The Buffalo Bills won on Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals by a score of 34-28. Although they won by six points, it was a sloppy game, especially in the first half. There are some key reasons as to why this game was as close as it seemed. These issues have to be cleaned up on a short week against their division rival, the Miami Dolphins on Thursday.
Special Teams
There were some key moments that led this game to be closer than it should have been. These moments included special teams play, specifically kick-offs. Late in the game with less than 10 minutes in the 4th quarter, the Bills go up 31-20. They kickoff and allow a return for a touchdown. After the Cardinals scored, they also went for two points and converted, making an 11 point lead diminish to a 3 point lead.
After the Bills got the ball back up 31-28, they moved down the field for a field goal. On the ensuing kick-off up 34-28, the kick was squibbed and went towards the sideline and went out of bounds. This set up Kyler Murray and the Cardinals offense at the 40 yard line, which is less than ideal when the Bills needed to stop the Cardinals from scoring with less than two minutes and all three timeouts.
First Half Defense
The Bills in the first half were not very good at both stopping the run, Kyler Murray scrambling, and especially on 3rd down. They could not stop the Cardinals offense from converting on the third down in the first half.
Some reasons for that were that the Bills lacked consistent pass rush, and also were getting taken advantage of over the middle of the field. The Cardinals ended the game 7/13 on third down, but in the first half they were 5/6.
Penalties
Whether it be pre-snap penalties or holding calls, the Bills were undisciplined. There were some questionable calls that were made by the officials, but some of the false starts were almost drive killers. O'Cyrus Torrence accounted for two penalties that delayed a touchdown score (a false start penalty) and stopped a touchdown drive entirely (hands to the face).
The Bills ended the game with 9 penalties for 65 yards, whilst the Cardinals had 5 for 31 yards. This will be a point of emphasis for Sean McDermott and the rest of the coaching staff for this week.
Tackling
As mentioned earlier in the special teams section, the Bills allowed a kickoff return for a touchdown. A big reason for that is poor tackling. Along with that return, the Bills defense missed some big tackles early in the game. A bunch of these misses led to first downs. This was another reason why the Cardinals converted so much on third down early in the game.
The bad part about the missed tackles was that it was not on one single player. A bunch of key players missed on tackles, including Terrel Bernard and Rasul Douglas. Hopefully the Bills can clean this up, because Miami is a team that can most certainly make any team pay for even one missed tackle.