I watched the condensed replay of the game.
This was the sloppiest game I've seen in a while. Lots of stupid penalties, dropped passes, and turnovers early. My gut feel is that Minn was overconfident and expected Buff to just fold quickly. Instead the Buff defense came to play.
There were two Minn turnovers early, I believe near their red zone and Buff was able to turn that into 14 points. IMHO the lopsided score was not due to Buff's dominance, but due to Minn's sloppiness and not being ready to play.
- Cousins looked pedestrian. Not world class. He threw lots of dink passes. For some reason Buff gave that too him on a silver platter. Cousins missed some easy throws early. The game was over it seemed early in the 4th. At that point it seemed Buff. went into prevent mode and gave Cousins the short stuff and Cousins was taking it. Many short passes for completions. Cousins game stats are inflated because Buff gave the short stuff to him for free. He's good, but nothing special today. Not impressed today.
- The Minn O-Line looked average to mediocre. Buff's D-line was winning 60 -40 I'd say, and putting pressure on Cousins often.
- The Minn D-line looked weak. Buff ran the ball better than I expected.
- The Minn pass defense looked weak. Lots of Buff guys were getting open. Josh Allen is raw, strong, and sometimes stupid. But even he was able to exploit Minn's pass D.
This was nothing like the Minn team I watched on opening day. I believe they were not mentally prepared to fight the battle and an aggressive team took it to them. Maybe Minn was drained from the war with GB the previous week. Maybe they figured somebody else would step up and roll the Bills.
