Week 5: Bills Lose Ugly 40-7
A bad loss wasn't totally unexpected but this was real bad.
by Steve Saslow

at Week 5 Bills    7 Bears   40 Gameday Grades

This game went exactly as the Bears expected it would as they dominated the Bills from start to finish enroute to a 40-7 rout of the Bills. Buffalo made it easy for the best team in the league. They had dropped passes, bad penalties, three interceptions, a lost fumble on special teams, and even a bobbled fake punt snap. That was no way to play if the Bills were going to pull off an upset win in the Windy City or even keep the game interesting past the first quarter.

The Bills opening drive was their best and that ended thanks to an illegal motion penalty and botched snap on the ensuing punt. It looked like it was going to be a fake but Brian Moorman said the fake wasn't on but Dick Jauron acknowledged it was. It was all Chicago after that as they scored on their opening five possessions. Two field goals were followed by three strong touchdown drives that gave the Bears a 27-0 halftime lead.

The Bills offense could do nothing after that opening drive as they had three, three and out drives sprinkled around two interceptions. The defense couldn't do anything as well as the Bears had good success running the ball with Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson. Jones went over 100 yards in the game with 109 on 22 carries while Benson added 48 of his own. They also had success in the air going to Bernard Berrian who burned Terrence McGee all day long. Berrian scored the Bears first touchdown with an 8 yard catch. Benson added a one yard run and Rashied Davis 15 yard touchdown reception to round out the first half scoring.

It didn't look much better for the Bills in the second half. After a rare defensive stop, the Offense started moving the ball, but J.P. Losman's third interception setup another Bears field goal to make it an even 30-0.

It got worse from there believe it or not. A Terrence McGee fumble on a kickoff return setup the final Bears score that made it 40-0. If the game ended there it would have been the worst road loss in team history but a small silver lining was that the Bills would score last.

A rare Chicago turnover setup the Bills on a 42 yard drive to a Losman five yard scoring pass to Lee Evans with 1:06 left. Evans was the only offensive player to do anything in this game as he was responsible 94 of the team's 145 yards offensively. Willis McGahee ran hard but there was nowhere to go most of the day. Losman looked like the player from a year ago as he made bad decisions all day and was definitely frazzled by the stellar defensive play of the Bears.

Nobody realistic expected the Bills to beat the Bears. The hope was that they would play a solid game and lose a close one to give them more confidence and another growth step for the young team. Instead, what was feared from this young team happened, they made too many mistakes and did look intimidated by the Bears and got blown out in the process. It isn't the end of the world, it just means that the Bills still have a lot of work to do, and we all knew that anyway. In any rebuilding project you always have setbacks, and this was definitely one for the Bills. They need to go and learn from this whipping and put it behind them as quickly as possible and try to come back strong against the Lions, who certainly aren't the Bears.

Here are our exclusive gameballs and goats from the Bills game against the Bears:

Lee Evans - He was the only player to really show up and play well in this game He had 65% of the team's yards in this game.

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