DETROIT — It’s hard to claim a defense played well when it surrendered the most passing yards in franchise history.
The Buffalo Bills gave up 40 points in back-to-back games for the first time since 2017, Sean McDermott’s first season as head coach. While the Bills defense was gashed by quarterback Jared Goff’s 494 yards and five touchdowns, they did just enough to give the Bills a cushion to play with a lead in a 48-42 win over the Detroit Lions, which was the biggest difference in their 44-42 loss to the Los Angeles Rams a week earlier.
And playing with a lead, it made the Lions a one-dimensional offense in the second half. Despite scoring 40 points for the — time this season, the Lions couldn’t play the style that got them to a 12-1 start.
Not only did the Bills force two punts to start the game, but they also made Detroit punt on its first drive of the second half and then forced a turnover on the next that allowed them to build a three-score cushion.
The Bills have been one of the NFL’s worst teams in run defense this season, allowing 4.7 yards per carry entering the game. Detroit, meanwhile, was third in rushing attempts and fourth in yards rushing.
The Bills held them to under 100 yards for the first time all season, holding them to season-lows in yards (48) and attempts (15). Instead, the Bills won by defeating the Lions at their own game, as Detroit gave up a season-high 197 yards rushing.
“I think we had to in some ways move on from it with the way the game was going,” Goff said. “Maybe we stick with it if the game is in a little bit of a different place, it starts to pop, and then it’s a different story. I don’t know.”
It started on the second play of the game when the Bills put nine defenders in the box and stuffed David Montgomery for no gain. One of the reasons why is that the Bills played with three linebackers for the first time since Week 10.
Buffalo inserted Dorian Williams or Baylon Spector into the game in place of cornerback Taron Johnson four times in the first half and Detroit was limited to 9 yards on three carries. It seems like a small area when looking at the entire game, but it wasn’t.
The Lions came in third in time of possession and the Bills held the ball for five more minutes. No team has run more offensive plays with a lead than the Lions (474) and it was just the second time this season they didn’t hold a lead in a game, winning the previous contest against Houston on a field goal as time expired.
When the Lions do play with a lead, they run the ball 52.3% of the time. Detroit attempted just four runs in the second half after attempting 48% of their runs in the first half through the first 13 games of the season.
And even though Detroit scored on its final four drives, it needed 37 plays to do so, whereas Buffalo’s five second-half scoring drives encompassed a total of 27 plays. No quarterback in the league has attempted more play-action passes (139), while his 1,482 yards off of it are nearly 300 more than anyone else.
Obviously Goff settled in, but he was also clearly out of sync early, going 12 of 20 — he was completing 72.4% of his passes prior to the game — for 161 yards and was sacked twice.
“I think our focus coming in was stop the run,” Bills linebacker Terrel Bernard said. “If we did that well, we had a chance. So we got a couple stops early, the offense went down and scored and turned it into a drop-back passing game, which is what we intended.”
Another big reason for the hot start was defensive tackle Ed Oliver producing his best game of the season. Oliver produced his first sack to force a punt on the second drive and it was only his second of the season and first since Week 2.
According to NFL Next Gen Stats, Oliver went from snap to first contact in 0.89 seconds and had 10 pressures, doubling his previous high from 2022. Seven of those pressures came against left guard Graham Glasgow.
On the second play of the game the Lions ran away from Oliver, but he worked his way down the line of scrimmage and Montgomery was contained from bouncing outside, Oliver was the first player to make contact.
The next drive, Oliver got one-on-one with Glasgow and used a straight bull rush to drive Glasgow 7 yards into the backfield to sack Goff. He also used a bull rush to obliterate All-Pro center Frank Ragnow, knocking him into the backfield and collapsing the pocket so Greg Rousseau could collect a sack.
Oliver also drew two penalties, including a facemask penalty on Glasgow that moved the Bills from the Detroit 41-yard line to the 26 after Matt Milano recovered an Amon-Ra St. Brown fumble, leading to a Josh Allen-to-Khalil Shakir touchdown to make it 35-14 in the third quarter.
When Oliver plays at that level, he is one of the best defensive tackles in the NFL and transforms the Buffalo defense.
“I thought he played a heck of a game and it doesn’t take a trained eye to see that,” McDermott said. “Run game, in his gap, coming off the ball, getting off blocks, making plays. In the pass game (he) was certainly affecting the quarterback and that’s what he’s capable of and that’s what we need more of, quite honestly, on a consistent basis.”