By Rich Kowalski / Billswire.usatoday.com
The Buffalo Bills loss on Sunday to the Indianapolis Colts didn’t come as a shock to those who watched. Once reality set in early on, the Bills didn’t give fans much of a reason to continue watching.
The game continued to get sloppier and sloppier as Andrew Luck dissected Buffalo’s defense.
Typically in these winners and losers write-ups, we’re able to pick from a handful of winners. This game, we only had one winner and a hefty handful of losers.
Let’s take a look:
Winner: Chris Ivory
Chris Ivory filed in nicely for the Bills after LeSean McCoy didn’t return early on after a head injury sent him to the locker room.
Ivory provided 81 yards on the ground, including a nice 21-yard run where the running back looked like he was shot out of a cannon. In addition to the 81 yards on the ground, Ivory made some nice catches as well. He finished with three catches for 25 yards.
While Ivory didn’t produce eye-popping numbers, he was able to sustain a fragment of consistency on an offense nearly void of it all.
Loser: Derek Anderson
On Sunday, 35-year old quarterback Derek Anderson was shown something familiar to him – a mess of an offense.
Anderson came into the game as the impromptu starter of this struggling Buffalo Bills offense and continued the trend, despite his best efforts. He finished the game 20-for-31 passing with 175 yards and three interceptions.
Anderson did provide small bright spots and found Kelvin Benjamin on four of five throws for 71 yards. He injected some life into Buffalo’s receiving core at first but continued the same old as the interceptions started piling up.
The starter for next Monday’s game versus New England is up in the air at the moment as Anderson’s body of work could give Nathan Peterman zealot and Bills head coach, Sean McDermott, another opportunity to put Peterman back out there for old times sake…on national television. Nothing would surprise me at this point.
Loser: Jerry Hughes
In a game in which I expected Jerry Hughes to continue his strong play at defensive end, Hughes did not.
Hughes finished the day with just one tackle and one tackle for a loss after coming into the day with 2.5 sacks in his last two games. His pressure was minimal, considering he was going against left tackle Anthony Castonzo, who just returned from a hamstring injury, and he failed to make any impact at all in the running game.
For Buffalo, Hughes wasn’t the only part of the Bills defense that struggled to stop the bleeding at times on Sunday. The team didn’t register a single sack of Andrew Luck.
Next Monday versus Tom Brady doesn’t sound like much fun.
Loser: Special teams coordinator Danny Crossman
In consecutive weeks, Buffalo was called for an illegal formation penalty on special teams. The unit has played well in the areas of kicking and punting but has completely failed in all other areas.
The Bills special teams unit looked sloppy on nearly all special teams plays Sunday begging the question, why is Danny Crossman still the team’s special teams coordinator?
Buffalo has a talented kicker and punter in their possession. They deserve better out of their unit. It starts with coaching.
Loser: The fans
For the umpteenth time this season, the Bills let their fans completely down. At least in the poor performances of prior Buffalo teams, the fans actually got to enjoy some action by their own team of some sort.
Sunday’s game was the third time this season where the Bills failed to score a single touchdown. Unsurprisingly, all three games had different starting quarterbacks.
If Buffalo wants fans to actually show up for the coming weeks, they’ll need to do a lot of making up. People typically don’t want to spend money on tickets for a losing team. It’s even worse when that losing team isn’t scoring…