It wasn’t the first time Buffalo held off New York at its doorstep on Sunday night. The Giants were on the Bills’ 1-yard line at the end of the first half, as well, with the opportunity to extend their six-point lead. But with no timeouts and 14 seconds left, Taylor checked to a run play, and Saquon Barkley got stuffed. New York couldn’t get another play off and went into the half without a score and with Buffalo breathing a huge sigh of relief, a far too familiar occurrence as of late.
Favorites in prime time to handle a Giants team without its starting quarterback, the Bills struggled offensively Sunday for the second straight week, failing to score a single point in the first three quarters for the first time in five seasons. Buffalo mustered just two late touchdowns (after 12-plus-play drives) despite working in New York territory on six marches and not punting on any of their final five drives.
The Bills have started slow two games in a row after putting up 31 first-half points against Miami in a Week 4 win. Last week, though, Buffalo was in unfamiliar surroundings, playing in London at 9:30 a.m. ET against a Jaguars team that had already been overseas for a week; a sloppy first half could be understood. On Sunday, the Bills were at home and in prime time and still started sluggish.
“At the end of the day, you’ve got to find a rhythm. You’ve got to establish the line of scrimmage and get our quarterback in a good rhythm,” Bills coach Sean McDermott told reporters. “It’s probably a little bit of everything. It’s never usually one thing. We’ve got to look hard at it because it’s been a couple weeks now here that we’ve gotten off to a slow start. We’re better than that, and we’ve got to work on that.”
A win is a win, however, and the Bills are now 4-2, one game behind the division-leading Miami Dolphins in the AFC East, with the lowly New England Patriots (1-5) on tap in Week 7. For Allen, McDermott and Co., it’s a prime opportunity to put together a complete performance after half-measures in back-to-back weeks.
“Sometimes you’ve got to find a way. You don’t have your ‘A’ game, and you gotta figure it out,” McDermott said. “I thought our offense did a little bit of that in the second half, and it was good to see.”