The Bills crush the Seahawks for their most impressive win of the season.

SEATTLE — The Buffalo Bills had some impressive performances in the first half of the season en route to winning the AFC East, but given the competition on Sunday afternoon, their 31-10 win over the Seattle Seahawks is their best win so far. by a score of 31–10. .

Beating the snot out of the Dolphins after they lost Tua Tagovailoa and then crushing the hapless Jaguars and Titans was clever in its own way, but the Seahawks—as inconsistent as they have been—started the day leading the NFC West, leading by 20, destroyed a decent Falcons team on the road and had a stable group of standout players on both sides of the ball.

So for the Bills to go to Lumen Field, always a tough spot for road teams, and to give the Seahawks such a beating was simply mind-blowing.

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“We knew it was going to be a tough, tough game, and it was,” coach Sean McDermott said. “We knew we would have to play well in all three phases and I think we did enough to get the result we were looking for.”

And who knows how much more lopsided the situation would have been if the Bills hadn’t committed so many penalties, some of which negated good offensive plays, prompting McDermott to add: “Again, there are definitely things we need to improve on – preliminary photo. fines and fines in general and then just making some decisions.”

Josh Allen came out of the game putting on quite a show for FOX analyst Tom Brady in the broadcast booth, and James Cook ran not only elusively but hard en route to the third 100-yard game of his career with two touchdowns. Also.

Meanwhile, Buffalo’s defense made life miserable for Seattle’s Geno Smith, who apparently overlooked injured star receiver DK Metcalf. Smith started the day as the NFL’s leading passer, but after three quarters he had just 123 yards before piling up a pile of trash after the Bills extended their lead to 31-3 with 11:19 left in the game.

“It’s there,” Allen said when asked if it was Buffalo’s best performance. “I think you look at it from all three phases, I think everyone came out and knew their job and did it at a high level – offensive, defensive and special teams. We’ll watch it, get rid of it and enjoy the plane ride.”

Here are a few of my observations:

Josh Allen’s interception streak ends

Allen had thrown 203 straight passes to start the season without an interception until early in the second quarter when he simply threw one right to challenge Josh Jobe in practice as he tried to hit Amari Cooper on a fast slant. That streak actually totaled 300 assists, starting with the regular-season finale in Miami last year and spanning two playoff games.

However, after Jobe returned the pick to the 7-yard line, one of the biggest plays of the game occurred, swinging the game in Buffalo’s favor for the rest of the day.

The Seahawks ran Kenneth Walker for three yards, then Zach Charbonnet for three, putting the ball at one, and on third-and-goal, Dorian Williams and Greg Russo punted on Walker.

Here, Seattle decided to go for the tying touchdown, but Smith tripped over his center’s foot, fell to the ground, and Rousseau grounded him at the 7, resulting in a big turnover on downs.

“Huge,” Allen said. “I hate throwing turnovers, but I made a tackle. And the coach talks about it all the time, something like this, to keep your head up, go on offense and let your defense get back on the field, because you never know what’s going to happen. They went out there and played four games in a row before the shutdown.”

The Bills then went 93 yards in 12 plays to take a 14-3 lead in what was obviously a seismic shift in the game script.

Allen was outstanding as he completed 24 of 34 throws for 283 yards and two touchdowns on a rainy day: one to Keon Coleman (five catches, 70 yards) and one to Dalton Kincaid (4-31).

Khalil Shakir becomes a star

Shakir is so important to the Bills passing game that he is an irreplaceable player. All you have to do is look at how badly Allen struggled in the game Shakir missed in Houston. Without his most reliable receiver, he had one of the worst games of his career, completing just 9 of 30 passes.

In terms of the Bills’ recent history, it’s easy to compare Shakir to the new Cole Beasley, a small, quick receiver who simply knew how to get open, especially against zone coverage.

But here’s the difference: Beasley caught the ball and then couldn’t gain any yards after the catch because he went down so often on first contact. Shakir catches the ball and has the ability to either elude the tacklers or bounce away from initial contact to find extra metres.

Part of this is also due to Allen’s better ball placement. That wasn’t Allen’s strong suit when Beasley was here, but now he’s much better at getting the ball to his receivers in spots where they can do something with it in their hands, and Shakir is better than anyone on the team at taking advantage of that. .

