After back-to-back great wins in Weeks 8 & 9, the Buffalo Bills were brought back down to Earth with a humbling loss to the Miami Dolphins, losing 30-13 in an embarrassing fashion. We thought that the loss against the Falcons was bad, but this loss was arguably worse.
Miami, who had just parted ways with their general manager and traded away one of their young star edge rushers in Jaelan Phillips, as well as played without Chop Robinson and Rasul Douglas, completely made Buffalo look like fools and made them look like frauds.
While there are a lot more negatives than positives to take away from this game, there were a few Bills who managed to show some signs of positivity for fans going into next week.
Bills' winners and losers from Week 10 loss to Miami
Winners:
S Cole Bishop
On Miami’s first drive to start the game (after they committed a false start and opted to use a timeout before the clock started), we thought that the Bills were going to start delivering a beatdown when Cole Bishop picked off Tua Tagovailoa to put the ball into Josh Allen’s hands.
Last week, Bishop had the game of his life against the Chiefs. This time against the Dolphins, he finished second in total tackles behind Jordan Poyer to go with his interception as well as a pass deflection. The second-year safety has been great on the field the last two games.
P Mitch Wishnowsky
The only other player that really shined because he had to play a lot was punter Mitch Wishnowsky. With the Bills going 5/15 on third down, Wishnowsky punted four times for a total of 217 yards, averaging over 54 yards per punt and managed to put the Dolphins inside their redzone twice.
Losers:
RB James Cook
After rushing for 330 yards against the Panthers and Chiefs combined, James Cook couldn’t get going against the Dolphins. Cook had 13 carries for 53 yards and didn’t get into the endzone against Miami.
He cooled off a bit, but part of it was the fact that the Bills fell behind and the run game had to be abandoned a bit. Still though, Cook wasn’t able to get anything going when he did have his opportunity.
CB Maxwell Hairston
Much like Cook, Maxwell Hairston was coming off back-to-back great games which included his first career interception on Patrick Mahomes. However, he certainly got embarrassed by Jaylen Waddle. Whenever Waddle made a catch, Hairston was near him and Waddle basically welcomed him to the NFL.
The one play that really hurt Hairston was the Tua to Waddle 38-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter where Hairston was just simply beaten by Waddle, and a defensive PI call was made on Hairston.
While Hairston did manage to pick off Tua for his second career interception, this was not a great game for him by any means.
Entire WR room
We could have put each wide receiver on this list, but they all deserve blame from this loss. Even with Keon Coleman getting a touchdown grab, he only had 3 catches off of 8 targets. He provides no separation and quite frankly, it’s getting very annoying that Josh Allen is forcing passes to him in a tight window.
Khalil Shakir wasn’t a contributor much despite him leading the Bills with 58 receiving yards off of 7 catches. Curtis Samuel had just one catch for 21 yards on a third-down conversion that honestly should’ve never worked. Elijah Moore had just 2 catches for 9 yards and Tyrell Shavers only had 1 catch as well.
There is no true No. 1 wideout for Allen and it’s hurting the offense more than you might think. Either Allen is holding too long onto the ball, or the receivers aren’t getting open. And we know what the truth is.
LB Matt Milano
Matt Milano was a bit quiet today for the Bills and it played a role in De’Von Achane rushing for 174 yards. He had just 4 total tackles and wasn't the best in coverage either. His days as a member of the Bills are becoming more limited by the week and this would have been a great game for him to show out. Instead, he was really quiet.
OC Joe Brady
The offensive playcalling this season has been…interesting, to say the least. Sometimes we are seeing guys like Dawson Knox being used on a jet sweep, just for a fumble to occur. There are many times where we see a screen pass to Khalil Shakir that doesn’t make a huge impact. James Cook is being brought off the field at crucial moments which then limits the Bills on what they can do. The one responsible for the playcalling? Joe Brady.
Brady came into this season as an offensive coordinator that was for-sure going to be a top head coaching candidate for next season. I’m not so sure about that anymore with the way he’s been calling plays. After all, the offense is the main reason why the Bills lost against Miami and part of it was because of the playcalling and the schematic mismatches.