Tag: bills cardinals

How Bills kicker Tyler Bass made history vs. Cardinals

Buffalo Bills kicker Tyler Bass makes history vs. Arizona Cardinals in Week 10 via 50-yard kicks.

The Bills offense didn’t make life easy on kicker Tyler Bass against the Cardinals in Week 10.

On your TV screen, you’ll see a “target area” for a kicker when the Bills offense is on the field, at times. When approaching that part of the field, on one occasion, quarterback Josh Allen lost 5 yards on a delay of game penalty. On another, the offense lost a yard on a third-down carry.

Still, the Bills (7-3) trotted their rookie kicker out time and time again against the Cards (6-3) and he not only converted from long range, but he also made history.

According to Pro Football Reference, Bass became the 12th kicker in NFL history to make three 50-yard kicks in a single game. Three in the single game is one thing, but Bass stands alone in one sense. He’s the only one in NFL history to have all three of his split the uprights in one quarter.

In the second stanza, Bass hit from 54, 55 and 58 yards, respectively. All three of those set a new personal career-long for him as well. And worth noting, there was some extra pressure here, too.

His counterpart, Cards kicker Zane Gonzalez, exchanged kicks with him. Bass hit one, then Gonzalez, then Bass, then Gonzalez, and once again… then Bass, to bring the game’s score at the time to 16-9.

Because of Bass and his history-making effort converting on all of those, Arizona needed a miracle to win the game in the end. Still, the Cards cannot take history from him.

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Former teammates Kyler Murray, Cody Ford chat postgame (video)

Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray, Buffalo Bills OL Cody Ford chat postgame.

After the Bills’ loss to the Cardinals in Week 10, at least two guys still kept things on friendly terms… which makes sense, they were former teammates, after all.

Sharing time in the same offense at the University of Oklahoma, Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray and Bills offensive lineman Cody Ford had a bit of a chummy moment caught on camera.

Ford didn’t play in this one due to injury, but he was still taking in the action, including the last second game-winning play. As the QB and O-lineman chatted at midfield… things got interesting as they each made a claim to victory for both of their current teams.

Check out their exchange caught by NFL Films here:

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Bills want improved run game post-bye: ‘It takes all of us’

Buffalo Bills’ Brian Daboll, Sean McDermott address running game struggles in recent games.

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Prior to Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, the Bills’ running game appeared to finally be showing some signs of life. The rushing attack has been slow to develop this season for Buffalo, but in Week 8, it had a 190-yard outing against the New England Patriots. 

But instead of growing on that, the work on the ground has stalled again. 

Bills quarterback Josh Allen led all rushers with 38 yards in the Bills’ Week 10 32-30 loss to the Cards. He was followed by rookie running back Zack Moss with 20 and back Devin Singletary with 15. Suffice to say this is not the run offense the team imagined when they added Moss to a backfield with Singletary and Allen. That has not gone unnoticed by the coaching staff and with the weekend off en route for the Bills, the ground game will be something Buffalo’s offense will be focusing on. 

“We need to do a better job,” offensive coordinator Brian Daboll while addressing the media on Monday. “Starts with me. We need to do a good job of designing things for those guys… It takes all of us to get that job done, we’re not where we need to be in regards to the running game, we acknowledge that and we look forward to working on it particularly in this bye week and getting ready for the Chargers.”

The Bills are currently among the worst teams in the NFL at rushing the ball at 29th overall in terms of rushing yards per game (97.6). A year ago, the Bills averaged the eighth-most (128). 

“It’s something we have to take a look at, particularly this week as a staff, and work hard to correct the things that we know we can correct,” added Daboll.

Much of the playmaking that has moved the ball downfield for the Bills offense this season has been in the air. Buffalo averages 278.9 yards per game via the pass attack, the fifth-most, but being a one-trick pony is not a good thing in the NFL. 

While Daboll is calling the shots on offense as Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott has a background as a defensive-minded coach, the bench boss still feels similar. McDermott has often said during his tenure that finding a franchise quarterback is among the most important things for a club, but complementing a QB with an established run game is of the upmost importance to McDermott currently. 

“It certainly hasn’t been good enough, for us to move forward as a football team and continue to evolve and grow, and try to win the games that we have to win, going forward here we’ve got to make sure that we get that better,” McDermott said. 

The Bills will have the week to re-evaluate the run before facing a former Buffalo coach and running back in his own right, Anthony Lynn. He returns to Bills Stadium as head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers where Buffalo will look to bounce back from a loss in Arizona in Week 12. 

