The Buffalo Bills’ multi-possession regular season loss to the Baltimore Ravens was its first of the sort in several years.
It’s, by far, not the most pressing concern exiting the Buffalo Bills’ ugly Week 4 defeat at the hands of the Baltimore Ravens, but an immensely impressive years-stretching streak that the team first started constructing in the 2021 NFL season came to a close when the final whistle tolled.
Buffalo lost by 25 points on Sunday night, which, per WIVB’s Nick Veronica, is its first regular season multi-possession loss since November of 2021. That particular defeat was a disastrous 41-15 home loss to the Indianapolis Colts in which running back Jonathan Taylor found the endzone on five different occasions; every subsequent Bills’ regular season loss since that day had been kept within one possession, a streak that, per Veronica, was the fourth-longest in NFL history.
The ‘regular season’ qualifier is important here, as the Bills have lost by multiple possessions since that day; Buffalo dropped its 2022 AFC Divisional Round clash with the Cincinnati Bengals by a score of 27-10, a three-possession margin.
Though it’s upsetting to see Buffalo’s astonishing multi-year streak conclude, it perhaps supports the idea that its discouraging loss at M&T Bank Stadium was more an outlier than it was an indicator of misfortune to come. Nothing went right for the Bills throughout the game; Baltimore identified the Bills’ depleted defensive second level and attacked it with fervor, putting up nearly 300 yards of offense throughout the first half. Even when Buffalo’s offense started finding life in the second half on the back of Josh Allen’s heroics, it shot itself in the foot with a ridiculous trick play that resulted in a turnover and subsequent Ravens touchdown.
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Even the Bills’ scant stout defensive play resulted in misery; the defensive front was actually constructing a red zone stand against Derrick Henry and company in the fourth quarter, making a few impressive stops. The unit forced a fumble on a second-down rush from the goal line; the ball rolled into the endzone and was recovered by Baltimore fullback Patrick Ricard for a score.
It was just a ridiculous outlier of a game; Buffalo isn’t in the business of getting blown out, something the existence of the aforementioned streak proved. Its loss in Baltimore was ugly, but it’s certainly not a trend; we’ll see if this blossoms into something more concerning in the coming weeks.