Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs had their issues in the off-season, which played a role in Diggs skipping a portion of the offseason program.
Perhaps those issues carried over to the first game of the season when the New York Jets beat the Buffalo Bills, even though quarterback Aaron Rodgers only played four snaps.
Well, Allen and Diggs showed no sign of any problems in their 48-20 blowout win over the Miami Dolphins on Sunday to take over first place in the AFC East.
“Each week, as you see Josh Allen, he adapts, and he grows as a receiver watching him up close and personal. I see his emotions,” Diggs said. “He’s a quarterback you want to play for.”
Allen passed for 320 yards and four touchdowns — he ran for another — while Diggs caught six passes for 120 yards and three touchdowns, including a spectacular 55-yard catch-and-run.
This is the Buffalo team we expected to see all season. Since the Jets’ loss, the Bills have been one of the league’s most dominant teams.
They’ve outscored their opponents 89-33, and each win has been by at least 28 points.
Allen averages 262 yards a game with nine touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 106.7. Tua Tagovailoa passed for 282 yards with a touchdown and an interception.
Buffalo sacked him four times and hit him nine other times. They also deflected five passes.
Miami scored on its first two possessions. Their next nine possessions went: punt, punt, fumble, punt, touchdown, interception, downs, downs and downs.
Remember, they scored 70 points and beat Denver by 50 last week.
The last four teams to score at least 60 in a regular-season game averaged 12.5 points in their next games.
Miami’s eclipsed that.
Barely.
“I think the Buffalo Bills proved why they are the team that our whole division is trying to beat,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel told reporters. “They’ve won it for how many years in a row now?”
Buffalo is 40-13 since the start of 2020 with three division titles.
Khalil Mack shows Las Vegas Raiders he’s still ‘that guy’
Khalil Mack terrorized the team that drafted him on Sunday with six sacks.
Yes, six.
And that helped the Los Angeles Chargers beat the Las Vegas Raiders 24-17.
Mack is the sixth player to record six sacks. Hall of Famer Derrick Thomas owns the all-time single-game record with seven.
“You could say there is something extra, but it is what it is,” said Mack, who played four seasons with the Raiders before being traded to the Chicago Bears in 2018.
“You want to play well against your old team, knowing where you came from. There’s a lot of respect but a lot of get back to from how it turned out.”
The last player with six sacks was the New York Giants’ Osi Umenyora in the 2007 season against the Philadelphia Eagles.
“He’d been close the whole year to having three monster games,” Chargers coach Brandon Staley told reporters. “Today, he put it all together, but this guy is one of the best edge players of the generation; he’s still that guy. He’s still that guy, and he just showed everybody, ‘I’m still that guy.'”
Another worst for Bill Belichick
Bill Belichick has been a head coach for 29 years and 454 games.
The Dallas Cowboys handed him the worst loss of his career on Sunday.
Dallas 38, New England 3.
The 28-3 halftime deficit was almost the largest of his coaching career. The worst losses had been New England’s 31-point loss to the Buffalo Bills in 2003 and a 29-point loss to the Bills in 2020.
The Patriots were inept on offense and defense.
Dallas scored two defensive touchdowns, forced three turnovers, and limited the Patriots to 253 yards total offense. Ezekiel Elliott gained just 16 yards in his first game against the Cowboys, who took him with the fourth pick of the 2016 draft.
“We’re a lot better team than we showed out there tonight,” Belichick said. “Need to do a better job playing, coaching. Not much to say.”
Justin Fields turn philosophical after demoralizing loss
Justin Fields, who recently complained about playing too much like a robot, had the best passing game of his career — and the Bears still lost.
They blew a 28-7 lead and wasted Fields’ sensational performance.
He completed each of his first 16 passes for 231 yards and three touchdowns and finished with 335 yards with four touchdowns and an interception.
The Bears, however, remain winless after blowing a 21-point third-quarter lead.
Denver rallied to win, 31-28
This was a demoralizing loss, but the Bears can build on it because Fields showed growth. This season is all about Fields’ growth and development.
“I’m looking at it like the big picture, just life in general. I think this past week has had me kind of look at it like, ‘What are the important things in life?’ … I think these past couple of weeks have made me appreciate the little things in life, like being able to play this game,” Fields said. “Every opportunity I get to go out there and play, I will have fun. I’m going to play my hardest and just thank God for giving me the ability to play.
