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As with their previous four games so far in the 2013 season, the Buffalo Bills’ Thursday night encounter in Cleveland was entertaining, and the team had a chance to win right down to the wire. They entered the game hobbled by injuries to key players, but most of those players – Fred Jackson, C.J. Spiller, Marcell Dareus, Stevie Johnson, Mario Williams – all played and made contributions to the effort. It was a typical workmanlike effort from rookie QB EJ Manuel, as he was efficient and mistake-free, but unfortunately for him and the team his night ended early in the third quarter when he injured his knee while scrambling for a first down. Backup Jeff Tuel, also a rookie, finished the drive Manuel started by drawing an interference penalty on an end zone throw, setting up Jackson for his second short TD run of the night. But Tuel wasn’t up to the task the rest of the way, as the offense sputtered and then self-destructed as Tuel threw a pick-six interception to Browns’ safety T.J. Ward to seal the 37-24 win for Cleveland.

The Bills’ special teams had a rough night. Punter Shawn Powell continually booted line drive punts to speedy Browns’ punt returner Travis Benjamin, who set a team record for punt return yardage and ran one back 79 yards for a back-breaking touchdown. Powell has been inconsistent since he replaced Brian Moorman last season, and the team’s patience with him ran out on Friday as he was released. Buffalo’s defense proved once again that they are an improving unit. They have put together consistently good efforts in every game this year, but in both road games the team has played, that effort was ruined by the secondary giving up huge pass plays that cost the team the game. Against the Jets, Justin Rogers was the pigeon who got toasted. On Thursday, it was Aaron Williams’ turn. In his defense, Williams was switched to safety this year and had to move back to the corner because of injuries to other players. He had a great first game at corner against Joe Flacco and the Ravens, but got burned consistently by Cleveland. Still, the unit has done a good job of stopping the run, generated a decent pass rush and gotten great play from individuals like Dareus, Mario Williams, Manny Lawson and especially rookie Kiko Alonso.

Buffalo now has 10 days to regroup before returning home to face Cincinnati, and when they do they’ll have to do it without Manuel, who is out for at least a couple of weeks. The starting QB in that game may be Tuel, or it may be someone not yet on the roster. They also have to find a new punter and figure out who will be the team’s holder on extra points and field goals, a job Powell held.

On Sunday, the Buffalo Bills rebounded well from a disappointing game against the New York Jets last week, pulling out to a 20-7 halftime lead and then holding on to defeat the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, 23-20. The team made their share of mistakes in the game, as rookie QB EJ Manuel had a couple of turnovers and the offensive line took some dubious penalties to kill drives, but overall the offense did just enough to win the game. There were a couple of missed opportunities – with Manuel overthrowing a wide open Stevie Johnson on a potential touchdown pass and tight end Lee Smith falling down on another possible TD – and a bad break when a touchdown throw to Robert Woods was overturned by a questionable replay review. But the combination of a sound rushing attack, (accomplished mostly by committee as C.J. Spiller, Fred Jackson and even Tashard Choice rotated in and out of the lineup, with a sprinkling of successful end-arounds by Woods and T.J. Graham) and a great defensive effort sealed the win for coach Doug Marrone’s club. Buffalo took the early lead with a pair of pretty touchdown plays – a perfectly thrown Manuel pass to Woods for a 42 yard score, and a Jackson run up the gut for a 16 yard TD.

Ravens’ QB Joe Flacco burned the Bills’ secondary with some long throws, but the Buffalo defense held Baltimore to field goals when it mattered most. The rush defense was stellar, holding the Ravens to 24 yards, while the pass defense, playing with a patchwork secondary, sacked Flacco four times and intercepted him five times. Aaron Williams, moved from safety back to cornerback due to injuries, picked off a pair of Flacco’s throws, as did playmaking rookie linebacker Kiko Alonso, who is probably the top rookie defensive player in the NFL through the first four weeks of the season. Jim Leonhard had the other pick, while Marcell Dareus had a pair of sacks, with Mario Williams and Manny Lawson getting the others. For the most part, it was a tremendous team effort by the defense, with contributions coming from the entire unit.

