The Bills shredded the Lions on Thursday night for 41 points and 446 yards. After the game, linebacker Jack Campbell addressed Detroit’s defensive performance while fighting back tears on multiple occasions.
Jeff Skversy of Fox 29 posted the video of the locker-room session with the 2023 first-round pick, who signed a four-year, $81 million extension in the offseason.
“It’s on me,” Campbell said. “I gotta be better. And I ain’t got no other thing to do than look in the mirror and be better, so that’s really where it starts. It starts with us.”
He said the run defense was the most frustrating part of the performance.
“Just guys not getting off blocks, not doing their job,” Campbell said.
He was asked if something didn’t feel right going into the game.
“No, just — I mean, every time I lace up my cleats, I’m going 100 percent,” Campbell said. “Yeah, put it on me. I played terrible, so I gotta be better, especially for the offense and for all these guys in the locker room.”
Were they doing anything special schematically?
“No,” he said. “Just played bad. . . . I don’t know how to explain it. You just feel like you’re letting your teammates down, honestly. And that’s what it is. I just gotta be better, so.”
The good news for the Lions is they get some extra time before their next game — and the next three before the bye are objectively winnable: Jets, at Panthers, at Cardinals.
If all goes well, they’ll be 4-1 with two weeks to get ready for back-to-back home games against the Packers and Vikings. If they should lose one, or two, of the next three games, there will be plenty of soul searching during the early-season break.
And more questions about whether the Super Bowl window has indeed closed.
Bills Clips
Josh Allen’s skills were on display in Buffalo’s win over the Lions on Thursday night and his performance was the latest reason why any quarterback should be excited about being compared to the Bills star.
That was where Ravens defensive coordinator Anthony Weaver went when he was asked about Saints quarterback Tyler Shough at a Thursday press conference. Weaver said that he believes the “sky’s the limit” for the second-year quarterback during an answer that included a comparison to Allen.
“Yes, I like that kid,” Weaver said, via a transcript from the team. “We played them towards the latter half of the year when I was in Miami last year, and I was impressed with him then as a rookie. He reminds me a little bit of like a poor-mans Josh Allen. Has all the arm talent in the world [and] can run. I don’t think he gets enough credit for how good [of] an athlete he is. So, particularly as you get down to the low red [zone], we are constantly going to be conscious of just his ability to scramble and create those extended plays.”
Calling someone a “poor-mans” version of something could be seen as damning with faint praise, but Shough is preparing to make his 11th NFL start so anything that brings Allen to mind is a good sign for where his career can go. A win over the Ravens would be a step toward getting there, but Weaver isn’t going to get caught off guard this Sunday.
Thursday night was a good night for the Bills on most fronts, but one exception was the shoulder injury that knocked wide receiver DJ Moore out of the game in the second quarter.
Moore was ruled out for the rest of the night after halftime and head coach Joe Brady had no update on his condition in his postgame press conference. On Friday morning, Adam Schefter of ESPN reported that Moore avoided a major injury and is considered day-to-day moving into Week 3.
The Bills will have extended time before hosting the Chargers on September 27, which should help Moore’s chances of making it back into the lineup without missing a game.
Moore did not have a catch before leaving the game, but did run once for one-yard loss. He had five catches for 100 yards and a touchdown in Week 1.
Josh Allen had a lot of big games in the old Highmark Stadium, but it’s hard to top the one he came up with for the first game in the new one.
Allen opened the game with a one-yard touchdown run and then went on to throw three scores while running for another one in a 41-31 win that pushed the Bills to 2-0 on the season. He now has four games with at least three passing touchdowns and two rushing scores in his career and he’s the first quarterback with five passing touchdowns and four rushing scores through the first two games of a season.
Those would be special results under any circumstances, but they hit even harder in the first game on a new field. Allen said after the game that being in the spotlight in the new stadium meant something extra to him.
“I think at the national anthem, I caught myself like taking it all in and understanding my job is the coolest thing in the world,” Allen said, via the team’s website. “It’s everything that I’ve ever wanted to be the quarterback of an NFL franchise. And I’m just very fortunate that I ended up here in Buffalo and got to be the first quarterback to open this stadium. It’s a special spot.”
No one is calling the new Highmark Stadium “The House that Josh Allen Built” at the moment, but there’s little doubt that he’ll be the center of attention in every game he plays in the building and they just might come up with a way to name it after him if he can cap off the first season in its history with the first Super Bowl title in franchise history.
Many teams choose to defer to the second half after winning the coin toss before games, but Bills head coach Joe Brady did not do that on Thursday night.
Brady elected to take the ball to start the first game at his team’s new stadium and that turned out to be a wise move. Running back James Cook ran three times for 23 yards while quarterback Josh Allen completed two passes for 22 yards and ran four times for 40 yards, including a one-yard touchdown to set off a frenzied celebration in the team’s new home.
“I’ve said all along, it was important for us, and I wanted to take the ball in this environment and set the tone,” Brady said, via WGR. “I thought we had some good third downs, we finished in the end zone, and that stadium was electric. That was the start that we needed.”
