Bills Central

Bills lasso the Colts, secure best start in three decades with 30-20 win

Another week, another win for the Buffalo Bills, who move to 8-2 on the season after a 30-20 win over the Indianapolis Colts.

David Faux

Grace Smith/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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The Buffalo Bills have moved to 8-2 on the 2024 season by beating a beleaguered Indianapolis Colts team 30-20 on the road. The Bills managed to play good football when they weren’t repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot. Despite numerous mistakes and unforced errors, Buffalo managed to walk away with a 10-point win and expand its ever-widening lead over the rest of the AFC East. 

Below, we’ll take a look at the most inspired performance, the player that has us questioning (in a very good way), the part of the offense that requires a better performance, and the part of the offense that delivered a most irksome performance today.

Inspire - Bills’ Defense: 

Taylor Rap
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Despite being put in tough positions, the Bills’ defense played fairly well on the road. After a Taron Johnson pick-six on the first play, the defense struggled a bit against Jonathan Taylor, allowing a big run of 58 yards early on. For the most part, however, the Bills were able to put the clamps on a much-maligned Colts offense. In the second half in particular, Buffalo managed to hold Taylor to a total of seven rushing yards in the second half after giving up 107 to the superstar running back in the first half. It will rarely ever be a pretty box score for the Bills' defense but the yards given up shouldn’t matter nearly as much as the points given up.

This has always been a bend-don’t-break style of defense, and sometimes between the yardage, you end up with some turnovers, which the Bills managed to do three times in Sunday's game. While the Bills’ pass rush wasn’t spectacular, they did enough today to force multiple Joe Flacco mistakes, and that’s what the Bills needed to do more than anything else. After a tough game against the Miami Dolphins in which the defense couldn’t stop either the run or the pass, the defense took on the challenge and came up big when the offense couldn’t put it together. Overall, a very good bounce-back game from Bobby Babich’s unit.

Related: Bills secure best start since last Super Bowl-appearing season with Week 10 win

Inquire - Tyler Bass:

Tyler Bas
Mark Konezny-Imagn Images

Man, remember when Tyler Bass was a weekly talking point because who knew if the Bills could trust him? Bass looked like the kicker of old on Sunday; indeed, he was on target, he looked calm, he looked comfortable, and he looked like he got his swagger back. It’s understandable after last week’s game, but it’s extremely encouraging to see him back in form, and for Bills fans to be able to have slightly smaller spikes in blood pressure when he lines up for a kick. As the season rolls along and he continues to make kicks, the Bills should continue to feel more comfortable with him moving forward, especially once the playoffs roll around.

Require - Bills’ run game:

James Coo
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A bit of an inconsistent, up-and-down day from the Bills’ run game. At times they were able to rip off five or 10-yard runs pretty easily, but at other times they struggled to get any sort of movement at the line of scrimmage. James Cook had a few good gains to help keep the offense on track but not enough to keep things in rhythm throughout the game. Ray Davis and Ty Johnson were pretty absent through most of the game as well. While the  Colts’ defense certainly started the year as a sieve versus the run, it has certainly tightened up in the last month, as was detailed by fellow SI writer Zach Hicks. The return of DeForest Buckner certainly changes the dynamic of the defense as a whole, allowing the defensive line to win more easily. At the end of the day though, the Bills certainly have the talent on the offensive line, and in the running back room for that matter, to have been more consistent against the Colts' defense.  

Irk - Bills’ Passing Game:

Josh Alle
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Let’s get some caveats out of the way. First, the Bills were without their two top receivers in Amari Cooper and Keon Coleman, who are both dealing with wrist injuries. Second, Dalton Kincaid, who Allen missed on a big throw in the first half, was in and out of the game with a knee injury. Third, the Bills still finished with over 400 total yards. 

That said, it wasn’t a very good performance from the Bills in the passing game. Guys like Dawson Knox and Mack Hollins came up big when they had to, and Khalil Shakir remains money for this team, but drive by drive, this was an extremely uneven performance from the Bills’ offense. A pair of rough Josh Allen interceptions gave the Colts great field position to work with, and while they couldn’t do much with it, a better team likely finds a way to take advantage. The Bills need to figure out how to maintain their passing game and find a way to ride the middle better rather than oscillating between two extremes. It’s always good to come away with a strong win, but the Bills need to be self-aware and take note of what is and isn’t working. Allen out of structure still works and works well. He can still make plays through the air and on the ground and it’s hard to stop him when he does those things. In structure though, Allen seemed to be force-feeding Curtis Samuel all day, targeting him eight times but only finding four completions. One of his interceptions was on a Samuel target as Kenny Moore made a great play breaking to the ball on the sideline. It’s simply too inconsistent; there’s no other way of putting it, and the Bills need to find a way to get consistent again, or they’re going to find themselves in too many of these types of games and they won’t be so fortunate to have Joe Flacco on the other side of it throwing up more turnovers than a Danish bakery. 

Related: Bills QB Josh Allen ascends team record book with second-quarter TD vs. Colts

What’s next for the Bills?

The Bills return to Buffalo in Week 11 to take on their biggest rivals of the last few years in the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs, who remain undefeated, have had a very odd season, not looking like their usual dominant selves but still finding ways to win games. In fact, seven of their nine games have been won by a single score. Are they due for some regression here? Will the Bills find a way to deliver the first loss of the season to the seemingly inevitable Chiefs? Next Sunday’s game at 4:25 PM will deliver that answer. 

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David Faux
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