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Trying to make sense of Bills’ reasoning for Mitch Morse not playing

Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott explains why C Mitch Morse did not play in Week 10 vs. Arizona Cardinals.

The Bills were without Mitch Morse in Week 10 against the Arizona Cardinals. Buffalo’s starting center was at the game, but he didn’t play.

Sounds a lot like he was benched.

But wait, what? Was he? No he wasn’t, per Bills head coach Sean McDermott on Monday. The bench boss gave some of the most eye-raise responses of his entire tenure with the Bills on this one.

First, McDermott confirmed Morse is currently healthy after suffering a concussion in Week 8 against the Patriots. But classified him not playing as a “coach’s decision.” Here’s McDermott’s first full response to why Morse was dressed and on the team’s active roster against the Cardinals, but did not play:

“He was healthy, coach’s decision right there. Mitch is a good player. Just felt like that week, being last week, we felt like we had some momentum with the group we had in when Mitch went down and we wanted to take one more look at it.”

Later in his weekly video conference call, McDermott was short. Also kind of confusing as well.

“No he was not benched,” McDermott said, before adding: “That lineup will be determined every week” when responding to whether or not Morse is his starting center moving forward.

Finally, McDermott fully classified the choice to not play Morse was “strictly a football decision.” Morse’s health did not factor into the situation, nor did any off-field actions like missing a practice session or being late to a meeting.

The whole thing was a pretty interesting set of exchanges for the head coach. Offensive coordinator Brian Daboll also echoed the explanation on the decision.

“[The starting O-line vs. the Cards] played a couple games together and that’s the direction we decided to go with last game. That doesn’t mean anything for next week or the week after that. Just had some continuity going with those guys, they’ve done a good job in there together, and we’ll see where we go with that,” Daboll said.

The five the Bills let take every snap along the offensive line against the Cardinals, from left to right, was Dion Dawkins, Ike Boettger, Jon Feliciano, Brian Winters and Daryl Williams.

Along with Morse not playing, Cody Ford, who’s dealing with an ankle injury himself, did not play, either. McDermott said he doesn’t know for sure when Ford will be back at this point, but the Bills are heading into their bye week, anyway. Perhaps because of that, the coaching staff did not want to be pressed into calling one guy their starter or not. They have two weeks to make that decision, but at least for one game, Morse wasn’t.

Now, for the numbers. Or the only ones we’ve got, which come via the folks at Pro Football Focus. Subjective numbers, yes, but some context.

Morse originally went down against the Patriots in Week 8 and both McDermott and Daboll referenced that game in their responses. What they could’ve liked from that outing was Boettger.

In that contest, PFF graded him the Bills’ top player on offense, a 94.1 overall mark. His performance went hand-in-hand with the best run game effort the Bills got all season, in due part to the offensive line’s efforts. The Bills had 190 rushing yards in Week 8.

Against the Seahawks last week, perhaps the Bills thought the game just… didn’t go the way of a rushing style of attack. Against a Russell Wilson-led team, the Bills probably knew it’d be a shootout vs. the Seahawks, and they guessed right considering it was a 44-34 final score.

So over that time period, Morse gets healthy, and maybe the Bills don’t want to say he was benched, but losing your job due to injury is one way guys benched all the time.

We wish Morse the best in terms of health, but we’re trying to break down a coaching decision here.

Via the eye test against the Cardinals, the Bills offensive line… wasn’t great. They never really are better than an average unit, but despite not being sacked, quarterback Josh Allen was certainly on the run a bit more in Week 10. The run game, as usual, was just never established.

Using PFF’s guidance, the position that provided the most let down? Feliciano at center, Morse’s spot.

Feliciano’s PFF mark had a huge overall drop from Weeks 9 to 10, 68.4 to 61.8, respectively. By comparison, Boettger and Winters saw their numbers move up slightly, just a point or two.

So where could the Bills go from here? We’ve got a bye week so we don’t know. But perhaps the Bills might look to keep Botteger at left guard with Morse at center and Feliciano at right guard. The best way to explain way this is to just to lay out exactly how the interior offensive line’s numbers current stand heading into the bye week via PFF’s grading system, player-by-player:

  • Ike Boettger: 72.0
  • Mitch Morse: 65.6
  • Jon Feliciano: 61.8
  • Brian Winters: 58.2 
  • Cody Ford: 53.8

Again, we can take PFF with a grain of salt. Maybe even a massive one. But another thing worth noting is that the Bills have tried to stick Ford into the lineup as much as possible when he’s healthy this season, despite any poor play or grades from the analytics folks.

