The Buffalo Bills have been incredibly aggressive this year with their fourth down decision making, but even head coach Sean McDermott was confused by a choice that Dan Campbell and the Lions made on Sunday.
With all three timeouts left and down only 10 points with 12 minutes to play, the Lions opted to try an inside kick, which has zero element of surprise under the new rules. This season, only 3 of 41 (7.3 percent) of onside kick attempts have been successful. The decision was perplexing, to say the least, with Bills wide receiver Mack Hollins fielding it and returning it inside the five yard line.
Asked if he was surprised at their decision to try the onside kick, McDermott was very blunt with his response.
“Yeah. They’ve been pretty aggressive, I would say, with their fourth downs. They went for one against the Packers. I think it was on their own very modest territory somewhere, and they didn’t get put the Packers in good position there. So obviously coach felt like that’s, you know, I don’t know what he was thinking, but it paid off for us.”
His response started off like he was trying to justify their decision, or explain the line of thinking, which he then basically gave up on and said he was glad they went for the incredibly low-probability play.
Trying to explain the decision comes down to basically one thing, and one thing only — Josh Allen. Detroit couldn’t stop Allen from doing essentially whatever he wanted to do during this game. The only thing that slowed down Allen was penalties by his own team. If they didn’t hurt themselves, he was marching on all but one possession in that game.
Let that sink in. Buffalo punted once. They had 11 possessions in the game, punted once, and Tyler Bass logged the shortest missed field goal of the NFL season on another. That’s it. In the second half,
Perhaps the decision to go for the onside kick was a desperation play from a team that new they were up against an unstoppable opponent. Whatever the thinking was, it was a wild choice to make, and one that Buffalo was glad to see happen.