AFC season-savers have arrived
AFC season-savers have arrived
James Cook fillets the Cowboys. Joe Flacco turns back the clock in the fourth quarter. With three weeks to go, the AFC is wide open.
High above in the coach’s suite, hat backwards, Dan Quinn was powerless. Nothing on his play sheet was stopping the Buffalo Bills this drive, this game. All that yellow and red and blue color-coding? Useless.
The Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator should’ve taken a seat and began preliminary preparations for the Miami Dolphins in Week 16. Hell, maybe someone could’ve hooked up Quinn with better coffee than the Tim Horton’s sewer brew Mike McCarthy was sipping below.
The Bills’ led the Cowboys, their old 90s’ bully, by the score of 21-3 when they took over with 10:58 left in the third quarter.
Next, they wielded the leather belt: Fifteen plays, 65 yards, 8:22 melted off the clock. No gain was longer than 11. Buffalo stayed in short yardage all drive long. On one third and 1 at midfield — a mere four seconds after Quinn relayed the call to his green-dot linebacker — Josh Allen hustled to the line, took the snap, shimmied to his left and snuck through the open B gap to convert. The absence of mammoth nose tackle Johnathan Hankins, out with an ankle sprain, was painfully obvious.
This drive signified a flipping of the script. Losses past, it was the Bills who couldn’t get off the field in critical situations.
This game, a 31-10 Bills win, James Cook announced himself as a rising star.