did lose the game. On top of that, three players were injured: Seantrel Henderson with a hard injury, Marquise Goodwin with a rib injury, and Sammy Watkins with an ankle injury. The Bills were not the only ones with the multiple injured players, but also the Bengals. Both teams were using the cart the entire day.
The Bills season got even more disappointing across the pond when they fell to the Jaguars. The Bills weren’t that far away from getting the win and they probably would have won if they had been at full strength. The main problem was probably EJ Manuel but after one of the wildest fourth quarters in the NFL almost everyone could be blamed.
The Bills dominated every stretch of the game except a disastrous seven minutes in the second quarter and the last three minutes of the game. In that span of seven minutes the Bills allowed the Jags to score on a 7 play 73 yard drive and EJ gifted the Jags three touchdowns off turnovers. In the final three minutes of the game the Jags went down the field in again impressive fashion to take the lead. Somehow the Bills were unable to convert a 2nd and 1 in the two minute drill. It might have been the worst two minute drill in the history of the game.
The Bills did play much better against the Jags than they did against the Bengals. The defense only allowed two real scoring drives in the entire game. The loss could easily be placed entirely on the shoulders of EJ Manuel who is after all the backup QB. At this point in the season fans are unhappy and are blaming everyone from the coach to the refs to the defense. In the end it looks like the Bills might just be ok and not great. Their defense may have taken a step back from last year and their offense has been terrible. Additionally, the Bills are one of the most penalized teams in the league and aren’t that great on special teams.
It looks like the Bills are simply going to finish the season with about a .500 record. This is going to be disappointing to the many fans that were saying before the year that they thought the time was going to the playoffs. The conference currently has 3 undefeated teams and the Steelers and Jets both look decent. Because of the games the Bills have dropped early in the year the math just looks really difficult for them. This is a team that struggled with the Jags and Titans and lost to the Bengals and Giants. They won’t be able to go 7-2 the rest of the year(which is what it will take to reach the playoffs) if they can’t take care of business against the bad teams and upset the good teams.
With the Bills season being 3-4 so far, the fans are definitely not happy about it. Multiple fans have been commenting on the team’s lack of passion in the game. Some of them blame it on the coach. One fan has said, “Rex Ryan and his coaching staff suck. Your team is playing with NO HEART.” Some just blame it on the players. Some even think that the Bills have lost passion because of some players being let go. Another fan has said, “No passion in this team… They gave some of it away when they released Jackson… He had passion and was a great leader…” Ultimately, the fans are getting sick and tired of the Bills losing. They can improve on so much, especially their offense. The Bills offense did manage to get some good touchdowns this game, but they have been slagging every game. There’s still some time for improvement before the Playoffs and hopefully Rex will be able to do something about this team.
