rayonsports.com

This week’s NFL game between the hometown Buffalo Bills and the hated New England Patriots had to be one of the most hyped sporting events in local  history, and unfortunately, coach Rex Ryan and his players appeared to be as caught up in the pre-game hype as the fans. The Bills received the opening kickoff and couldn’t have started off more perfectly – they drove 80 yards in 10 plays, taking 5 minutes off the clock, and scoring a touchdown on a 2 yard run by rookie running back Karlos Williams. The Bills then acted like they’d already won the game, as they started getting cocky and taking totally foolish unnecessary roughness penalties to set up Tom Brady, who doesn’t need the help, for a couple of easy scores to get New England started toward what turned out to be an easy win. At least, it should have been easy. In the second half, Patriot coach Bill Belichick refused to follow conventional wisdom by starting to run out some clock with his running game while holding a 34-13 lead, instead allowing the Bills to crawl back to within a single score at 37-32 with his arrogant offensive approach. The Bills couldn’t quite complete the comeback, losing 40-32, so this loss just gets lumped in with all the others Belichick and Brady have inflicted on Buffalo over a 15 year period. It will be a tough loss for the Bills to swallow, since they did a lot of talking before the game and didn’t back it up, but it also won’t define their entire season. They have to continue to work on the negatives from this loss – like eliminating the excessive penalties, especially all the undisciplined roughness calls, and  making sure their supposed dominant defense works harder to ensure they are consistently dominant, every week, with their play on the field and not just with idle talk. They need to put this loss behind them and realize that the season is long and luckily they don’t have to play New England every week. They should also realize that the Pats routinely do to the rest of the league what they did to them on Sunday, and take some of the positives from the defeat. For instance, Tyrod Taylor’s no-quit performance. Yes, he looked bad at times taking 8 sacks and tossing 3 interceptions, but he also led the offense to 5 touchdowns, which you’d think should be enough to win with a defense that is supposed to be as good as Buffalo’s. Another positive was Sammy Watkins, after a dormant performance in the opener against the Colts, getting re-involved in the passing attack. Also, LeSean McCoy finally looks to be getting warmed up to provide bigger and better things to the attack. Buffalo faces their first road test of the season next week in a late Sunday afternoon encounter in Miami. The Dolphins will be in must-win mode after losing to Jacksonville this week. Ryan needs to tone down the swagger and get his team, and especially his defense, refocused to bring home a big division road win to get the season back on track.