The christening of the new Bills’ stadium had plenty of witnesses. Both in the building and elsewhere.
Prime Video has announced that 18.6 million watched the Week 2 Thursday night game between the Lions and the Bills. Buffalo raced to a 21-0 lead, and emerged with a 41-31 win.
It’s a five-percent bump over the 2025 Thursday night opener between the Commanders and Packers, and a 21-percent increase over last year’s full-season average of 15.33 million.
It’s the fifth season of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video. And the numbers gradually have been increasing, as more people pivot to the paid streaming platform.
This week, there could be a dip. The Falcons, who lost in ugly fashion to the Panthers on Sunday, will face the Packers at Lambeau Field. It’s Green Bay’s home opener — and it’s the first of three straight Falcons games in prime time.
Bills Clips
After Week 1, Bills quarterback Josh Allen had his MVP odds move from +600 to +500. Bears quarterback Caleb Williams made an even bigger climb, from +1200 to +600.
As of Sunday night, Allen’s odds have improved even more. And Williams, for now, is off the board.
Allen is currently the +275 favorite. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson is at +800. Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes are tied at +850.
Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is next, at +1400.
Once more is known about Williams’s hamstring injury, he’ll likely return. Missing significant time would likely take him out of the mix for the top individual award in the game. In a 16-game season, the most games missed by the eventual MVP was three (Joe Montana, in 1989). In a 14-game season, the most games missed by the MVP was two (Larry Brown in 1972, and Paul Hornung in 1961).
The first week of the 2026 season featured three fouls that will count toward possible suspensions.
Bills defensive back Sam Franklin was fined $9,425 for a blindside block, Packers defensive back Evan Williams was fined $7,087 for a hit on a defenseless player, and Dolphins cornerback Chris Johnson was fined $17,911 for a hip-drop tackle.
Under a new rule adopted for this year, players who pick up three fouls for five specific player safety rules will be suspended. The three fouls above all qualify under the rule as well as fouls for horse-collar tackles and launching. The suspension would come into effect for three violations of the same rule.
Players can appeal the fines and any player that ends the season with one violation of a rule will get 50 percent of the fine paid back to them.
After defeating the Lions on Thursday night, the Bills will have a long weekend to rest up and heal before hosting the Chargers in Week 3.
That’s good news for a club that has a pair of key players banged up.
Head coach Joe Brady did not have much of an update on receiver DJ Moore — who exited the game with a shoulder injury — or Ed Oliver, who was inactive after injuring his hip during pregame warm-ups.
“We’re still obviously going through [it],” Brady said. “One of the perks of the Thursday night game, not a lot of perks, but one of the perks of it is you do get that long weekend, and guys will recover. So we don’t practice again until next Wednesday. No different than any other — we’ll see how these guys are going to recover and how their body will take it. As you guys who have been around DJ or know DJ’s past, he’s as tough as they come. So, if he can be out there, he’ll be out there.
"[Oliver is] another guy, we’ll just see how he’s progressing,” Brady added. “The guys that are getting tests and MRIs and all that, they’re getting that now.”
Additionally, Brady noted that running back Ty Johnson and defensive lineman T.J. Sanders were close to playing against the Lions. With the extended break before Week 3, both may be able to be back for Buffalo’s next game.
The Bills will host the Chargers on Sunday, Sept. 27.
The Bills have started the season with two wins over two teams that entered the season as favorites to win their divisions. They have to be pleased with their 36-31 win over the Texans and their 41-31 win over the Lions.
At least, they have to be pleased with scoring 36 and 41 points in their first two games. Giving up 31 points in each game is not so pleasing.
In fact, the Bills are just the third team ever to start the season 2-0 despite giving up more than 30 points in both games. Previously, the 2000 Rams won their first two games by scores of 41-36 and 37-34, and the 1991 Bills won their first two games 35-31 and 52-34.
Via Josh Dubow of the Associated Press, only four teams in NFL history have given up 62 or more points while starting 2-0: This year’s Bills, those 2000 Rams and 1991 Bills, and the 2018 Chiefs.
The good news for the Bills is, the three previous teams to give up 62 or more points while starting 2-0 made the playoffs. The bad news is, all three of them lost in the postseason — and all three of them gave up more than 30 points in those losses.
The Bills’ offense looks great through two weeks of the season. It remains to be seen whether they can win a championship with this defense.
The Bills christened their new stadium with both the American and Canadian national anthems, with the quartet known as Barenaked Ladies singing O Canada before kickoff. It was not a political statement, at a time of plenty of friction between the respective governments.
“For us, it’s all about the business,” Bills chief operating officer Pete Guelli said, via Tim Graham of The Athletic. “This is part of a broader marketing effort into Southern Ontario and Toronto. It’s been a critical part of our business model, and it’s going to continue to be. This has been in the works prior to anything that’s come up on the [geopolitical] front.”
At one point, the Bills played a small handful of regular-season games in Toronto, with the goal of expanding the team’s footprint.
“Buffalo’s a small market, but when you combine it with the Greater Toronto Area, it’s a top-five NFL market,” Guelli said. “Somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 percent of our PSL holders are Canadian. Our waiting list is closer to 20 percent.
“We’ve built a multibillion-dollar stadium and firmed up this team in our market for the next 30-plus years; Canada was an important part of that and always will be.”
The Bills will play the Canadian anthem before every home game, to the likely chagrin of those who inexplicably have beef with our neighbors to the north.
It certainly didn’t look like anything was out of the ordinary for Josh Allen during Thursday night’s 41-31 victory over the Lions to open the new Highmark Stadium.
But after the game, Prime Video analyst Richard Sherman revealed Allen had been feeling ill leading up to kickoff.
With Allen and Dion Dawkins next to him on the postgame show, Sherman said that Allen needed an IV and was “shivering in a hot tub.”
Allen sat somewhat stone-faced and did not confirm or deny what Sherman had said.
But Allen’s head coach, Joe Brady, may have also subtly referred to Allen’s pre-kickoff illness.
“You watch how [Allen] plays, and it’s like, how does everyone else not feel like they need to empty it out,” Brady said postgame, via Matt Parrino of nyup.com. “Because he literally gave everything he had out there. He put the team on his back in a lot of those situations.”
Allen finished the contest 20-of-31 passing for 248 yards with three touchdowns. He also rushed for 69 yards with two TDs.
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.
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.
