Dear Buffalo Bills,
We’re sorry. You have proved us — and many others, thankfully, for our sake — very wrong.
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We knocked you for using offense coordinator Greg Roman as your sacrificial lamb after Week 2. He wasn’t the culprit, we said. You had much bigger problems and much clearer reasons for your 0-2 start. The defense, affected by assistant head coach Rob Ryan, brother of your eccentric head coach Rex Ryan, was the problem. Rob should have been the one to go. Rex would be right behind him.
Whoops.
Your defense responded to adversity by shutting down Carson Palmer and the Cardinals’ potent offense in a 33-18 win. You followed that with a win for which even a man the size of Rex Ryan starved — a shutout of the Patriots in New England.
Then you held Todd Gurley to 3.1 yards per rush in a win over the Rams. You returned home Sunday for a 45-16 beatdown of the 49ers in Colin Kaepernick’s first game back as starter.
Yes, we’re keeping track — you’re 4-0 since you fired Roman.
Even considering those dominant defensive performances, we might have been most wrong about your offense. We asked: Why would you can the coordinator who glued together a Tyrod Taylor-led unit still searching for its identity?
Turns out that identity already was in place, just not exposed. We didn’t believe LeSean McCoy when he told us he immediately saw improvement under new coordinator Anthony Lynn.
Whoops.
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McCoy, who posted rushing totals of 58 and 59 yards, respectively, in the two games under Roman, rushed for 110 yards and two scores against Arizona. He grinded out 70 key yards in New England. He put up 150 yards in Los Angeles. He added 140 yards and three — count ‘em — three scores against San Francisco.
You’re winning games. You have your confidence back. Perhaps most important, you’re sitting pretty in the AFC wild-card picture and resting comfortably behind the Patriots in the AFC East standings.
Forgive us, though, because we still need to see more.
You have two more big division games next on the schedule, with a road game in Miami before your rematch with New England. You have to travel to Seattle after that. Then Cincinnati. A couple weeks later, you go to Oakland, where the Raiders will look to steal your wild-card thunder. You have to play AFC power Pittsburgh, too.
So let’s see how you do. With all due respect to the 49ers, Rams and struggling Cardinals, you need to pass more real tests.
But kudos for reaching 4-2 after such a pathetic start to the season. You could have folded after losing to the Jets. You did the opposite.
Only 12 percent of teams who started 0-2 in the current NFL playoff format (1990) made the playoffs. That’s 12 reasons why you were smart to brush off our criticism; 12 reasons why you should keep doing what you’re doing.
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Sorry for doubting you, and sorry for the continued (albeit diminished) doubt.
Keep proving us wrong. We can take it.
Sincerely,
Sporting News