Well where do you start? Buffalo went down to Miami and embarrassed themselves to a winless Dolphin team who was starting a second year quarterback. The Bills needed to have this game if they wanted any hopes of staying in the division race, and the whole team turned in a completely embarrassing performance to show that they are not playoff ready. The Bills coaching staff, and the play of Trent Edwards were part of the main reason Miami walked away with a 38-10 win in South Florida.
The Bills were battling injuries as three out of the four players in the secondary were out for this game, and the young and inexperienced offensive line was missing Demetrius Bell . This would pose a big problem for Edwards as the game went on. The big storyline for Buffalo was the return of Marshawn Lynch from his three game suspension. The Bills started out with the ball first, and Trent went to Terrell Owens on the first play of the game for four yards. It was good to see that the coaching staff was trying to get him involved early after last weeks zero catch game by Owens. The drive stalled after the line was beaten and Edwards fumbled the ball on third down. This was the start of a very awful performance by the Buffalo offensive tackles. The Bills recovered the fumble and punted the ball. After Buffalo forced Miami to punt on three plays, Roscoe Parrish had a big 31 yard punt return to take the ball to near midfield. Lynch got his first carry of the year to go for 2 yards. But as the story has been all year, the offense failed to take advantage of the opportunity. On third down and four from the Miami thirty yard line, Edwards tried to hit Owens on a slant pattern, but threw the ball high, this was the main story line the first quarter. Trent was very inaccurate on long and short throws. Rian Lindell then came in to hook a 49 yard field goal wide left.
Even though Miami got excellent field position, they were forced to punt on the next drive. Buffalo got the ball back, and then on third down and seven, Trent hit Marshawn for a beautiful 23 pass play taking the ball to the Buffalo 37. The drive stalled a couple plays later and the Bills were forced to punt. Then Miami put together a 11 play that left the Buffalo defense on the field for 6 minutes, and got 3 points out of it.
Now at this point in the game, the offense needed to get something going, but on the next play for Buffalo, Edwards locked onto Josh Reed , and Vontae Davis jumped the rout and intercepted the pass returning it for a 23 yard touchdown to give Miami a 10-0 lead. This was a back breaker for the Bills. To Dick Jauron’s credit, they didn’t get conservative on the next drive, as Trent threw the deep ball to Owens, who made a beautiful adjustment to bring down a 39 yard catch, but they could only end up mustering a Lindell field goal to cut the lead to 10-3. The next drive the defense completely broke down to the wildcat offense, as Ronnie Brown had a key 38 yard run to set up the 1 yard touchdown he scored on 4th down. The scored stayed 17-3 as Edwards was sacked to end the half. The Bills were not getting anything going offensively and the defense was tiring out at this point.
Miami opened the second half with a 12 play drive taking six minutes off the clock with a variety of runs mixed with Chad Henne throws, resulting in a touchdown to put the game away at 24-3.
On the ensuing drive, Edwards threw a poorly thrown ball to Owens that was intercepted by Will Allen, and that set up a 1 yard Ricky Williams touchdown to put Miami up 31-3. On the next drive, the Bills finally went deep a couple of times to Lee Evans for passes of 35 and 25 yards which set up an Edwards touchdown pass of 3 yards to Reed to make the score 31-10. Miami would take on another touchdown in the 4th quarter to finish the embarrassment of Dick Jauron’s Bills at 38-10.
There are a lot of questions that are going to need answering by the Buffalo front office this week as Jauron’s seat is getting hotter by the game. The offense was non existent this game as Edwards had another poor day. The Bills have now lost 8 in a row to AFC east opponents, and are showing the country they are not ready to be a playoff team. They must regroup for next weeks games against the winless Cleveland Browns at Ralph Wilson stadium in what could be a must win for Dick Jauron and his Bills if they want to make a run for the playoffs.
Bills Blitz
Positional Breakdown and Grades
NFL.com Gamebook
Dolphins Game Preview
Gameday Homepage