Bills win, but will injuries be a problem?
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – For the first time in his NFL career, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is going to have to play a true road playoff game Sunday night.
And that game will take place at Highmark Stadium thanks to the Buffalo Bills’ 31-17 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers on a frigid Monday night (Jan. 15) in a venue that looked like an igloo three hours before the start of the game.
Bills fans, I would think, are perfectly happy that the AFC wild-card game was moved from last Sunday to Monday because the weather was about a million times better – cold, yes, but manageable wind and no snow – and it allowed the Buffalo offense to function the way it normally would.
“People keep saying that’s what we wanted (the game being moved), and we had no call in that, or no say in that,” Josh Allen said. “That was a health and safety issue from the state. We would have played yesterday, would have played Saturday, would have played Friday, it wouldn’t have mattered. We would have come out here and played when we were told to play.”
But they would not have played, at least on offense, as well as they did. For the Bills to have scored 31 points and not turn the ball over was quite a night, even if the Steelers didn’t have their best player, edge rusher T.J. Watt.
That production would have been impossible last Sunday.
For a while, it looked as if this was going to be an easy Buffalo victory as the Bills jumped out to a 21-0 second-quarter lead, but an unfortunate sequence at the end of the half changed things dramatically and because nothing has ever come easy for the Bills, the rest of the night was not nearly as comfortable as it should have been.
Unfortunately for the Bills, they paid a heavy price to beat the Steelers and they face the prospect of playing the Chiefs with a severely depleted defense, though this is nothing new this season.
They have been without cornerback Tre’Davious White and linebacker Matt Milano since early October, and did not have defensive tackle DaQuan Jones for 10 games, but they had worked out those absences and had their defense back in pretty good shape and playing well. But now in the last two weeks, disaster has struck.
They lost cornerback Rasul Douglas, linebacker Tyrel Dodson and safety Taylor Rapp in the Miami game and then lost linebacker Terrel Bernard, cornerback Christian Benford, linebacker Baylon Spector, and nickel cornerback Taron Johnson against the Steelers.
That is a major situation with Mahomes and Travis Kelce coming to town. Bernard certainly looks to be out as he was carted off the field with an ankle issue so that’s certainly not a good sign, and the others are going to be a wait-and-see scenario all week.
So, with all those players going out, several reserves had to come in and while things were a little sketchy for a bit on defense, ultimately it came together in big moments in the fourth quarter. Baylon Spector started in place of Dodson, but then he suffered a back injury so A.J. Klein – who was supposed to be going on vacation with his family to Key West, Florida, on the weekend – was summoned.
He was re-signed to the Bills practice squad Wednesday, practiced twice, was elevated to the game-day roster because of the Dodson injury, and wound up playing most of the second half. He led the team with 11 tackles.
Dane Jackson played for Douglas, Cam Lewis stepped in to play nickel corner in place of Johnson, and Damar Hamlin had a few snaps replacing Rapp as the third safety in the dime package. It was quite a gutty effort by the defense to overcome all of that trauma.