Craziest stat from today - Bills won the points of turnovers battle

[Matt_In_NH]

Just now, dave mcbride said:

Yes, if you read my post, I am counting a turnover on downs, especially when it’s 4th and long and failure puts the Bills in plus territory.

OK, but that is not how points off turnovers are actually counted.

[BuffaloBillyG]

14 hours ago, BillsFan130 said:

I was shocked they went for that 4th and 10. I get the whole idea of not giving it back to Josh Allen, but the chargers defence was playing lights out 

With how flag happy the refs were yesterday, I would have gone for it too. Chances of a defensive penalty were pretty high. 

[dave mcbride]

4 minutes ago, Matt_In_NH said:

OK, but that is not how points off turnovers are actually counted.

Yeah, I could care less about that. It was for all intents and purposes a turnover (quite literally, a turnover on downs). Just because a counting stat has a certain arbitrary rule doesn’t mean it’s indicative of reality. The Chargers turned the ball over on their own side of the field when they should have punted. It was a ~40-yard negative swing for them.

Edited September 28 by dave mcbride

[Shortchaz]

The team stats from yesterday are virtually identical other than turnovers 

[The Firebaugh Kid]

Teams losing the turnover battle by 4+ were 1-69-1 before yesterday. 

Find a way boys. 

[BRH]

15 hours ago, Warcodered said:

I thought the craziest thing was the last time the Bills beat a team with 5 turnovers at home or something was against the Chargers HC back when he was a QB.

 

I believe that was the game where the Colts opened up a 26-0 lead.  The Bills closed the gap to 26-10 at halftime and then chased them down in the second half for what at the time was one of the largest regular-season comebacks ever, with Todd Collins of all people at the helm.  Antowain Smith went off, if I remember correctly.

[CLTbills]

15 hours ago, Generic_Bills_Fan said:

Harbaugh makes absolutely no sense.  Settling for fgs on 4th and short/medium then goes for that 4th and 10 on his own end 

Him not kicking the field goal from the 18 on first down with 2:28 left was coaching malfeasance. Brutal clock management. They only had one timeout and had to have a Field Goal AND a touchdown. You have to use the 2 minute warning to your advantage there.

 

Crazy to me that these coaches make all this money and can't understand simple clock management.

[Warcodered]

38 minutes ago, CLTbills said:

Him not kicking the field goal from the 18 on first down with 2:28 left was coaching malfeasance. Brutal clock management. They only had one timeout and had to have a Field Goal AND a touchdown. You have to use the 2 minute warning to your advantage there.

 

Crazy to me that these coaches make all this money and can't understand simple clock management.

Technically they needed either a FG and a TD plus a 2pt conversion or two TDs, they were down 11, opting for the former instead the latter is an interesting decision on 4th down. From my perspective there really isn't much point your essentially in the same situation at the end for the 2pt conversion only the game is probably over at that point.

[Drew21PA]

Despite an ugly offensive performance - not sure why fans are encouraged by the defense turning the corner yesterday 

[Generic_Bills_Fan]

18 minutes ago, Drew21PA said:

Despite an ugly offensive performance - not sure why fans are encouraged by the defense turning the corner yesterday 

Did you mean aren’t? 😂. If so I think the chargers are just one of those teams nobody takes seriously (despite winning 11 games last year)

[Drew21PA]

8 hours ago, Generic_Bills_Fan said:

Did you mean aren’t? 😂. If so I think the chargers are just one of those teams nobody takes seriously (despite winning 11 games last year)

Sheesh here I go again - lol yes are not is what I meant lol 

[Psautcsk]

13 hours ago, dcinmuncie said:

Shawne Merriman is back ?

I heard he was in the parking lot yesterday.

[K-9]

I would like nothing more than to think the defense was why we won yesterday, but I think it was more a function of the Chargers having an inept offense than us having a good D. Yes, the D did what they had to do when they had to do it and I give them full credit for that, but the Chargers offense also crapped the bed against the Cards and Raiders to start the season. 
 

Going into this season, I and others thought it would be six to eight games before Leonhard figured out what he had and our guys had a full grasp of the new system and yesterday notwithstanding, I am not convinced we are a good defense at this juncture. 

[dave mcbride]

On 9/28/2026 at 9:24 AM, CLTbills said:

Him not kicking the field goal from the 18 on first down with 2:28 left was coaching malfeasance. Brutal clock management. They only had one timeout and had to have a Field Goal AND a touchdown. You have to use the 2 minute warning to your advantage there.

 

Crazy to me that these coaches make all this money and can't understand simple clock management.

