Inside Slant

The Sports Xchange

November 01, 2018 at 1:38 am.

Bills offense at the lowest of the lows

The shame of what has happened to the Buffalo Bills in the midst of one of the worst offensive performances in recent NFL history is that they are laying to waste a defense that has played at a mostly high level all season.

“It’s tough,” said cornerback Tre’Davious White. “We come out and hold those guys to one touchdown and we still can’t get the win.”

He was talking of the high-octane Patriots who defeated the Bills 25-6 despite scoring only one offensive touchdown. The Buffalo defense forced five field-goal attempts (four were made) and New England also scored on defense, a pick-six 84-yard return by Devon McCourty in the final minutes to put a bow on their 32nd win in the last 37 games against Buffalo.

“They came hard and played hard,” said Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, who caught only three passes for 43 yards. “They brought game, they weren’t backing down at all. When you’ve got players on the other side of the ball coming hard in the NFL, it’s always going to be a tough challenge.”

Said quarterback Tom Brady, “They’ve been playing good all year and they haven’t given up many yards. But we hung in there and we grinded it out.”

Linebacker Lorenzo Alexander is as frustrated as anyone, but he also knows that he and the rest of his teammates on defense can’t moan about it; they have to continue to grind, keep the Bills in games, and hope that at some point the offense will escape the incubator.

“This is an offensive league, so it’s hard to hold people to three points, but we have that mentality every week,” he said. “We haven’t been able to accomplish that, but at the end of the day we have to get more turnovers because obviously, we’re having a hard time scoring touchdowns.”

It won’t get any easier Sunday when the Bills meet a Chicago Bears defense that ranks seventh in yards allowed, third against the run, and first in interception percentage and fewest first downs permitted.

And now, bake in the Nathan Peterman Factor and things could potentially get very ugly.

It appears that Peterman is going to be forced to start because Derek Anderson is in concussion protocol, and Josh Allen remains out with an elbow injury. The Bills signed journeyman Matt Barkley Wednesday, but he won’t be ready to play, so it’s Peterman’s show, and that’s about the very last thing any Bills fan wants to see.

“We’re going to support Nathan if, in fact, he is called upon to play,” head coach Sean McDermott said. “We’re going to support him with everything we’ve got and we expect him to go out and execute, and execute at a high level.”

Executing at a high level is a virtual impossibility and surely, deep down, McDermott must know this. If Peterman can execute at a functional level, and stop throwing the ball to the other team (he has 10 picks on 84 career pass attempts), then perhaps the Bills, with their stout defense, will have a chance to pull the upset.

If Peterman does what Peterman has always done, then the train to irrelevance will keep chugging down the tracks, both for Peterman, and the Bills.

SERIES HISTORY: 13th regular-season meeting. Bears lead series, 7-5. Buffalo won the last meeting on opening day in 2014. The game prior to that was a Bills home game that was played in Toronto and the Bears pulled out a 22-19 victory at Rogers Centre during a period when the Bills were playing one home game per season north of the border.

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