Taking a page from the Old Testament, Chan Gailey is hoping that leading his team into the desert can help the Buffalo Bills find themselves and recover from a pair of devastating losses. The Bills are spending the week in Arizona preparing to play the Cardinals next weekend rather than return home after their embarrassing loss to the 49ers in Candlestick Park.
Gailey is hoping that the time in isolation can help the team pull together and turn things around. “I think it can be very helpful,” Gailey said. “The people that are going to change this and rectify this are sitting in that team room in there. It is not anybody else.”
It isn’t just that their last two losses have been by a combined score of 97-31, and that they have been outscored 90-17 in the last six quarters. Things have gotten historically bad for the Bills, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. They became the first team to give up over 550 yards in back-to-back games since the 1950 New York Yankees (and that’s not a typo – there was an NFL Yankees team in the 1950s).
Last week against the Bills, the 49ers were the first team in NFL history to have more than 300 yards rushing and 300 yards passing in the same game. The week before, the Patriots faced the Bills and became only the second team in NFL history to have a 300-yard passer, two 100-yard receivers and two 100-yard rushers in the same game. And the 49ers almost repeated the feat against the Bills the following week, as Kendall Hunter was just 19 yards short of providing the second 100-yard rusher.
Bills defensive tackle Kyle Williams isn’t mincing words in his assessment of his unit’s performance. “We have stunk the past two weeks,” Williams said. “We have a lot of football left to play. That being said, we have to get a lot better fast.”
Gailey, characteristically, is looking to break things down to the simplest element. “We have to get back to basics,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to call the defense and let them go play.”
After the Bills were extremely active in free agency, bringing in Mario Williams and Kyle Williams to bolster the defensive line, the team is currently ranked 31st in both yards allowed and points allowed. But while the team has self-destructed on the field the last two weeks, they haven’t turned on each other. The leadership of the team recognizes that everyone needs to step up and improve their play in all phases of the game, and maybe a little time in the desert can help them do that.
“Every guy on this team has to understand that the only way we are going to get better is if you point at yourself,” Williams said. “If you watch film and say ‘OK what can I do better? How can I do my job to help us be better on defense or help us be a better football team?’ If you are not looking at it that way, you are looking at it the wrong way. That is something we talked about today. Hopefully it carries a little weight.”
On the offensive side of the ball, quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick also emphasized the need for the team to pull together. “It was bad,” Fitzpatrick said of last week’s lost to the 49ers. “[We] just got outplayed.”
“We have to find a way to get a renewed sense of energy and optimism. Just make sure that our confidence level remains high,” Fitzpatrick added. “Making sure that they know that I have confidence in them, just like I have confidence in myself and just like I expect that they have confidence in me and themselves… We have been a confident bunch at times. Right now it is a little low I think because of what has happened the last few weeks but I think we will get it back.”
The Bills face a tough challenge on Sunday against a 4-1 Arizona team that has been playing some of the best defense in the league, giving up only 15.6 points per game. Time is getting short to turn things around, and the schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Bills. After Arizona, they face Tennessee followed by the Texans and Patriots, possibly the two best teams in the AFC.