Because of that, it might be a better guess that Ford, the former second-round pick the Bills traded up for, gets out there over Boettger, a former undrafted rookie free agent.

Regardless of all that, some verbal tip-toeing for sure from McDermott which should turn some heads.

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Cardinals’ DeAndre Hopkins says he ‘dunked on’ Bills for winner

Arizona Cardinals WR DeAndre Hopkins reacts to his game-winning touchdown vs. the Buffalo Bills.

After the Bills were stunned by the Cardinals, a couple of Buffalo’s guys faced the music and were candidly upset.

“My reaction? Pissed,” safety Micah Hyde said.

“I was tracking it, tracking it…” safety Jordan Poyer added via post-game video conference. “We’ve just got to find a way to knock the ball down.”

The safety duo are discussing the game-winning catch made by Cards wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins in the dying seconds of Buffalo’s 32-30 loss to Arizona. As one would expect, the pair were somber.

But don’t you worry, Hopkins more than made up for those down feelings with his comments after the game. Hopkins used a not-so-nice basketball reference to describe his feelings of what he did to the Bills.

“You know in basketball terminology, that’s what they call this,” Hopkins said via video conference, gesturing over his head. “You know, when somebody get dunked on…. but it was on three people… they were in position, it was just a better catch by I.”

Hyde and Poyer were two of the Bills defenders who jumped up for the prayer pass from Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray in the dying seconds. As the story goes, Hopkins came down with the ball.

The third Buffalo defender near Hopkins on the play, cornerback Tre’Davious White, did not talk after the game. He likely was not in a great mood. Hopkins’ thoughts were clearly above and beyond the happiness scale and perhaps maybe the sportsmanship one as well, but that’s a different conversation.

Regardless, Hopkins earned it.  One vs. three and he got the ball. .

Hindsight 20/20, but Murray was just as confident after the game, too.

“I definitely thought it had a chance when I let it go. Just the feeling of it,” Murray said. “But I knew when I let it go, I thought it had a good chance. Every quarterback kind of has that feeling when you let it go whether it’s good or not. Like I said, it felt good, and it went in.”

Unfortunately for the Bills, they likely won’t face the Cardinals again until 2024 when the NFC West comes back around on their schedule again. Buffalo isn’t going to have a chance at redemption for awhile, pending a Super Bowl matchup.

But on the positive side of things… the sky isn’t falling, either. There’s plenty of football left in 2020 and Buffalo will move it.

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Report card: Bills fall 32-30 vs. Cardinals

Buffalo Bills’ report card for Week 10 vs. the Arizona Cardinals.

The Bills fell in dramatic fashion against the Cardinals in Week 10. While this game will be remembered for one play by the Cards (6-3)… there’s still plenty of snaps to judge and grade the Bills (7-3) on.

Here’s Bills Wire’s Week 10 report card for Buffalo against the Cards:

The Morning After: It doesn’t have to be one thing the Bills did wrong

The Morning After reaction to Buffalo Bills’ last second loss to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 10.

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The Bills can head into their bye weekend in one of two ways. They can mope about their tough loss to the Cardinals, 32-30, or just forget about football for a couple of days after that one… certainly do not turn on the TV in doing so.

Regardless of what the locker room does, reaction to the loss is still going to be debated by the Bills faithful. Buffalo (7-3) had a strong look at adding to their win column in Arizona (6-3). Instead… yikes.

For the sake of being a writer, we’ll briefly recap what happened but you  already know… Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray to wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. End story.

The prayer of a pass in the final seconds that sent the Bills into their bye week with a loss was one single moment. But that doesn’t mean the problem sits in just one area. On the play alone, the first final-second prayer victory in the NFL since 2015, the Bills did a couple of things wrong.

The first fingers will be pointed toward the three defensive backs surrounding Hopkins on the play: Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer and Tre’Davious White. We’ve got a couple of Pro Bowls and an All-Pro mixed in there and somehow, Hopkins comes down with it.

Credit to Hopkins for the timing and hands, and to Murray for an excellent throw, but in any sports circumstance, three against one with the three losing deserves some level of criticism. Of all three, it appeared that White, who did not talk with reporters following the loss, went up to defend the pass with two hands in an effort to intercept the ball instead of getting a better reach with just one. Hindsight is 20/20, naturally, but…

Moving on, even before the ball was thrown, defensive end Mario Addison, who pounded the ground with his fist in the first half when Murray escaped a sack from him, failed to bring the QB down in the backfield on this play too. Then, even before the ball was snapped, the Bills played extremely far off of the line of scrimmage. Nobody slowed the pace of Hopkins & Co.

