Thursday Night Football Afterword: Bills vs Dolphins

The Bills and Dolphins played in one of my Top 20 games
of 2012 so far. Photo credit to NFL Network.

Last night’s game was more interesting and exciting than I could have hoped for. The game went down to the final minutes, there were two return touchdowns, and they were division rivals in a cold weather game. The only thing missing was a blizzard.

The Bills dominated the first three quarters in terms of offensive yards, but a kickoff taken to the house kept the Dolphins in the game. Buffalo had so many possessions deep in Miami territory that it would have been upsetting if the Dolphins had snatched away the win, but they gave themselves a chance but stalling the drives and forcing four field goals. In fact, only one touchdown in the game didn’t come on a return, and surprisingly it belonged to Miami.

The Bills offense looked dangerous, but I will have a hard time deciding what I expect of them next week because they played against a defense that seemed to give a lackluster effort.

The second half saw no scoring until the fourth quarter when an incomplete pass was challenged and reversed into a touchdown reception by Davone Bess on a fantastic pass by Ryan Tannehill, unfortunately one of only a few really good-looking tosses by the rookie under center.

Ryan Fitzpatrick didn’t throw for a ton of yards and his completion percentage was nothing mind blowing, but he had a great game nonetheless, drawing several pass interference calls from a defense trying too hard to shut down Donald Jones, who had been a fantastic alternate to Steve Johnson since the bye week.

But the Harvard grad didn’t have to be outstanding because C.J. Spiller ran all over the Miami defense with only one memorably bad run in the game, one in which he tried to bounce outside and get to the edge when there was much more running room up the middle.

The loss is the third in a row for the Dolphins while the Bills got a close win after suffering a close loss last week against New England. I hadn’t seen much from Miami’s past few games so last night was the first opportunity I had to see just how bad they look compared to earlier in the season. The Bills seem to have found their running game and their defense actually shut down a decent running attack, something they struggled mightily with throughout the first half of the season.

Neither team is really a playoff threat right now, but at least their fans will be treated to a few more good games, perhaps more so for Bills fans than ‘Fins fans.

Thanks for reading everyone and enjoy the rest of Week 11. I’ll be back Monday with my Sunday Afterwords!