ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — There wasn’t a lot of celebrating going on in the Bills’ locker room Sunday afternoon.
And there shouldn’t have been.
Buffalo had just survived a tense four-hour, wild-card playoff struggle that it was supposed to dominate.
Thus, after the 34-31 victory over Miami before a sellout crowd of 70,651 at Highmark Stadium, the Bills’ attitude was palpable relief rather than playful rejoicing.
This team that Las Vegas oddsmakers had made the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl before the season started had made it out of the wild-card round by a whisker.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Buffalo was a 13½ -point favorite — longest spread of the week’s six playoff games — over a 9-8 Dolphins team that had lost five of its previous six games under a first-year head coach who was down to its third-string rookie quarterback, was without three starting offensive linemen AND its top running back.
And when the Bills jumped out to a 17-0 lead, less than 18 minutes into the game, it seemed time for Miami to prepare for an embarrassed trip back to the airport.
We’ll never know if, getting that easy early lead, Buffalo went into cruise control.
However, nobody told Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel his team was supposed to roll over, say ‘thank you for the invitation’ and return back home, head down.
TWELVE MINUTES, three field goals, two interceptions and one touchdown later, Miami had tied it, 17-17. Buffalo saved a bit of face with a field goal before halftime, but immediately lost it when, on its first possession of the second half, quarterback Josh Allen committed his third turnover in a span of 7½-minutes, this time a strip-sack, the resultant fumble returned for a TD and a 24-20 Miami lead.
The Bills retook the lead for good with five minutes left in the third period, but the Dolphins still had two fourth-quarter possessions to tie or retake the lead. It wasn’t until Skylar Thompson’s pass near midfield for tight end Mike Gesicki on fourth down failed to connect, with just over two minutes to play, that Buffalo’s victory became secure.
AFTERWARD, a subdued Allen admitted, “The turnovers really hurt us … we let them back in the game. We’re up 17-0 with (other) chances and I give them the ball two times (on interceptions) and a (fumble for a) touchdown.
However, the Bills QB was being a bit punitive on himself as one interception bounced off wide receiver Cole Beasley’s chest and, on the fumble, Allen’s protection broke down immediately.
But, on the latter play, he quickly moved on.
“You can’t focus on that,” Allen said, “the play happened, you’ve got to move on. Having that leadership on offense, whether it be Stef (Diggs), Mitch (Morse), Dion (Dawkins) or Rodger (Safford) coming up to me and saying ‘Forget it, we gotta go.’
“You can’t let your last play dictate your next play.”
THE MAIN bonus in the win for Buffalo is that it earned another home game, this time Sunday afternoon against the Bengals, its foe last month in Cincinnati when safety Damar Hamlin suffered a life-threatening cardiac episode which caused the game to be canceled.
The Bills are home courtesy of being the No. 2 seed to Cinci’s No. 3, a seeding that could have been reversed had the regular-season meeting not been wiped out and the Bengals, leading at the time, gone on to win.
Given the seriousness of Hamlin’s health crisis, it’s a break Buffalo probably deserved.
And the Bills still had to earn its meeting with Cincinnati at Highmark.
Despite Buffalo’s uneven play, coach Sean McDermott allowed, “I give our guys credit … they hung in there and found a way to win.”
To which Allen added, “All that matters is surviving and advancing. It doesn’t matter how we win, it’s IF we win.
“I’m proud of our guys for playing the way we did.”
And Sunday afternoon they get another chance to do it.
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
