Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR 550) - I’m not here to tell you that four turnovers is a good thing. I am here to say it often hides a bigger problem.
Josh Allen’s three interceptions and lost fumble against the New York Jets on Monday night account for four of their seven failed drives.
Hi there, you may remember me. I’ve lived on Punts-Are-Turnovers Lane for about a decade now, and that remains true. In fact, it might be the punting (or any failed drive) that gets a quarterback like Allen to start to feel pressure to make big, hero-sized plays.
Let’s go back the last few games where we’ve felt the Buffalo Bills offense just doesn’t have it. We lived an entire offseason looking back at the AFC Divisional Round loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, one where the Bills offense came away with a putrid 10 points.
How’d they get to that?
- Punt
- Punt
- Touchdown
- Punt
- Field goal
- Punt
- Turnover on downs
- Interception
Four punts against the Bengals.
By the time the first traditional turnover hit, the score was 27-10. It was a garbage time pick.
The Bills failed on 6-of-8 drives. Swap two or three of those drives that ends in punt to interception, and the story of the offseason sounds an awful lot like the last few days have sounded.
The reality, to me, is that we should always be measuring this team’s success in "failed drives".
Just about every football person near a microphone will tell you how turnovers correlate to success, and they’re not wrong. But once you move into the "punts are turnovers" mindset, games like the one against the Jets don’t actually hit you as hard, because a game like Cincinnati was just as bad.
By the way, the Bills had five punts in the AFC Wild Card Round game against the Miami Dolphins. They had seven punts in the second Jets game last year, a 20-12 win in Orchard Park against Mike White and Joe Flacco.
What do the Bills have to do? Limit the turnovers, right?
Well, yeah sure. But more important, they need to convert drives. We need to hate punts nearly as much.
If you’d exchanged the two deep ball interceptions on Monday for punts, the noise around Allen wouldn’t be what it is, but the result would be the same. If the pass intended for Gabe Davis that got picked went as a turnover on downs or punt, the story would be different, but the result likely the same.
With 11 possessions against the Jets, the Bills put up one touchdown. If that’s four touchdowns with four picks, we’re talking about a team that’s 1-0.
Turnovers are an enemy, but they get all the headlines, while punting remains an often bigger threat.
I’ll finally feel the Bills offense will finally feel like it’s back on track when that punting number comes down too. I’d bet Allen might come back to Earth at about the same time.
The Bills need their quarterback to settle down a bit, and play within their structure. They’ll also need him to mix in those hero plays from time-to-time.
What they’re really going to need, if they’re going to be the team we all hope they can be, is an offense that finishes drives and games again.
Some games have a juicier headline, and the quarterback has to answer for his carelessness… while others just pile up and leave us feeling like this offense continues to drift.
