Texans 23, Bills 20

Only three coaches in the NFL are longer tenured with their teams than Sean McDermott is with the Buffalo Bills (Tomlin, Harbaugh and Reid). No matter how disastrous this season ends up being – or next season or the one after that – his job is safe. So yesterday, he fell on his sword and took full responsibility for the puzzling play calling and clock management on his team’s final offensive possession yesterday in Houston, Texas. “It’s on me” is what he said.

Questions will continue this week about the decision to throw three times from the endzone – an area of the field fraught with risk late in a tied game. A sack or a holding penalty would have ended the game on a safety and any turnover would have obviously been lights out as well. The play of the game may have come from Texans punter (with a great name) Tommy Townsend who pinned the Bills inside their five yard line with less than a minute remaining. The obvious alternative to the plays that the Bills ran was to have run the ball and try to give their own punter a bit of breathing room or, better yet, grind out one first down to allow them to run out the clock after Houston had used their three second half time outs. Then take your chances in overtime. One of the most difficult tasks in football is to run when the defence knows that’s your plan so the Bills decided to try to let Josh Allen remedy the difficult situation himself. An offensive pass interference call on Keon Coleman pinned them further back before two incomplete passes set up Sam Martin’s punt from deep in his own endzone. His punt was pretty good but Robert Woods (a Bills draft pick from 11 years earlier) returned it 13 yards and after a short gain on one offensive play, Houston’s Hawaiian kicker (with another great name) Ka’imi Fairbairn ended the game on a 59 yard field goal.

So, why didn’t they run the ball? Surely they weren’t trying to score; the objective was to run out the clock and send the game to overtime. With the Texans holding their three time outs, short runs up the middle would not have used any more time than incomplete passes did but running was clearly what they should have tried to do. It’s not exactly Monday Morning Quarterbacking to say this; the entire football world landed on this consensus as soon as the game had ended. Unorthodox plays always seem great when they work: “What a brilliant call to pass in that situation” would have been the analysis had one of them worked. And on the third down pass, Allen’s arm was hit as he delivered the ball in the direction of Mack Hollins who was open for an easy first down. The pass bounced on the turf and, as they say, the rest is history.

The Bills were lucky to have come back in the second half at all. A key injury to receiver Nico Collins who had torched the Bills defence (and Cole Bishop in particular) in the first half and two turnovers by CJ Stroud allowed them to keep the game within reach but defensive weakness, especially on third down, and the worst statistical performance of Josh Allen’s career should have foreclosed any chances they had. The Texans are a good team, are well-coached and I predict will be a tough out for whoever they play in January.

I dug up some commentary from NFL analyst Mike Florio from a couple of years ago. He was talking about the Tua Tagovailoa concussion incident (in a game against the Bills) where he was cleared to return to a game after clearly wobbling around and needing assistance from one of his teammates following a hard helmet-to-turf hit. He then played in a Thursday game four days later. Florio explained then that the NFL had made a big deal of their establishing the deployment of UNC’s – Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultants – to “independently” evaluate players suspected of being concussed. The illusion of these neurotrauma specialists being “unaffiliated” or “independent” only means that they are independent from individual teams. They are hired and paid by the league which clearly has a vested interest in keeping its star players on the field. When Josh Allen’s head hit the turf yesterday, it certainly looked like a big enough impact, where he did not brace for it, that I said to my partner that he would not be returning to the game. Into the blue tent he went (he claimed afterward that it was initially to evaluate an ankle injury) for a short time, missed only one play and was back under centre to finish another unsuccessful drive. The UNC obviously was satisfied that he was fit to return and since injury from head trauma manifests itself very differently case to case, who am I to question the validity of the blue tent examination by the UNC? My guess is that he was asked what his annual salary is and who his girlfriend is. Easy for me to say (and apologies in advance for this) but if I were making $43 million and dating Hailee Steinfeld, I’d remember those things no matter how badly I’d been concussed. Allen also took a very hard hit on the failed trick play in Baltimore a week earlier. I hope he is ok. And I mean really ok and not just ok in the opinion of the not-so-independent evaluator in the blue tent.

The Bills three-game road trip continues next Monday night in the Meadowlands against the Jets - just when I had my circadian rhythm adjusted to a 1pm Sunday game. This will be another tough one as the Jets lost again yesterday, this time in London to the unbeaten Vikings. The Bills will return home to play the Titans after that and will either be 3-3 or 4-2. The AFC East is shaping up to be one of the weaker divisions in the NFL so if they can get their key injured players back and stay healthy down the stretch, the Bills still have a good shot at another division title and the home playoff game that goes with it.