Takeaways from Bills win over Vikings
· Yahoo Sports
The Buffalo Bills beat the Vikings 23-6 in Week 9 on Monday Night Football, a dominant defensive effort that paired wonderfully with fine performances from Josh Allen and James Cook.
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The win moved Joe Brady’s team to 7-1 on the season.
These are my takeaways from Buffalo’s victory.
The defense was sensational… even if Carson Wentz was not
The Bills defense had an epic performance in this game, I don’t care who the quarterback was. Carson Wentz was 8-of-25 for 81 yards with two picks. And the goalposts can’t be moved here. While rumors have swirled of Minnesota trading for a quarterback this past week, there were many who believed the Vikings weren’t really downgrading at the position going from Kyler Murray to Wentz for this primetime battle.
Let’s not forget, in Week 1, in a relief appearance after Kyler Murray was injured, Wentz was 12-of-19 for 133 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions. On paper, as a veteran pocket passer, he should be better suited for Kevin O’Connell’s offense.
And it’s not as if Wentz had a pedestrian outing. He had a quarterback rating of 8.9 against the Bills defense. That’s the lowest rating a quarterback with at least 25 attempts in a game has managed since… 2019.
Now, of course, Wentz missed on a handful of throws in this contest, but the Bills defense forced him to hold onto the football often — his 2.82-second average time to throw was higher than Josh Allen in this game — with outstanding coverage downfield for the vast majority of this matchup.
The pass rush and coverage were married throughout, and Buffalo only had to blitz on 25.9% of Wentz’s dropbacks to affect the pocket consistently.
And I’ll finish with this storyline that probably won’t be talked about enough given how abysmal the Vikings pass game was — Minnesota ran it 12 times for 51 yards, which equates to a 4.3 yards-per-tote average. Aaron Jones averaged 3.2 yards per carry. Only 27.3% of the Vikings runs were successful — determined by yards gained relative to down and distance — the fifth-lowest rate for a run game in Week 9.
Buffalo’s run defense is steadily improving each week, and it’s already much more consistent than it was a season ago.
Josh Allen was excellent
The stats will miss the sheer brilliance of Allen in this game. His rating was only 87.3. But beyond his slightly floated interception — that did come on a 3rd and 23, mind you — the Bills quarterback excelled against the most unique and aggressive defense in football, a truly elite unit, on its home turf.
To start 3-of-5 for 24 yards with a pick and finish the evening 21-of-31 for 234 with a touchdown through the air was immaculate from Allen.
He commanded the offense, both pre and post snap exactly how it should be done. He made smart decisions and threw with proper velocity/touch starting with that touchdown drive near the end of the first half. His ball placement was superb as well.
And, heck, no quarterback is going to be perfect for 60 minutes against that Vikings defense.
Allen did all this without Dion Dawkins and Alec Anderson.
MVP-caliber performance from him in this game.
Hats off to Tylan Grable + Austin Corbett
Grable and Corbett allowed four pressures each. Not exactly what clubs want from starting blockers. But after a few miscommunications early that led to quick pressures, I thought both depth players settled in nicely, and really got after it in the run game in the second half.
The Brian Flores defensive scheme is designed to create offensive line miscommunication, and Grable and Corbett have never played alongside each other in an NFL game before.
But instead of their presence on the field becoming a story throughout this game, an issue that severely hampered the Bills offense all night, Grable and Corbett were steady in the second half, as run and pass blockers.
The Bills linebackers played tremendously
The responsibilities in Jim Leonhard’s defense are starting to become second nature to Terrel Bernard, Dorian Williams, and Kaleb Elarms-Orr.
Williams and Bernard snagged a pick each in this one, and Bernard dropped probably the most gift-wrapped interception opportunity of his NFL career.
They are flowing freely in coverage, rapidly reacting to route concepts, and getting to proper depth at the intermediate level. Against the run, they’re triggering quickly and regularly not allowing blocks to stick to them.
In this game, Bernard led the team with six tackles. Dorian Williams had three without a miss. And Elarms-Orr added three tackles of his own on just 13 snaps. This trio has become an underrated three-down group.
Joe Brady called one heck of a game
Sure, it wasn’t idyllic to start. But once Brady understood the outside pitch plays weren’t working on the ground, he went away from them.
Then, later, when he realized the interior run game was doing just enough to keep the Vikings defense on its heels and burn clock, he stuck with it.
But it wasn’t a one-dimensional attack for Buffalo in this game. There was a fine collection of play-action, throws to tight ends in the flat, running backs involved through the air. Lots of 13 personnel. Over-the-middle looks for Khalil Shakir, some classic first-read looks outside for DJ Moore, and well-timed quick screens to receivers.
Again, it’s never going to be flawless against a Flores defense that has the horses on the Vikings roster.
But Brady was in his bag as a play-caller in this convincing win.
The special teams unit was damn good, again
Whether it was Tyler Bass making his 18th consecutive field goal (a team record) to begin the season, Tommy Doman Jr. handling punt and kickoff duties and laying the lumber to force a fumble, or Greg Dortch’s big return to begin the game, special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers has built a fantastic unit that was showcased in this Monday Night Football win.
In a low-scoring, defensive clash like we got in the first half, I can’t stress enough how important Bass making those kicks was to avoid field-position and momentum shifts.
Doman even proved capable of kicking a “dirty ball” that hits within the landing zone but isn’t immediately fielded by the returner.
Buffalo’s special teams were once again stellar in victory.