NFL
By: Rick O’Donnell
The Buffalo Bills face the Baltimore Ravens in the Divisional Round of the playoffs on Sunday. The two teams will square off for a rematch from earlier this season where the Ravens walked away with a 35-10 victory. There are huge expectations for both teams as the losing quarterback will face some harsh criticisms come Monday morning by the national media.
Depending on who can put a W in the win column, the opposing QB will have fallen short yet again. Both Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen have had remarkable seasons and remarkable careers. However, neither has produced a Super Bowl victory in their time with the team despite both of them putting up MVP-caliber seasons and for one of them, this year will be no different.
Now when it comes to the Buffalo Bills, they’ve been knocking on the door for quite some time. They’ve been favored to win the AFC multiple times and if not for an OT coin flip at the end of an exhausting game, the Bills may have upset the Kansas City Chiefs to get there. Yet, this is the NFL, and “if only” doesn’t win a championship. Plenty of people, analysts, and fans alike wrote the Bills off this season only for the team to stumble early on and get into a rhythm.
Mark Konezny-Imagn Images
To be fair to Buffalo, they weren’t even bad at the start of the season, they just weren’t firing on all cylinders like they did towards the end of the season. Now, when they faced the Baltimore Ravens back on the 29th of September, that’s when the doubt started to show up. Buffalo got rolled up on by the Ravens and it was a bit of a wakeup call for the season. From that point on, as all good teams do, they started to make the necessary adjustments to get the team back to playoff-caliber football, and here we are.
But what will be different this time around if Buffalo wants to beat the Ravens and advance to face either the Chiefs or Texans? Simple. Buffalo can’t allow Derrick Henry to run all over them again. They need to play complimentary defense. Lamar Jackson didn’t beat the Buffalo Bills in that game. He only threw for 156 yards but did have two passing TDs. No, Derrick Henry carrying the ball 24 times for 199 yards (8.3 ypc) is what beat the Bills that day. Lamar Jackson tacked on 54 yards on the ground himself on 6 carries (9.0 ypc).
Buffalo allowing two rushers double the league average in yards per carry cannot happen again if they expect to win this matchup. Baltimore controlled the game. When you can effectively run the football, you keep the clock running and keep the football out of your opponent’s hands. That’s the perfect strategy against someone such as Josh Allen. He’s going to make you pay so you don’t give him the chance.
That’s it. There’s no big secret to how the Buffalo Bills beat the Baltimore Ravens except by stopping the big plays which primarily came in the run game. If they can do that, there’s a good chance they advance to the conference championship.
