One thing you can take from the Buffalo Bills’ 34-21 one-sided loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday is that Rex Ryan’s preseason bluster about “guaranteeing” the playoffs this year was just empty noise. The Bills stand at 3-3 and are far from out of the playoff race, but they have looked completely overmatched against high level competition (Patriots, Giants and Bengals) in their losses so far. Buffalo entered the game having to play backup quarterback E.J. Manuel, so it figured that Rex’s vaunted “elite” defense needed to defend their home turf with a dominating effort against Cinci’s Andy Dalton, who has started off strongly this year but still has the reputation for wilting under pressure. Instead, Dalton had his way all day long, as the Bills’ defensive unit had no sacks, no turnovers and looked helpless to stop the run. Manuel guided an opening TD drive which he capped by running 2 yards for the score, and led another drive to pull his club to within 17-14 at halftime. How did Buffalo respond? By allowing touchdown drives, with little resistance, on the Bengals next 2 drives as Marvin Lewis’ unbeaten squad went ahead by an insurmountable 31-14 count.
Buffalo now needs to circle the wagons enough to try to eek out a win next week in London over the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars. This shouldn’t be difficult, especially on a neutral field (the Bills have experience with that from their Toronto games in past years) but at this point they are capable of losing to anyone. If they accomplish that and get to 4-3, they then have to use their bye week to self-evaluate and figure out how Ryan took Jim Schwartz’s aggressive defense and in trying to “fix what wasn’t broken”, has turned that unit into a confused bunch that can’t be counted on for stops when they’re most needed, let alone play dominating football. They also have to answer the question of why last season’s successful special teams have turned into a weekly liability, and why this team can’t seem to stop itself from committing costly penalties, many of which are undisciplined. Basically, Rex needs to shut his mouth and start actually coaching this team. It never seemed possible, but Ryan is making Doug Marrone look good.