Let’s go deeper: Even before the fourth quarter, the Cardinals ripped off 17-straight points in the third quarter. Once again, teams get footing on the Bills in the second half of games to climb back in it. This could be the biggest issue the Bills have. Typically Buffalo has pulled off a win and we’ve used the phrase “paper covering cracks.” But this game-losing reception kind of does that in a way, too. The Bills did hold a 23-9 lead, but the focus will mostly be on the one final play.

All things considered, folks should not point to just one of these instances and blame one individual or one moment. A lot of things went wrong leading up to this heartbreaking loss for the Bills.

So if you can, take the latter route yourself.

The Bills should unplug from football for a day or two on the bye week, and why not do so as well? It’s going to be some decent November weather this week, after all.

Because through all of these negatives leading up to their third loss of the season, which also comes at a time when the Miami Dolphins are now nipping at the Bills’ heels in the AFC East standings… it’s not all bad.

Bills quarterback Josh Allen to Stefon Diggs was pretty sweet. Cole Beasley had himself a day, too. Plus, the defense appears to be improving. Of course, Buffalo’s still 7-3 as well and the world is (probably) not going end before Week 12 when the Bills host the Chargers.

The standard is raised for this Bills team in 2020 so such a disappointing loss leads one potentially thinking “same old Bills.” But no one is going to remember Hopkins’ heroics if there’s a playoff win for the home team in Orchard Park in a few weeks. Remember that.

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Bills Wire’s Week 10 Player of the Game: WR Cole Beasley

Despite the inconsistencies on defense, and at quarterback, Beasley produced.

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It was an awful way to lose, but no one did more to help put the Bills in a position to win than our Bills Wire Player of the Game against the Cardinals: wide receiver Cole Beasley.

Despite the inconsistencies on defense, and at quarterback, Beasley produced for the Bills in this one, extending drives to keep the Bills’ victory hopes alive. He hauled in 11 catches for 109 yards and a touchdown. He put Buffalo in scoring range on some of the most important plays. Beasley’s most-impressive grab was actually only for four yards, but the one-handed effort of his way awfully impressive, double that considering it was on third down. 

The Bills will need their bye to recoup after this 32-30 loss, but the optimism still remains high as they make their final push for the AFC East crown and the playoffs.

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Bills QB Josh Allen catches TD pass vs. Cardinals (video)

Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen catches touchdown pass vs. Cardinals.

Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen is at it again.

Allen has a touchdown catch in his career already, but what a play this was against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 10.

Buffalo got the game’s first touchdown to take a 7-3 lead when wide receiver Isaiah McKenzie tossed Allen a pass in the backfield and the QB ran it in from there.

Check it out here:

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Bills call Darron Lee, multiple players up from practice squad due to COVID

Buffalo Bills make COVID-19 callups from practice squad.

The Bills (7-2) were dealt a curveball on Saturday ahead of facing the Cardinals (5-3) in Week 10.

Actually, it was more of a 12-6 or knuckle curve if we’re going to get deep into the baseball terms, but like hitting one of those pitches, the team had to be meticulous to deal with the situation.

On Saturday, the Bills announced that they would be without four players, in total, because of a positive COVID-19 test result in their locker room. Cornerback Josh Norman tested positive for the virus. Due to safety precautions via contact tracing, other players who also will not suit up includes tight end Tyler Kroft, cornerback Levi Wallace and safety Dean Marlowe.

That’s a big chunk of players that did not travel to Arizona. So in order to deal with the situation, five players were called up from the practice squad by the Bills on Saturday.

Those five players are:

  • LB Darron Lee
  • CB Daryl Worley
  • WR Jake Kumerow
  • S Josh Thomas
  • CB Dane Jackson

Lee was a former first-round pick of the Jets who recently signed with the Bills, as did Worley, who played for the Panthers in 2016 when Bills head coach Sean McDermott was still employed there.

Kumerow and Thomas were already called up from the practice squad once this season, playing special teams roles. Jackson, a seventh-round rookie, was called up twice this season and recorded an interception in one outing.

NFL rule changes this season state that a player can only be called up twice. But due to the emergency situation involving COVID-19, Jackson is allowed to be called up a third time without needing to be signed to the Bills’ 53-man roster.

For more information on the Bills’ COVID-19 situation on Saturday, see the link below:

Josh Norman tests positive for COVID, 4 Bills players out vs. Cardinals

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