Bills 41, Lions 31 — Week 2: Six Touchdowns on Nine Drives

Third and 11 from the Detroit 43, three 49 left in the first quarter, Buffalo up seven to nothing. Josh Allen threw deep down the middle to Joshua Palmer for 43 yards and a touchdown. Nine points of win probability on one snap, the biggest swing of the night, and from 14 to nothing on, Detroit never got back within one score. Buffalo beat Detroit 41 to 31 at Highmark Stadium on Thursday night, led for 54 minutes and 13 seconds, was tied for the other five 47, never trailed, and by the win probability model never dipped under 52 percent.

Start with the run game, because it was the best thing on the field. 33 rush plays, 206 yards, three touchdowns, and by expected points added, +13.6 — expected points added is what a snap was worth given the down, the distance and the field position, so that is the value the ground game created above what those situations were already worth. 64 percent of those runs kept the offense on schedule. For the comparison: Detroit's run defense finished eighteenth in the league last season by expected points allowed per play, and at that rate those same 33 plays would have been worth about minus half a point. Buffalo's own run game was second in the league last season, and its best single game all year was worth 13; Thursday beat it. Across all of last season, only five run games in the whole league produced more, and no run game in Week 1 was worth more per play. It was not one long run. James Cook went 20 up the middle and then 35 off left guard on consecutive snaps in the second quarter, from the Buffalo 32 to the Detroit 13, and after a holding penalty backed them up, Dalton Kincaid caught the 16-yard touchdown on second and 13. Cook went 22 off right tackle to the one in the fourth quarter and scored on the next play. Allen's legs were the other half: scrambles of 13, 12 14 on the opening drive, the 14 to the one, and on the 15-play, eight-minute-22-second drive in the third quarter, three third-and-ones that Allen converted himself up the middle.

The passing game held its Week 1 rate. 33 pass plays — that count includes the two sacks — produced +15.1 expected points, 248 yards and three touchdowns, and just over half of them were successful plays. Per play, that is almost exactly the rate of Week 1 in Houston, when it ranked third of 32. At the rate Detroit's pass defense allowed last season, fourteenth in the league, those 33 would have been worth about zero. The plays: Kincaid's 25 down the middle on second and nine put the ball at the Detroit 42, a run lost one, an incompletion, and then Palmer. Kincaid's 23 to the six with two-oh-seven left in the third set up Allen's two-yard scramble touchdown. Keon Coleman's 22 to the Detroit 13 early in the second quarter set up Dawson Knox's one-yard touchdown.

Third down is the number a Lions fan will remember. Nine of 11. Last season Buffalo was fourth in the league at 46 percent, and across all of last season only one offense converted a higher share with 10 or more tries — Cincinnati, 10 of 12, against these Bills in Week 14. Four of the nine were Allen keeping it on third and one, two or three. The drive chart: nine drives, six touchdowns, two punts and the kneel-downs. No turnovers, no three-and-outs, no field goals. The one point left on the field was Tyler Bass's extra point wide left after the Kincaid touchdown, which is why it was 41 and not 42. Buffalo held the ball for 33 minutes and 45 seconds, and none of Detroit's nine drives started past its own 35.

The other side of the ledger is why this was a 10-point game. Detroit's 42 pass plays produced +18.6 expected points, 327 yards and four touchdowns, and 57 percent of them were successful plays. Buffalo's pass defense was seventh in the league last season; at that rate those 42 would have been worth about −5. The worst passing day this defense allowed in all of last season was +9, so Thursday was twice that, and only 23 team-games in the whole league last season produced as much through the air. The run defense was the opposite: 20 Detroit rush plays for 66 yards and −4.2, nine of them gaining nothing or losing yards, 30 percent successful — from a unit that was thirtieth in the league against the run last season and 20-seventh in Week 1. The situational defense held more than the totals suggest. Detroit converted four of 11 third downs, and 11 red-zone snaps produced three touchdowns. But Detroit went two for two on fourth down, and both conversions came on drives that ended in touchdowns. The pass rush had its night without getting the ball: Greg Rousseau sacked Jared Goff twice in the first quarter, the second a strip on second and one that Detroit recovered, Bradley Chubb's 13-yard sack on third and five ended a second-quarter drive, and Chubb and Michael Hoecht split one late. Four sacks, zero takeaways. All three fumbles in this game — Aidan Hutchinson's strip of Allen on Buffalo's third snap, Rousseau's of Goff, and Goff's aborted snap on third and 11 — were recovered by the offense.

The game had one moment of doubt. Sam LaPorta's one-yard touchdown with 10 57 left made it 34 to 24, and Buffalo answered with its first empty drive since the second quarter: six plays that died at midfield, a punt, fair caught at the Detroit 10. Detroit went three plays and out from its own 10. From there, eight plays and 61 yards, Cook's 22 to the one, Cook's touchdown with two 53 left, 41 to 24. Amon-Ra St. Brown's 27-yard touchdown at one 48 came with the win probability model reading one-tenth of a percent for Detroit.

Now the part where a Week 2 episode has to be honest about what it is. Two games is not a season, so the comparison is still last year, when Buffalo went 12 five with the second-best run game in the league by expected points per attempt, the seventh-best passing game, the seventh-best pass defense and the thirtieth-ranked run defense. Week 1 in Houston was a 36 to 31 win in which the passing game was third in the league and the run game 20-seventh. On Thursday the run game was better than any single game last season's version played, the passing game held its Week 1 rate, the run defense had a good night, and the pass defense allowed more than it did in any game last season. So the two units that were supposed to be strengths went opposite directions in the same evening. One game against the passing game that was fifth in the league last season does not settle whether the pass defense has changed. It does mean the question is open.

Buffalo hosts the Chargers next Sunday afternoon at Highmark Stadium. Watch whether the pass defense's Thursday was Detroit or a change, and watch whether the run game's success rate holds against a different front.

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_Data via nflverse._