“Cole was a phenomenal player in his own right,” McDermott said. “He did a lot of good things for this team. Khalil is his own player. Over the last couple of weeks with Khalil, you’ve seen him playing injured and finally this week I think he’s starting to get back to his fitness, approaching 100 percent.”

He made two catches for 17 yards on the Bills’ first TD drive and then two for 24 yards on their second TD drive. After his 35-yard catch and run early in the third quarter that set up Tyler Bass’ field goal for a 17-3 lead, he had seven catches on seven targets for 93 yards and finished the day with nine catches for 107 yards. . The only catch he didn’t catch came in the fourth quarter, and that was because a pass was picked off at the line of scrimmage.

The Bills overcame some sloppy play.

The Bills won this game despite themselves. It was a fire in the penalty area, especially in the offensive line.

Alec Anderson had a holding, David Edwards had a false start, and Connor McGovern had a holding, all on the first drive of the game, but the Bills still found a way to drive 91 yards and get the ball in the end. zone. Dion Dawkins had a false start later in the first quarter and another in the fourth.

On the first possession of the third quarter, Spencer Brown received a holding penalty on the first play and later received a penalty that was waved off as it was his fourth. And then on Seattle’s first possession of the third, they would have faced a quick third-and-10, but Christian Benford gave them a first down with an illegal contact penalty.

“We could run the football, we could throw the ball, we could defend, but again, we just kill ourselves with penalties,” Edwards said. “That’s one thing we need to really clean up moving forward if we want to be the team we want to be.”

By the end of the game, the Bills had been flagged 13 times for 85 yards. Not that the Seahawks were much better, as ref Ron Torbert’s team chased them as well, recording 11 for 82 yards. This does not include several cases where fines were offset. The 24 combined penalties were the most in the league this year. The previous high was 22 in the Bills-Jets game three weeks ago.

This was one of those NFL games where the referees are too involved in the game. Sure, some of the calls were definitely penalties, but there were also a lot of little things that spoil the NFL every week.

Austin Johnson’s interception was huge.

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Defensive tackle Austin Johnson threw an interception. Yeah, it was pretty crazy, and it’s no surprise that it was the eight-year veteran’s first career game, 123rd NFL game.

“It’s a tremendous moment to cross that off the list,” Johnson said. “In college, I had a scoop and a score for a touchdown, but never an interception, so that was cool.”

The Seahawks were on the move midway through the third quarter, trailing just 17-3 and looking to get within one point. Smith dropped to pass and was immediately pressured by AJ Epenesa on the left side. He tried to get rid of the ball with a throw to center field intended for Kenneth Walker, but Casey Twohill tipped it over and it slammed right into Johnson’s stomach, ending Seattle’s attempt to get back into the game.

Asked what he was thinking when the ball suddenly came his way, Johnson laughed and replied, “Catch it! When you get such opportunities, you should definitely take advantage of them. If there was no one in front of me, I would run. … If you have a ton of people around you and the offense is running and doing an amazing job, like they are, I just try to get the ball back to the offense and let them continue to do their thing. They had an amazing day.”

The Bills had the ball at their 49 with 5:59 remaining, and four minutes later Cook ran around the left end for a two-yard touchdown and the game was all but over at 24-3.

Advocacy for bills mutes Kenneth Walker

Without Metcalf, the Seahawks wanted Walker to start the running game because he is one of the best in the NFL and has the kind of speed that could give the Bills defense playing without linebacker Terrell Bernard.

But Walker was never the deciding factor. He was involved in two important games near the goal line, and after that he was practically not involved. He finished with 12 yards on nine carries. It was the second-lowest total of his 36-game NFL career.

“Really good runner,” McDermott said. “He loves to go outside and you could tell when they didn’t use him for two or three games… you could see the difference in their offense. So, we knew they were going to challenge the line of scrimmage, and they did it, and they did it early, and we were able to dampen that a little bit, which helped make them more one-dimensional.”

It was by far the Bills’ best defensive performance of the season, with Seattle finishing with just 32 yards on 17 attempts, 16 of which came on Smith’s five scrimmages.

Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades, including 35 years as a staff beat writer for D&C, and he has written numerous books about the team’s history. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @salmaiorana. https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast