Bills 36, Texans 31 — Week 1: Two Touchdown Drives From the Four-Yard Line

Twice on Sunday in Houston, Buffalo took the ball at its own four-yard line, and twice it scored a touchdown. The first took three plays, the first of them Josh Allen deep right to Dalton Kincaid for 38 and the last Allen deep right to DJ Moore for 43 and the score, with one 39 left in the half. The second was the game. Down 31 to 30, punt downed at the four, three 13 left: seven plays and 96 yards, the big ones Kincaid for 35 on first and 10 from the 32, and then third and 11 from the Houston 34, Allen deep middle to Josh Palmer for the touchdown with one 41 left. 32 points of win probability on that throw, the biggest swing of the game. Houston still got to the Buffalo nine with 25 seconds left; Deone Walker sacked C.J. Stroud for nine, and two plays later, on a snap from the 18, Greg Rousseau sacked him again, knocked the ball out, and Terrel Bernard fell on it at the 24. 36 to 31, Bills.

Start with the passing game, because it was the best unit on the field and it was where the game was won. 32 pass plays, 334 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and +15 expected points added. Expected points added is what a snap was worth given the down, the distance and the field position, and +15 across 32 pass plays is the second-best figure of the 16 teams in Sunday's early games. What makes it unusual is how it got there. Only 14 of the 32 were successful, meaning they gained what the situation asked for — that rate is eleventh of the 16 — but six Buffalo plays gained 20 yards or more, the highest explosive-play rate of the 16. Kincaid had three of them: 38, 40 on third and four from the Buffalo 40 with 12 44 left in the fourth, and 35. This was a passing game that failed on most snaps and produced touchdowns on the ones that mattered, against a defense that finished first in the league against the pass a year ago.

The run game was the opposite. 20 rushing plays, 87 yards, two touchdowns, and −3 expected points — fifteenth of the 16 by expected points per carry. Both touchdowns were Allen: a 21-yard scramble around right end from the 21 with 12 57 left in the half, and a one-yard sneak two plays after a 46-yard pass interference call on Kamari Lassiter put the ball at the one. After halftime the run game was eight carries for 20 yards, and one of the eight was successful. Buffalo's opening drive ended with Allen stopped for −2 on fourth and one at the Houston 34.

The defense was middling on both sides of the ball, and the pass is what nearly lost it at the end. 41 Houston pass plays, 274 yards, two touchdowns, +1 and a half expected points allowed — on defense a big negative number is the good direction, and +1 and a half is tenth of the 16. Against the run: 32 carries, a hundred 24 yards, two touchdowns, +3 and a half allowed, sixteenth. That number is a first half. 18 Houston rushing plays before the break produced 94 yards and +7; 14 after it produced 30 yards and −3, and four of the 14 were successful. What the defense did have was Rousseau, twice. Third and 12 at the Houston 34 with nine 40 left in the first quarter, he sacked Stroud and knocked it loose and Ed Oliver recovered at the 32; Buffalo got a 46-yard field goal out of it. And the last one, at the Buffalo 18. Two takeaways, zero giveaways. Houston converted seven of 16 third downs, and it converted two fourth-and-ones on the drive that tied it at 27 early in the fourth.

The part that made this close was the last 20 yards of the field. Nine Buffalo snaps inside the Houston 20 produced one touchdown — the sneak — and two field goals; that is fourteenth of the 15 early-game teams that had a red-zone snap. Second and seven at the 13, up 24 to 21 in the third, Allen was sacked for five by Mario Edwards and Will Anderson, and the drive ended in a 34-yarder. Third and four at the 14, down 28 to 27 in the fourth, incomplete for Khalil Shakir, 33-yarder. Tyler Bass made all three, from 46, 34 33. The two-point try after Palmer's touchdown, for Keon Coleman, was incomplete. Buffalo converted three of nine third downs.

Now the part where a Week 1 episode has to be honest about what it is. The ranks in this episode are against the 16 teams that played in the early window on Sunday, not the whole league. What there is, is last year. In 2025 this offense finished third in the league in expected points per play and first on the ground, and the team won 12 games. On Sunday the passing game was second of 16 and the run game was fifteenth, against a defense that finished eighth against the run — so the run game is the thing to be least sure about. The defense finished thirteenth in expected points allowed per play a year ago, seventh against the pass and thirtieth against the run. On Sunday it was tenth of 16 against the pass and it took the ball away twice on strip-sacks. If you want one sentence out of this: the passing game beat the best pass defense of 2025 with six big plays, the run game did not look like the best run game of 2025, and one game in Houston does not settle which of those is the September version of this team.

Buffalo is home to Detroit on Thursday night — a short week. Watch the run game first, and watch whether the red zone gets fixed, in that order.

That's your Bills — every game, by the numbers. This is Muffed: we do the same deep dive for all 32 teams. Follow the Bills show wherever you're listening, so next week's recap lands the moment it's out. No theater. Just the football.

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_Data via nflverse._