The Bills now have a short week to prepare for a Thursday night matchup with the Browns in Cleveland, another tough test on the road, where they didn’t exactly distinguish themselves in their first game away from home against the Jets. They now have to figure out how to transfer the resilient attitude they’ve shown at home to a hostile road environment.

Sunday’s Buffalo Bills’ game against the New York Jets was one of those games the Bills have suffered  through over the years. The team shows up apparently unprepared to play, and gets physically dominated on both sides of the ball to the point that players leave the field injured all day long as a result of that domination. The Jets won by only a 27-20 score, but the game was nowhere near that close. When an opponent hands you almost 200 free yards as a result of taking a whopping 20 penalties, and you win the turnover battle, you should win that game, yet the Bills were so physically dominated that they still lost. New York was overpowering in the trenches on both sides of the ball. The Jets kept their rookie quarterback, Geno Smith, clean all day while sacking Bills’ rookie EJ Manuel 8 times. The Bills’ line struggled against Rex Ryan’s blitzes all day. Guard Colin Brown, who was dubbed the worst offensive lineman in the NFL by a statistical website recently, played up (or down) to that rating on Sunday, but overall the whole line was terrible. Manuel was under siege all day, and looked skittish throughout the game, overthrowing receivers and heaving balls out of bounds without getting his throws anywhere close to allow those receivers to make any plays on the ball.

The Bills’ defense, as is their habit, allowed another obscure back, this time some guy named Bilal Powell, to rush for over 100 yards, while allowing 2 receivers to go for 100+ yards. While the unknown Powell was gashing the Bills all day, Buffalo’s star back, C.J. Spiller, gained 9 yards on 10 carries and eventually was pummeled into the trainer’s room with an injury. It was Spiller’s second disappointing game in 3 outings, and the Bills’ coaching staff, which has stubbornly and predictably kept running him into the middle of the line on almost every first and second down, deserves a lot of the blame for his failures. To repeat what was said by game analyst Rich Gannon on Sunday, running a fast-paced offense doesn’t necessarily equate to running a creative offense. As far as injuries, besides Spiller, defensive end Alex Carrington was lost for the season, while Mario Williams, Kraig Urbik, Stevie Johnson and Leodis McKelvin also were hurt. McKelvin’s injury affected the team the most, as his replacement, Justin Rogers, was toasted by the Jets all afternoon. With Stephon Gilmore, Ron Brooks and Jairus Byrd already out, the secondary was depleted, but still, the backups didn’t look much like NFL players against an offense led by a rookie QB with a receiving corps that lacks any star players. Up next for the Bills is an even bigger challenge – the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, who have a veteran signal caller in Joe Flacco and an even more physical defense than the Jets.

The Buffalo Bills’ stunning last-second 24-23 win over Carolina on Sunday can be summed up in one word – emotional. It was emotional for their new head coach, Doug Marrone, who had a close friend pass away prior to the game. It was emotional for rookie QB EJ Manuel, who led his first fourth quarter comeback, then presented his father with a game ball he was awarded, on his dad’s birthday, which was Sunday. It was emotional for Stevie Johnson, who, despite being a playmaker in his time with the Bills, had a gigantic monkey of numerous critical dropped passes on his resume also. He caught the winning TD pass from Manuel with 2 seconds left on the clock. It was emotional for Mario Williams, who had the game of his career with 4 1/2  sacks while also tormenting Panther QB Cam Newton most of the day. Most of all, it was emotional for Bills’ fans, who have been beaten into submission by the team with one heartbreaking loss after another over the last decade, and surely already had this one chalked up in the loss column when Manuel and the offense took the field with 80 yards to cover, a touchdown needed and no timeouts at their disposal.