“So, no matter what the scoreboard is, I’m going to keep to the same mindset and just pushing and keep moving forward.”
Philadelphia Eagles mastering art of winning ugly
It wasn’t pretty, and it hasn’t been for the Philadelphia Eagles. But they keep winning, and that’s what matters.
The Eagles allowed a touchdown on the game’s final play — a 10-yard touchdown pass to Jahan Dotson — but they recovered quickly.
Washington had the ball first in overtime and gained just five yards before punting, setting up Philadelphia with good field position.
Still, Jalen Hurts passed for 319 yards with two touchdowns, and A.J. Brown caught nine passes for 175 yards and two touchdowns.
Hurts never questions himself. He doesn’t care about stats — only winning.
He’s now won five straight games when facing a double-digit deficit. The Eagles trailed 17-7 in the second quarter.
“My whole career has kind of been a rollercoaster in terms of being in different and unique and unprecedented moments, which you may call pressure and stormy and that fire,” Hurts told reporters. “But that’s what I was born in. I feel like it’s a unique feeling being in those situations because you work so hard and you prepare so hard, and you go through so much to put yourself in a position where you’re comfortable in those moments.”
Nothing fancy from Lamar Jackson, but Ravens keep winning
Lamar Jackson hasn’t had that many spectacular plays this season, but he’s playing efficiently and the Baltimore Ravens are winning.
Jackson completed 15 of 19 passes for 186 yards and two touchdowns in a 28-3 blowout win over the Browns without left tackle Ronnie Stanley and receivers Odell Beckham Jr. and Rashod Bateman.
Understand, the Browns had allowed just one touchdown and 491 total yards in the first three games.
Jackson threw touchdown passes of seven and 18 yards to tight end Mark Andrews. He also scored on runs of 10 and 2 yards as the Ravens moved into first place in the AFC North. Jackson, once questioned as a passer, has completed 73.7 percent of his passes this season with four touchdowns and an interception.
Deshaun Watson injured his shoulder in practice and didn’t play. Not that it would’ve mattered all that much the way he’s played this season and the way Jackson performed Sunday.
Cincinnati Bengals the worst offense money can buy
What’s up with Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals’ offense? One of the best offenses in the league last year has been an abject failure much of the season.
Burrow, the league’s highest-paid player, completed 20 of 30 passes for 165 yards in a 27-3 loss to Tennessee.
“We weren’t able to find it, weren’t able to complete balls down the field, weren’t able to really do anything,” Burrow told reporters. “So, we’ve got a lot to get fixed.”
Perhaps, it’s all tied up to calf he strained in preseason. He aggravated it a couple of weeks ago, and he just doesn’t seem right. And neither does the offense.
The Bengals have scored more than 20 points once in four games.
Ja’Marr Chase caught seven passes for 73 years. The Bengals totaled just 211 yards and 14 first downs.
They play the Arizona Cardinals next week followed by Seattle, San Francisco and Buffalo. Their playoff dreams could be over a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving.
“This was unacceptable,” Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor told reporters. “I’ve got the confidence that we’ve got everything we need in this locker room to get right and get back on track next week. Disappointing this is not the expectation we had going into this game.”
Nice rebound for Sean Payton, Russell Wilson
You’re have to give Sean Payton and Russell Wilson some credit.
Seriously.
They each had every opportunity to have a pity party and lay down, when they fell behind to the Bears, 28-7, in the third quarter after a 15-play drive. But they responded immediately with a touchdown drive to cut the lead in half. They tied the score at 28-28 on a 35-yard fumbled return by Jonathan Cooper and won it with a 51-yard field goal by Wil Lutz with 1:46 left.
This is the kind of win that could turn the Broncos’ season around. Wilson completed 21 of 28 passes for 223 yards and three touchdowns. The more he gets a feel for Payton’s scheme, the better he should play.
He has six touchdowns and two interceptions.
Payton needed the win as much as Wilson. Had they lost to the winless Bears after giving up 70 points in Miami last week, the fan base would’ve been screaming for somebody’s head and Payton may have felt obliged to give it to them.
Jean-Jacques Taylor is an NFL Insider for Sportsnaut, and the author of the upcoming book Coach Prime: Deion Sanders and the Making of Men. Follow him on Twitter.