Let’s get it out of the way: Josh Allen wasn’t great against Chicago.
But a week after Allen willed the Bills to a win over the Dolphins, his teammates were there to pick up the slack when conditions were less than ideal for another one of his masterpieces.
The Bills are a reflection of their quarterback. Sometimes they win with beautiful skill, sometimes they win with brute force and sometimes they make mind-bogglingly poor plays.
The result almost always seems to be the same, though, and after Saturday’s 35-13 win over the Bears, the result was a third consecutive AFC East championship.
Much of the criticism of the Bills this season has been warranted in the moment, but no one can say this team isn’t resilient. At the beginning of the year, it seemed it wasn’t a team that needed to be. The win over the Bears was Buffalo’s fourth win of 20-plus points, but the first since Week 5.
Fourteen key defensive players have missed games due to injury, as have four of the team’s five starting offensive linemen. They had a home game moved for weather and played the last three in miserable conditions.
The Bills left for Chicago a day early to beat a blizzard, that same blizzard is preventing them from returning and will force them to spend another night away before catching a planned flight to Rochester on Christmas morning.
Who knows if the Bills will meet their Super Bowl expectations, but it won’t be because they wilt under pressure or they find a situation to difficult. It’s hard to imagine they find anything more adverse than what’s already been dealt.
“It just shows the mental toughness that this team has being able to deal with adversity,” Bills safety Jordan Poyer said. “It just shows that we’ve got a lot of great leaders on this team and a lot of young guys that have bought in to everything that we do here. It’s pretty special, but we’ve got a lot of football left and we want to continue to get better.”
The Buffalo defense has been hammered with adversity all season, whether it be injuries or questions about just how good they are. A week after giving up 188 yards rushing to the No. 27 rushing offense in the league, they held the NFL’s No. 1 rushing offense to 80 yards, more than 100 below their season average.
To start the day, the Bears marched 64 yards on the opening drive, with defensive ends losing contain on Justin Fields and linebackers getting mauled by offensive linemen on running plays, all capped by miscommunication in the secondrary that led to a touchdown pass to a wide-open Dante Pettis. That was ultimately one of the few highlights for the Bears offense.
Buffalo buckled down and surrendered one drive of more than 25 yards the remainer of the game, holding Chicago to 209 yards of total offense. The Bills had as many tackles behind the line of scrimmage (11), as Fields, a 1,000-yard rusher, had yards rushing.
Ed Oliver led a defensive line that accounted for nine of the tackles for a loss, with two and a sack of Fields, who was limited to his lowest rushing total of the season.
“We caught him in the pocket a couple of times while he was just sitting there holding the ball,” Oliver said. “That’s what you’ve got to do to him. You can’t him get out — collapse from the outside and just keep him in the pocket. If you try to chase him down, he’s liable to do anything, but if you can keep him that pocket and contain him, you can get him down.”
Allen may not have been great — throwing for 172 yards and three total touchdowns — but this wasn’t a game it was needed. He tried, at times, too hard to be great and it resulted in two head-pounding interceptions.
But Chicago boasted one of the NFL’s worst run defenses and the Bills gashed it for 254 yards on 8.2 yards per carry, both of which were season-highs. Devin Singletary (106 yards) made Bears safety Jaquan Brisker look silly with a dazzling cut on his 33-yard touchdown run, while James Cook (99) yards looked as electric as advertised coming out of the draft.
It’s easy to nitpick Allen when he doesn’t play well, but he shouldn’t have to be spectacular each week. Patrick Mahomes completed less than 60% of his passes in a win over the Seahawks, while Joe Burrow was superb early and then threw two interceptions as a late fumble prevent the Patriots from erasing a 22-point deficit.
When Allen is great, there may not be a better team in the NFL, but Buffalo has continually proven he doesn’t have to play to that level to win games.
“We found a way to get it done,” Allen said. “They’re not all pretty and we can say we didn’t play great, but at the end of the day, we had over 400 yards of offense and our run game did well.”