Buffalo Bills’ shocking, brilliant, impossible win over the Ravens is an instant classic
- Bills’ shocking, spectacular, impossible win over the Ravens is an instant classic
- The Buffalo Bills scored 18 unanswered points in the final five minutes to beat the Baltimore Ravens 41-40.
- A critical fumble by Ravens running back Derrick Henry early in the fourth quarter helped pave the way for the Bills’ comeback.
- Bills quarterback Josh Allen threw for 394 yards and two touchdowns and led the game-winning drive.
ORCHARD PARK, NY – What an epic.
That’s what unfolded at Highmark Stadium on Sunday night. It was one of those games that even if you witnessed it, you wouldn’t believe it.
The Buffalo Bills were down by 15 with under five minutes left – and still won the darned thing. And boy did they ever.
And the usually reserved Bills Stadium faithful were making noise at a level they rarely managed prior to the pandemic, doing whatever they could to will their team back from a Baltimore Ravens squad that, revenge-minded after an AFC divisional playoff loss on these grounds in January, was threatening to run the home team off its own field.
And crazy stuff happened to determine the first 41-40 score in the NFL’s 106-year history.
Either crazy or divine intervention.
“Glory to God,” Bills Coach Sean McDermott, a man of religious faith (even more after Sunday, perhaps), said in his postgame revival, er, news conference. Afterward, McDermott could be seen pointing toward the heavens through the night sky.
The Big Guy is some Bills Mafia member? Who knew?
Then again, the fact that it all happened in the first place has left all of us wondering.
Derrick Henry ran over the Bills defense for 169 yards and two scores, but then fumbled — punch the football out, Ed Oliver — late to allow the Bills to cut it to two with a score in the final moments.
So it was no surprise that Henry apologized to his teammates after the game.
“I put this loss on me,” Henry said in a glum visitor’s locker room.
Yes, the mere nature of classic games is they feature heroes and clutch performers, while the usual safe bets let you down at the worst time. And, frequently, a little luck.
Prior to Henry’s fumble, the Bills scored on a 10-yard touchdown pass to Keon Coleman on fourth down that bounced off tight end Dawson Knox, who was running a route in front of Coleman and reaching for the pass, and was caught by Coleman as he slid across the back of the end zone.
It was that kind of drama.
“It’s up there,” Ravens linebacker Kyle Van Noy said, marinating on what was one of the wildest games he has played in over his 12 years in the N.F.L. “But it sucks being on the other side.”
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
“You’ve got to play the game for 60 minutes,” said Josh Allen, who threw for 394 yards and two touchdowns — and connected on 32- and 25-yard completions on the final drive to set up Matt Prater’s 32-yard field goal as time expired, giving the Bills a 34-33 win.
Sixty minutes. Easy for Allen to do that, accurate as it may be.
Of course, the NFL loves it. The first Sunday night showcase between two winless teams turned into a blazing–highlight suspense-fest — and hey, postgame buzz saw no one in either postgame frame spitting on an opponent.
If you didn’t buy the 60-minute theme and turned off the set after the game went deep into the night, you missed a good one. But you can’t be blamed. The game appeared to be well in hand by the Ravens. And they didn’t punt until there were 6 minutes 25 seconds remaining in the third quarter.
And Lamar Jackson was in a special kind of zone of his own. Jackson threw for 210 yards, ran for 70 and generated three TDs. I think Jackson and Henry showed exactly how lethal of a 1-2 punch they are in two sequences of note. Then midway through the second quarter, they hit for 48 yards and a TD on a pair of lengthy jaunts. Then early in the fourth they one-upped that with alternating runs worth 64 yards (turns out even a bad carry is still some work) as Jackson kept for 19 yards to set up a 46-yard TD blast from Henry.
Classic stuff. And a comeback of the classic variety to launch the farewell season from Highmark Stadium, the Bills’ new home being built across the street.
As for the fans who exited in the fourth quarter, shame on them. The place was perhaps a third-empty in the middle of the fourth quarter. You know it happens. Fans want to hit the road a little early because the home team appears to be headed for a major L.
Those fans went home shortchanged. Tsk. Tsk.
One for the ages, this game. No, the stakes were not as high as they were the one time that Frank Reich, taking over for an injured Jim Kelly, helped engineer the Bills from a 32-point deficit against the Houston Oilers to win an A.F.C. wild-card playoff game in January 1993 that remains the biggest postseason comeback in N.F.L. history.
But that playoff magic was conjured in the same place — it was called Rich Stadium then — and I suspect for the Bills fans who lived through it, it had to feel something like what happened on Sunday night.
Not in that sense, but it was just so special. So classic.
Acquired late last week as a desperation replacement for injured kicker Tyler Bass, Prater made three field goals in his Bills debut. He has made his share of those game-winning kicks that beat the clock during his 19-season N.F.L. career.
But now there is this brand new classic to greet him in Buffalo.
Afterward, after his new teammates, many of whom he barely knows, swarmed him on the field, lifted him in victory in a mob melee, it didn’t matter that he’s a battle-tested veteran who has been around the N.F.L. block a few times.
“I’m still on Cloud Nine,” Prater said.
Which was one way to describe a classic.
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