Sunday in Miami, the Buffalo Bills laid it all on the line, but came up short 21-19 vs. their divisional rivals in the Dolphins.
The Bills dropped to a 2-1 record, but perhaps even more importantly saw a rash of injuries that left them depleted by the final whistle.
While every team encounters injuries during the season, the intense heat, coupled with pre-existing injuries entering the Week 3 matchup, left the Bills fielding a large portion of backups by the end of the contest.
Despite the state of the team’s health, Bills players/coaches refused to use that as an excuse for the loss.
“I thought our guys did a good job, like I said. I couldn’t tell you who went out or who went down. Guys went in and the communication was pretty good,” Bills quarterback, Josh Allen said following the game. “I thought they did a good job up there and again that’s gonna happen in this game. Guys are gonna go down. It’s a physical game that we play and ya, that’s how it goes sometimes and we gotta be prepared for that.”
While injuries happen, the intense weather was a heavy talking point during the game’s broadcast. On-field, temperatures rose to nearly 100 degrees and the Bills bench was in the sun for the entire game.
Miami’s bench which was under shade by the end of the first quarter.
“Yeah, it was warm. Breathing was tough sometimes,” Allen continued. “We had some really, really long drives. We had a 20 play drive that ended in a field goal that we gotta find a way to put in the end zone, cap that one off. But I think our guys did a good job of sticking with some of the tempo stuff we were doing. You know cramps are gonna happen in this heat. You can do your best to prepare for it all week, drink as much water and Gatorade and this and that, but it’s different when you’re in game time and your adrenaline starts going. Like you said, it gets pretty hot on the field and there’s no way to really simulate that so we gotta do the best we can to stay on the field.”
While the loss was a tough one to swallow, the Bills have to take it in stride and move on.
“Next man up. This is one game,” Allen told reporters. “We’ll learn from this one tomorrow, take it on the chin and again, prepare for next week. That’s all we can do is move forward and again, we’re 2-1. Like to be 3-0, but 2-1 and we can still accomplish everything we want to accomplish.”
Bills wide receiver, Isaiah McKenzie, was also asked about the treacherous conditions on Sunday.
“We just trying to fight through and be resilient, even myself,” McKenzie told the media in the locker room after the game. “We got guys cramping, guys tired. You know what I’m saying, we got four guys out there. We just trying to do the best we can to get a drive downfield and try to put some points on the board. It was exhausting, but you know we fought. We fought, but we didn’t come out with the win. We gonna learn from it.”
Like Allen, McKenzie was asked how the Bills use this game to improve going forward.
“We gonna learn from it, you know what I’m saying?” McKenize continued. “We’re a resilient team. We’re gonna overcome, persevere and do what we need to do. We know we didn’t play our best football, but we gonna put our best foot forward and watch this film and get better for next week.”
McKenzie, who is actually from South Florida and still spends his offseason in Miami, was asked if he was use to those weather conditions the Bills encountered on Sunday.
“Did two IV’s during the week. Drunk a lot of water, drunk a lot of Gatorade. Took right stuff. I did a lot of things during the week, you know we all did a lot of things during the week just to stay hydrated,” McKenzie stated. “And I said during halftime, I’m like, ‘I stay hydrated and I’m still cramping up.’ I came back here and got an IV and it still wasn’t enough. I just fought through it, but it was hard. And me being from South Florida I thought I was just doing my stuff. But I guess I’m more familiar with Buffalo than I am with Miami right now at this point.”
While the players were the ones battling the conditions on the field, the Bills coaching staff was helplessly watching from the sidelines as player after player went down. The final number of different players who suffered some sort of issue on Sunday ended up at a whopping 13.
“I thought our training staff did a great job,” head coach Sean McDermott told the media during his postgame press conference. “Guys were going down. Some of it heat related, some of it other injury related there. Just real proud of the guys. I know we didn’t get the result that we all came down here for… I think we learned something about our team today, that’s for sure. Proud of the guys for the way they battled and the effort they gave us.”
When pressed on what you can take away from a close loss given all the adversity the team faced, McDermott was quick to dismiss the notion of any sort of consolation prize.
“We came down here to win the game and didn’t get that done. I didn’t get that done,” McDermott clarified. “But I’m proud of the way the guys battled and the effort they gave. We used about everybody we could on the sideline right there and hopefully we can get some of those guys back and healthy.”
When asked what he said to the team following the loss, McDermott kept playing up the angle of pride. Pride in the effort, but not in the result.
“I told them today in the locker room after the game… I didn’t even bring them up because they couldn’t move… that was a heck of an effort,” McDermott stated. “Never want to come up short. There’s no ribbons for second place and they know it. So we go back and we learn from this and I think we’ll learn things that were really good about today, one of those are the guts and heart and the intangibles of our football team. And I think we’ll learn some things that weren’t very good today, which led to the result that we got.”
Before ending his press conference, McDermott was asked if being down that many players made it too tough to win the ball game.
“No, no, never,” McDermott said passionately. “That’s not too difficult. I got a lot of confidence in the guys in this room. A lot of confidence. It’s never too difficult. Got a lot of confidence in these guys.”
While any divisional game loss hurts in the grand scheme of things, the Bills can at least take some solace in the fact that despite almost everything going wrong on Sunday, they were a play or two away from winning the game.
As McDermott echoed, there is no such thing as a consolation prize in the NFL, but there’s a difference between getting beat by your opponent and beating yourself. It felt like the latter happened on Sunday.
Next up, the Bills will need to try to get healthy as they set their sites on another tough matchup with Lamar Jackson and the 2-1 Baltimore Ravens.
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