Miracle stings, but shouldn't derail Bills

After Buffalo’s playoff loss to the Houston Texans last season, Josh Allen said it would take a long, long time to get over it.

- MARK Ludwiczak

Maybe Buffalo’s bye week has come at just the right time.

The Bills could certainly use an extra week to get over their Week 10 loss to the Arizona Cardinals — which improbably, implausibly, and inconceivably will go down as one of the most shocking losses in team history. Moments after Allen connected with Stefon Diggs on perhaps the best touchdown pass of his career, Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins came back and shocked the world with a successful Hail Mary in the game’s final seconds.

“Obviously, losing’s never fun,” Allen said. “To lose like that is painful. It hurts. It’s why you play 60 minutes of the game.”

The natural inclination after a loss like that is to quickly assign blame. Why were the Bills unable to knock the ball down? Why was Buffalo unable to put more pressure on Murray? Why did the Cardinals even have a shot in the first place?

None of that really matters, and in this case none of it seems particularly relevant. The Bills had three players in position to make a play on both the ball and Hopkins, and Hopkins — who is considered the best receiver in the league for a reason — stepped up and made a play.

Sometimes, it just isn’t your day. This was Hopkins’ day.

“At the end of the day, they made a play,” Bills head coach Sean McDermott said. “As coaches, you sit here and immediately go, what could we have done differently? At the end of the day, they had two special players that made a special play.”