Good issue to ponder. Assuming you fail at the the onside kick but make a stop, you're probably going to get the ball back at your own 10 yard line with around 1:08 to go with no TOs and needing 8. You could kick it off and - if you make a stop - get the ball back at around your own 30 with that amount of time left. I'd do the latter given the very low likelihood of recovering an onside kick. Hit one deep in that gets you the Bills 45; spike it; hit a throw that gets you to the 30 (in bounds; the sidelines will be covered); and then you have 20-25 seconds for 3-4 throws at the EZ. Not impossible.   

[CLTbills]

On 9/29/2026 at 1:24 PM, dave mcbride said:

Good issue to ponder. Assuming you fail at the the onside kick but make a stop, you're probably going to get the ball back at your own 10 yard line with around 1:08 to go with no TOs and needing 8. You could kick it off and - if you make a stop - get the ball back at around your own 30 with that amount of time left. I'd do the latter given the very low likelihood of recovering an onside kick. Hit one deep in that gets you the Bills 45; spike it; hit a throw that gets you to the 30 (in bounds; the sidelines will be covered); and then you have 20-25 seconds for 3-4 throws at the EZ. Not impossible.   

Yes, but if you fail to get the onside kick, the Bills are automatically in field goal range. If you fail to get the onside kick, the game is essentially over for you. But by doing what he did, and running it down to the two minute warning after running three plays, and THEN kicking the FG after the 2 minute warning, you eliminated your chance to do it because you needed the 2 minute warning as a timeout to stop the clock on second down.

Edited October 2 by CLTbills

[MJS]

It's pretty pathetic to get only 10 points off of 5 turnovers. It's why I never really doubted that the Bills would win that game. Yes, we turned it over a bunch, but the Chargers rarely capitalized on it. So, you knew eventually that the Bills would stop shooting themselves in the foot and score some points.

 

Well, they didn't really stop shooting themselves in the foot (bad penalties too), but they managed to score some point in between mistakes.

Edited October 2 by MJS

[CLTbills]

On 9/28/2026 at 10:09 AM, Warcodered said:

Technically they needed either a FG and a TD plus a 2pt conversion or two TDs, they were down 11, opting for the former instead the latter is an interesting decision on 4th down. From my perspective there really isn't much point your essentially in the same situation at the end for the 2pt conversion only the game is probably over at that point.

Yeah, but it's about clock management. It's a two possession game. It's about conserving clock and the ability to stop the clock once you have to kick the ball back off. Doing it after the two minute warning basically left them with the onside kick as the only option, versus kicking the field goal, and still having one timeout, plus the two minute warning to stop the clock on first and second down once the Bills got the ball back. So then the Bills would be running their third down play coming out of the two minute warning. Essentially punting the ball (if they didn't gain the first down) with 1:20 left. 

[Matt_In_NH]

On 9/28/2026 at 8:51 AM, dave mcbride said:

Yeah, I could care less about that. It was for all intents and purposes a turnover (quite literally, a turnover on downs). Just because a counting stat has a certain arbitrary rule doesn’t mean it’s indicative of reality. The Chargers turned the ball over on their own side of the field when they should have punted. It was a ~40-yard negative swing for them.

That's nice but it's just not how it is done so comparing that to all other games that are done correctly is not apples to apples.  Are we giving Josh Allen a touchdown pass that was called back on holding that did not look like holding because for all intents and purposes that was a touchdown pass.   If your overall point is that the Chargers did not take advantage of the 5 turnovers and only scoring 16 points demonstrates that, I agree.

Edited October 2 by Matt_In_NH

[dave mcbride]

39 minutes ago, CLTbills said:

Yes, but if you fail to get the onside kick, the Bills are automatically in field goal range. If you fail to get the onside kick, the game is essentially over for you. But by doing what he did, and running it down to the two minute warning after running three plays, and THEN kicking the FG after the 2 minute warning, you eliminated your chance to do it because you needed the 2 minute warning as a timeout to stop the clock on second down.

I'm talking about the Chargers immediately kicking when they get in makeable range, not what they actually did. 

23 minutes ago, Matt_In_NH said:

That's nice but it's just not how it is done so comparing that to all other games that are done correctly is not apples to apples.  Are we giving Josh Allen a touchdown pass that was called back on holding that did not look like holding because for all intents and purposes that was a touchdown pass.   If your overall point is that the Chargers did not take advantage of the 5 turnovers and only scoring 16 points demonstrates that, I agree.

I am not following your logic. The Chargers really did turn the ball over on downs and there were consequences. Allen did not throw a TD pass because it was called back due to a legitimate holding call that affected the play. One happened; the other didn't.

[Simon]

On 9/28/2026 at 7:27 PM, K-9 said:

Going into this season, I and others thought it would be six to eight games before Leonhard figured out what he had and our guys had a full grasp of the new system and yesterday notwithstanding, I am not convinced we are a good defense at this juncture. 

 

They seem to be getting better each week, but we know this is not going to be a linear process.

While I am encouraged by the progress, I'd also hesitate to start calling them "good" already.