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The Buffalo Bills’ game against Miami on Sunday, a resounding 35-8 Dolphin win, followed pretty much the same script as last week’s blowout loss in Dallas, as the team looked horrible again and was outcoached and outplayed in every phase of the game. For three straight weeks now, the team has looked not ready to play, and instead of finding answers it has gotten progressively worse in each loss. When a team isn’t physically or mentally ready to play, the result is their opponent winds up steamrolling them, and worse, these types of games become dangerous as the unprepared players getting physically whipped all day long start getting carted off with injuries. That’s exactly what happened to the Bills for the second week in a row. In the last 2 weeks it was Eric Wood, George Wilson and even kicker Rian Lindell, who hurt his shoulder making a tackle on a kick return because the rest of his kick coverage teammates were asleep. This week, Terrence McGee, Donald Jones, David Nelson and Fred Jackson all got hurt, with McGee and Jones probably now lost for the season. The Bills have been a great story early in the year, but the losses of Wood on the offensive line and Kyle Williams on the defensive front have effectively removed the aggressiveness from both units.

On offense, the Bills seemed to have a good plan on the opening drive, using screen passes to break big gains and slow down Miami’s aggressive pass rush. It might have been a good day for them, except that for the second week in a row, the defense couldn’t stop anything. In ending last week’s post reviewing the Bills’ loss to the Cowboys, I stated that if the Bills’ couldn’t find some answers to improve their defense, they would wind up making Matt Moore look like the second coming of Dan Marino. Moore wears jersey # 8, but he may as well have worn 13 on Sunday. The Fish scored touchdowns on their first 4 possessions. When that happens, the other team’s offense, in this case the Bills, is inevitably going to look bad trying to keep up. Granted, the offense didn’t help matters by turning the ball over and putting the D in bad spots, but on a supposed playoff team, shouldn’t the defense be expected to make a stand at some point when things are going bad? The Bills’ defense isn’t terrible, in fact they swarm to the ball, hustle and try hard on first and second downs throughout every game. Then on third down, they become clueless, passive and robotic and will continually give up first downs. It’s gotten to the point where Bills’ fans have that feeling on third down that they’ve had in the team’s worst losing seasons. If it’s third and one, they’ll surrender the yard. If it’s third and 3, they’ll give up 5, if it’s third and 12, they’ll allow a receiver to run a 15 yard pattern unchallenged and give up the first down. On the flip side, for this particular game, the Bills’ offense had ZERO third down conversions. ZERO. Not against the 1970s Steel Curtain defense, against the 2-7 Dolphins. This is a team that clearly has lost all of whatever momentum they had early in the year. They are 10 games into the season, and have now regressed on offense, defense and special teams. A missed blocking assignment on a punt that causes a blocked kick? In week 10? That’s just unacceptable. Going into next week’s game against the Jets, the coaching staff has to realize that at this point there are no more rookies or “young” players. They need to find some playmakers somewhere on the roster in a hurry, especially among the defensive players.