Brady was remembering another drive involving third downs because the Bills never faced one on that trip to the end zone, but that’s understandable because his team had six touchdown drives over the course of the 41-31 win. All of that success can run together, especially when it plays out to a soundtrack of joyful Bills fans celebrating a memorable night in franchise history.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell saw a lot that his team needs to improve in Thursday night’s 41-31 loss to the Bills.
“We’ve got a lot of room to grow, and that’s encouraging,” Campbell said. “We’ve just got to clean up a lot of things on defense right now, particularly in the back end. . . . It wasn’t good enough.”
Campbell expressed optimism about the way the Lions can use their extra three days after playing on Thursday night to prepare for Week 3 against the Jets.
“It’s early, we’re in Week 2, we’ve got a long season, and the most important thing is that we get better,” Campbell said. “We just need to get better than we were today in all three phases. We need to play better against the Jets, and I think we will. We can, and we certainly will.”
Campbell credited Bills head coach Joe Brady for having his team ready to play.
“They got after us and we didn’t play good enough and we didn’t coach good enough. That falls on me,” Campbell said. “It certainly needed to be a lot cleaner than that.”
Josh Allen made the first regular-season game in Highmark Stadium memorable for Bills fans.
The quarterback threw three touchdown passes and ran for two in a dominant 41-31 win over the Lions. The Bills improved to 2-0, while the Lions fell to 1-1.
Allen now has four career games with three touchdown passes and two rushing touchdowns. No other player in NFL history has more than two (Kordell Stewart), according to NFL Researcher.
Allen completed 20 of 31 passes for 248 yards and three touchdowns. His scoring tosses went for 43 yards to Josh Palmer, 1 yard to Dawson Knox and 16 yards to Dalton Kincaid. Palmer has two catches for 77 yards and two touchdowns this season, having caught the game-winning touchdown in the win over the Texans on Sunday.
Kincaid caught seven passes for a team-leading 95 yards.
The Bills lost wide receiver DJ Moore to a shoulder injury and a stinger in the first half.
Allen also ran for 69 yards and two touchdowns on 14 carries, topped only by James Cook’s 21 carries for 135 yards. Cook scored the team’s last touchdown on a 1-yard run with 2:50 left to seal it.
The Bills outgained the Lions 446 to 355, were 5-for-5 in the red zone and went 9-of-12 on third down.
Buffalo scored touchdowns on its first four possessions and punted only twice all night.
The Lions, who blew a 21-0 lead to the Saints last week before winning in overtime, fell behind 21-0 and trailed 27-10 at halftime. They twice pulled to within 10 points when the game was still in reach, but Allen and the Bills answered twice.
Detroit’s last touchdown, which pulled it to within 10 again, came with 1:42 left as as Amon-Ra St. Brown scored his second touchdown. The Bills, though, recovered the onside kick.
Lions quarterback Jared Goff was 26-of-38 for 327 yards and four touchdowns after a slow start. Goff reached 40,000 yards in his 153rd game, the sixth-fastest for any quarterback.
St. Brown caught nine passes for 142 yards and two touchdowns, and running back Jahmyr Gibbs had 16 carries for 52 yards and caught six passes for 61 yards and a touchdown.
Bills outside linebacker Greg Rousseau, who had two sacks and two forced fumbles in the season-opening win over the Texans on Sunday, had two sacks and a forced fumble against the Lions.
Josh Allen is a touchdown machine.
For the 10th time in his career, he has scored two or more rushing touchdowns and two or more passing touchdowns in the same game. His latest score came on the ground from two yards out, extending Buffalo’s lead over the Lions to 34-17.
Allen holds the record by a wide margin. In second place on the all-time two-and-two list is Hall of Famer Steve Young. He did it four times.
For the season, Allen has already accounted for nine touchdowns.
Barring a collapse, the Bills will move to 2-0 on the year, with a proper christening of their new stadium.
Bills wide receiver DJ Moore will not return tonight.
With extra time until their next game, the Bills will have to hope 10 days is long enough for Moore to heal.
Moore was injured with 2:56 remaining in the first half when he dove in the end zone for a pass from Josh Allen. The pass was incomplete, and Moore landed on his shoulder before Lions cornerback Rock Ya-Sin landed on top of him.
Moore is out with a shoulder injury and a stinger.
The Bills lead the Lions 34-17 after Josh Allen’s 2-yard touchdown run with 1:07 remaining in the third quarter. Allen has run for two touchdowns and thrown three others.
The Lions aren’t dead yet.
Detroit opened the second half with an 11-play, 74-yard touchdown drive, and now trail the Bills 27-17. The Lions were down 21-0 before Jared Goff hit Jahmyr Gibbs for an 11-yard touchdown. Jake Bates kicked a 31-yard field goal on the last play of the first half, and Goff found Amon-Ra St. Brown for a 2-yard touchdown with 9:29 left in the third quarter.
Goff is 18-of-24 for 198 yards and two touchdowns. He has thrown a touchdown in 25 consecutive games.
St. Brown has six catches for 70 yards and a touchdown.
