3 key stats from the Buffalo Bills win over the Pittsburgh Steelers
By Joe Cook
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The Buffalo Bills Won the Turnover Battle
For the past few years, the Buffalo Bills have been one of the best teams in the NFL. Throughout those last few years, the argument can be made that they should have even more wins than they’ve had, especially this year. For some reason, the Bills love to beat themselves. The Bills are in every single game no matter what they always give themselves a chance, but way more often than not, they shoot themselves in the foot at some point in their losses. A large part of that is untimely turnovers.
Against the Steelers, the Bills won the turnover battle and didn’t turn it over once. Coming into the game, the Bills were missing their top corner, starting outside linebacker, and number three safety who has been extremely valuable, especially in their dime looks.
The injuries only worsened as they lost their number two cornerback, Christian Benford, rising star middle linebacker, Terrel Bernard, and All-Pro nickel cornerback, Taron Johnson. Despite being down to their fourth stringers, guys like A.J. Klein and Kaiir Elam stepped up.
Elam made a gorgeous endzone interception that, at the time, held the Steelers scoreless. It let the Bills build on their lead, which they later leaned on in the wake of injuries. The Bills also forced two fumbles in the first half, recovering only one. Taron Johnson hit George Pickens, and the ball popped out and was recovered by Bernard.
Later on, Pat Freirmuth fumbled the ball and it was recovered by Baylon Spector inbounds. The refs ruled that the ball was dead because it touched Freiermuth while he was out-of-bounds, it was close and could have gone either way. The Bills won the turnover battle 2-0 and it was a very large part of their win.