However, for the first time in ages, the Bills did the unthinkable and created some magic with the startling 80 yard touchdown drive to seal the win. It was a strange game in that the Bills seemed to spend most of it shooting themselves in the foot with turnovers, mistakes and costly penalties that either killed drives for the offense or extended drives for the Panthers. Yet after the dust cleared on the final drive and the improbable win was in the books, the statistics showed that not only did Manuel lead the winning drive, but C.J. Spiller rushed for 103 yards on 16 carries, and Johnson went over 100 yards in receiving also. It had to be the quietest pair of 100 yard games by Bills’ players in team history. While Mario’s sack total stood out and was evident as a major contribution to the defensive effort, Spiller’s and Johnson’s days were workmanlike and hardly noticed until seeing the stats afterwards.

The bottom line is that the Bills earned a much-needed victory that hopefully will boost their confidence and propel them to greater heights as the season progresses. They have undoubtedly treated their fans to a pair of exciting home games to start the season.

Entering the 2013 regular season, the Buffalo Bills were almost a mystery. With a new front office, new coaching staff and a roster loaded with new players, it was hard to get a handle on what to expect when the team opened the season at home against division rival New England on Sunday. The result of the game, a 23-21 Patriot win,  was typical of Bills-Patriots recent matchups – a competitive contest that goes down to the wire, and in the end New England makes the plays they need to win, and the Bills don’t. As far as the play of the home team, there were pluses and minuses, and, considering the “new” Bills were thrown into the fire against one of the league’s best teams, the result, though disappointing, is also somewhat encouraging, if coach Doug Marrone can build off the effort. Here are some of the minuses:

* Mistakes, penalties and turnovers. The Bills stayed in the game down to the wire despite the fact that they handed Tom Brady field position for 2 easy TDs with fumbles, and killed drives with costly penalties. The penalty situation was a constant throughout the preseason, but the thinking then was that the flags were against players who wouldn’t make the final roster anyway. After 13 penalties in the opener, it’s now clearly a pattern that the coaches haven’t been able to clean up.

* the disappointing performance by C.J. Spiller, who fumbled on the team’s first drive and was ineffective all day.

* the underwhelming play of their big-money free agent, Mario Williams. Williams didn’t do much, and the Pats seemed to be targeting his side with the run when they needed crucial yards on the ground.

* the inability of the defense to get stops on third down, especially when the game was on the line. Granted, Brady and the Pats have been one of the best, if not THE best, team in the NFL recently in converting on third down, but the Bills’ defense has been horrible in what seems like forever in getting off the field on third downs, through numerous coaching staffs and players.

Here are the positives to take from the game:

* the exceptional play of rookie QB E.J. Manuel. He was composed in the pocket and showed good decision-making skills, a quick release and a nice touch on his passes. Despite being held back by a conservative game plan designed to help him “manage the game”, Manuel was effective even though the Bills rarely threw on first down and seemed to wind up putting him in third-and-long situations all day due to an ineffective running game. He showed enough in this game for the coaches to hopefully unleash him a little more in next week’s game against Carolina.

* the play of the secondary. They faltered at the end of the game by allowing Brady to complete passes for first downs on the winning drive, but played well most of the day considering 2 of their best players, Stephon Gilmore and Jairus Byrd, were missing. Byrd’s replacement, Da’Norris Searcy, was a revelation, with a sack and a fumble recovery return for a touchdown. The Bills are a young team looking for some of their new players to step up and make plays, and Searcy certainly answered the call.

* the play of Fred Jackson. Jackson was playing at an MVP level in 2011 before getting hurt, then had a down season in 2012 that included some ineffective games and numerous costly fumbles. He looks ready to be a positive contributor and a much-needed veteran leader on offense this season.

* rookie receiver Robert Woods. A high draft pick, he was penciled in to the starting lineup early in training camp, and saw very limited action in preseason. Woods made a couple of nice catches (one negated by one of those costly penalties) and looks like the real deal.

Overall, despite the loss, the Bills, considering the quality of their opponent, gave a decent showing, and if they clean up the penalties and turnovers and stop beating themselves, have a chance for a winning season.