As impressive as the performance was, it almost got lost in the glittering effort put out by the Bills offense in last Thursday’s 31-10 domination of the defending Super Bowl champion Rams at Los Angeles.

Three touchdown passes by quarterback Josh Allen, plus a TD run, in a game where Buffalo never punted, pretty much stole the spotlight.

But the Bills were awfully good on the other side of the ball as well.

Consider they held Matthew Stafford, one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks, to 240 passing yards, a figure that fell to 191 when subtracting the 49 yards generated by Buffalo’s seven sacks.

The Bills also picked off Stafford three times — cornerback Dane Jackson, safety Jordan Poyer and defensive end Boogie Basham each getting one — and hit him an impressive 15 times, including a game-high four by end A.J. Epenesa.

Marquee free agent end Von Miller, late of the Rams, had two sacks and added three tackles for loss while Epenesa and tackle Jordan Phillips, back for a second stint with Buffalo, split a trio of sacks.

The Bills also throttled LA’s running game, holding it to under three yards per carry and the Rams’ offense — running and passing — to fewer than four yards per play.

Buffalo’s offense averaged over seven per snap.

AFTER his film review, Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier was still impressed days later.

“Coming out of training camp you can’t do a lot of live tackling and hitting … so to come away from that game holding that team to less than 300 yards in total offense (243) and tackling as well as we tackled … then to come away with the takeaways and splash plays by our defensive line … we were overall really pleased with the production as well as the play by our players,” he allowed.

“Sometimes it’s hard when you get into games when you don’t play the guys that much in the preseason. It’s kind of like the fans wondering how we’re going to respond, but our guys did a terrific job in the way they responded and a lot of credit goes to the type of training camp and offseason program that Sean (McDermott, head coach) and our sports science department put together to prepare us for that ballgame.”

When asked about Miller’s performance, he added, “You hope that he’s going to have the impact that he had (in a glittering career with the Broncos and Rams) but you don’t know until you actually get out there. But his history says, yes, that’s what you can expect and sure enough, he had a major impact on the game.”

THEN, OF COURSE, Frazier was asked about Monday night’s home-opener against Tennessee and the Titans’ bulldozer running back, Derrick Henry, at 6-foot-3, 250 pounds.

Two years ago at Nashville, in a 42-14 loss, Buffalo held Henry, one of the league’s most productive rushers, to a modest 57 yards, but he still scored twice.

Then, last October at the same site, the Bills lost a 34-31 heartbreaker when Allen slipped on 4th-and-1 from the Titans’ 2-yard line in the closing seconds. That play decided the game, but the reason Buffalo was behind at that point was Henry had his way with the Bills’ defense, running for 143 yards on 20 carries with three touchdowns, including a 76-yarder.

Looking ahead to a fifth-straight season of facing the Titans and Henry, Frazier noted,

“We did a great job of stopping the run early on (against the Rams), and it makes all the difference in the world, but this is going to be a tremendous challenge for us. We’re going to try to put together a game plan that will limit those big plays by Derrick and that offense but you have to get into it and go out and play the game.

“We’ll have a plan, but you have to execute that plan and hopefully we can get it done.”

(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)