The Best of One Bills Drive - Dec. 17, 2023

(Greg D. Tranter and Budd Bailey have written a book about the history of the football stadium in Orchard Park called "One Bills Drive." It has been published by Reedy Press (https://reedypress.com/shop/one-bills-drive-the-buffalo-bills-greatest-home-games/). The books covers the top 50 games played in the stadium's history from 1973 until January 2025. However, there are several other games that qualified as thrilling - but they couldn't crack the top 50. Those contests deserve to be remembered too, so we'll offer them in this space a couple of times per week during the season.)

Attendance: 70,933

Score by Quarters:

                                     1        2       3       4       Total

Dallas (L, 10-4)                 0        3         0       7        10

Buffalo (W, 8-6)                7       14      3       7        31

Scoring Summary:

Quarter – Team – Play

1 – Bills – Murray 2-yard run (Bass kick)

2 – Bills – Allen 18-yard pass to Cook (Bass kick)

2 – Cowboys – Aubrey 32-yard field goal

2 – Bills – Allen 1-yard run (Bass kick)

3 – Bills – Bass 23-yard field goal

4 – Bills – Cook 24-yard run (Bass kick)

4 – Cowboys – Lamb 3-yard run (Aubrey kick)

Recap:

Bills coach Marv Levy didn’t like the term “must win.” As he once put it, “World War II was a must win.”

Good point. But that doesn’t mean that Buffalo’s game with Dallas in 2023 wasn’t an important one for all concerned.

The Bills had lost three out of four games to fall to 6-6 on the season entering the bye week in early December. Buffalo’s margin for error for reaching the playoffs and winning the division was quite small heading into the stretch drive. The Bills helped their own cause with a narrow win in Kansas City on December 10, but there was still much work to do. The smart guys who work on analytics claimed the Bills had a 50-50 chance of qualifying for the postseason.

The next test would be a tough one, as the Bills were slated to host the Dallas Cowboys. “America’s Team” came into the game with a 10-3 record, and was on a five-game winning streak. They looked like one of the best teams in the NFC and a possible Super Bowl contender. But they were no match for the Bills on this day, thanks in part to the play of a younger member of the offense whose role seemed to be growing by the game.

James Cook was the Bills’ second-round draft choice in 2022. He didn’t start a single game as a rookie, but he received more work as the year went along. Cook finished with 507 yards rushing – not bad under the circumstances. In his second year, the running back picked up his play quite a bit, breaking the 100-yard barrier twice earlier in the season. But this would be the masterpiece of his 2023 campaign.

Buffalo’s first drive of the game couldn’t have gone better. The Bills took 14 plays – nine of them runs - to move the ball down the field for a touchdown. Latavius Murray did the honors. Soon after that, Buffalo relied on Cook. He ran the ball five times, and caught an 18-yard scoring pass from Josh Allen. The Bills were up 14-0, and the Cowboys had done very little.

Dallas did get on the scoreboard with a field goal, but Allen and Cook simply went back to work. Cook ran for 49 yards on that drive alone, and Allen plunged the ball into the end zone for a 21-0 lead that held up into halftime. Based on the first 30 minutes, it was difficult to tell which team was the possible Super Bowl contender.

The Bills again played power football when they had the ball in the third quarter. A drive that lasted more than 10 minutes finally stalled on the Dallas’ 5-yard line, but Tyler Bass added a field goal to pad the lead. Only a few minutes later, Cook ran 24 yards for a score to make it 31-3 with 12:30 to go. Allen and Cook were excused for the rest of the afternoon, and a late touchdown by the Cowboys was irrelevant.

For those who thought the Bills were one-dimensional in their reliance on Allen’s arm and legs, Cook had shown them to be wrong. He had 179 yards rushing on 25 carries, his best day in all of 2023. It was the top rushing total by a Bills’ player since Fred Jackson went for 212 yards in a 2010 game against Indianapolis. Cook also caught two passes for 42 yards against the Cowboys.

“I just let it rip when I get my opportunity,” Cook said. “My O-linemen, they were opening it up and I was hitting it. Finding that rhythm.”

“He’s a dog, man,” defensive end Greg Rousseau said. “I played against Cook when I was like 10 years old. We’re both from Florida. So, he’s like a legend down there and he’s doing his thing up here. Real proud of him. He’s a younger guy, but you wouldn’t even know it by the way he plays. So he’s a baller. He’s certified.”

Allen only threw 15 passes, completing seven of them for 94 yards and a score. He didn’t need to do a Superman impression in this game. “I felt like the kid that didn’t do anything in a class project but got an A,” Allen said. “But I’ll do this 10 times out of 10 times, man. Like, keep going.”

As a consolation prize, the Cowboys cliched their playoff berth before the game even started, thanks to a combination of losses by other teams. But they still fell to 3-4 on the road, a strong contrast to the team’s 7-0 record at home.

“It’s a gap. That’s part of my message,” Dallas coach Mike McCarthy said. “We play so well at home, and there’s just too big of a gap in our road games. We are conscious of it. We have a long flight home to continue to talk about, think about (it).”

It was the Bills’ second consecutive win, their first such streak since a three-game streak in Weeks Two to Four. “It was kind of all systems go today,” center Mitch Morse said. “We still have an uphill battle, but this is a great first step.”

Noteworthy: The Bills had about a 10-minute advantage in time of possession. … It was the 10^th time in the 2023 season that Allen ran and threw for a touchdown, setting an NFL record. … Buffalo only had nine third downs, converting five of them. … The Cowboys had the NFL’s highest-scoring offense entering the game, but could only put up a field goal in the game’s first 57 minutes. Dallas had 195 yards in total offense. Quarterback Dak Prescott completed 21 passes, but they only earned 134 yards. The longest reception went 16 yards. … Prescott’s streak of 199 pass attempts without an interception ended when Benford picked off a pass in the fourth quarter.

Legacy: The Bills ran the table at the end of the season, finishing with five straight wins to wind up 11-6. The last win was in Miami, and gave Buffalo the tiebreaking edge as it won the division title for the fourth consecutive year.

Cook finished the 2023 season with 1,122 yards rushing and two touchdowns. He cracked the 1,000-yard milestone again in 2024, and added a league-leading 16 touchdowns along the way.

Dallas didn’t play favorites in the AFC East, losing to Miami a week after the defeat in Buffalo. The Cowboys did win two of their final three games to take the NFL East title, only to be smoked by Green Bay in the first round of the playoffs.