ORCHARD PARK — Joe Brady said there were smoke detectors going off throughout the team.
Certainly it was a way to keep the Buffalo Bills focused on the Los Angeles Chargers after an impressive 2-0 start. The Chargers came in 0-2, with a litany of injuries and in desperate need of a win.
So, naturally, the Bills coughed up five turnovers.
“The house was on fire today,” Brady said.
The last time the Bills won a game after committing five turnovers was 1997 against the Indianapolis Colts. Coincidentally, Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh was the Colts’ quarterback that day.
And yet, there was never a moment it felt the Bills were teetering on getting blown out, not even down 10-0 after the first quarter. There was never a moment it felt like the Bills didn’t have a chance to win.
Partly because the Buffalo defense only gave up six points off turnovers, the Bills nearly won the game by double-digits and led 24-13 with 3:13 to play after taking their first lead just four minutes earlier.
There are wins, games teams are lucky to win and games teams win because they are good. Teams that win despite committing five turnovers wins because they are good.
The Bills, despite how poorly they played, showed just how good they are.
“When you turn the ball over five times, you’re not going to win many games,” Brady said “… That fact that we were able to find ways to win the football game speaks to the character of the guys in the locker room and the guys not pointing fingers and continuing to stick together and putting the ball down.”
Allen was anything but the superhuman force of nature he had been in the first two weeks. Maybe James Cook’s fumble on the first play from scrimmage tweaked him out, but he never seemed to get comfortable.
It was one of those games from Allen — he’s had more than his share over the years. Both of his interceptions to Chargers safety Genesis Smith shouldn’t have been thrown, both intended for D.J. Moore.
Allen also had a few other throws he might have wanted to reel back upon release. And it didn’t seem like he ever got a feel for the Chargers’ pass rush, which hauled him down four times in the game, matching the entire total from the first two games.
But Allen made throws when he needed to — including a Houdini-like pass to Ty Johnson on fourth down that led to the go-ahead touchdown — while his mere presence impacted the Chargers. Harbaugh called for three field goals on fourth and 3. They needed all the points they could get against the Bills, who punted only once in the game.
“To be tied at halftime felt like a dream, to be honest,” Allen said. “… It’s not a game you expect to win, but we’ll take them any way we can get them.”
But what makes the Bills offense so good is their ability to morph into whatever they need to be in any given week. And with Allen off kilter, handing the ball to Cook provided a calming presence to the offense.
One of the big differences in Joe Brady’s play-calling over the first two weeks was first-down run-pass percentages. Brady flipped from running the ball 61.6% of the time the previous two seasons to keeping the ball in Allen’s hands nearly half the time during the first two games.
Throughout the game, Brady continued to go back to Cook, who ran for 154 yards and a touchdown on 24 attempts, on a cool 6.4 yards per carry. And he carried 16 times for 96 yards on first down, putting the Bills in manageable situations later in the series of downs.
And when the Bills needed six yards to close out the Chargers? Hand it to Cook on third and 6 — on a play they ran over and over — and gained nine yards. After just 57 yards in the season opener, Cook’s 346 yards are the third-most over a three-game stretch to start the season in franchise history, trailing only O.J. Simpson in 1975 (538) and 1973 (476).
“You always need — especially early on — just a gut-punching game like that,” Bills center Connor McGovern said. “Just to see what your team’s really made of. And I think we have that X-factor.”