–Head coach Sean McDermott didn’t want to say anything on the record, but it was clear that he felt the hit by Houston linebacker Whitney Mercilus on Josh Allen last week was a cheap shot. “I’m not going to go into that,” McDermott said Wednesday. “I’ve addressed that with the powers that be and I’m not going to go any further on that.”
Mercilus appeared to lower his helmet and aim it directly at Allen’s elbow after he’d delivered his best pass of the game, and he succeeded. Allen felt pain immediately, but he stayed in for one more play. When he tried to throw on that play, the pain overcame him and he dropped to a knee and asked for the trainers.
“Hindsight is 20-20, but it’s football, you know,” Allen said. “If it had just been Mercilus that hit me, I probably would have been fine; if it was just (Jadeveon) Clowney that hit me, I would have been fine, but they kind of came in together. I saw the replay and whether it was late or not, it’s not up to me to decide. I threw the ball and you take the brunt of the hit. And like I said, that’s football. It’s a man’s game, it’s a tough game. I still love this game, regardless of what happens.”
–At halftime of the Week 2 loss to the Chargers, the Bills had already allowed 75 points in the first six quarters of the season, and McDermott took over the defensive play-calling from coordinator Leslie Frazier. The Bills held the Chargers to three points the rest of the day, but McDermott turned the call sheet back over to Frazier for the Week 3 game in Minnesota, in which the Bills played spectacularly on defense.
“I know exactly what we would do different,” Frazier said when asked if he knew what the problems were the first six quarters. “That’s for another day. … In my mind, I felt like I knew what our issues were, and we went through something similar a season ago where we had a three-game streak that was not the best football. You just have to take a look at where you are and figure out what the solutions are. If you believe what you’re doing, you can usually get it turned around if you have the right people working around you. It’s a long season, there are a lot of ups and downs. You just can’t push the panic button, and those players understand that as well. If you believe in what you’re doing, and you have the right people, you can get it turned in the right direction.”
The Bills have done that. In the last four games they are allowing just 15 points per game, have risen to third in the NFL in yards allowed and have forced 12 turnovers.
BY THE NUMBERS: 26 – That’s how many points the Bills have scored in the last 14 quarters dating back to halftime of the Week 3 Minnesota game. They are now the lowest-scoring team in the NFL at 12.6 per game.
