- The Buffalo Bills overcame a 15-point deficit with less than five minutes remaining to defeat the Baltimore Ravens 41-40.
- A crucial fumble by Ravens running back Derrick Henry in the fourth quarter helped set up the Bills’ comeback.
- Bills quarterback Josh Allen passed for 394 yards and two touchdowns, leading the game-winning drive.
ORCHARD PARK, NY – Instant classic.
That’s what happened at Highmark Stadium on Sunday night. It was one of those games that if you didn’t see it you would not believe it.
The Buffalo Bills trailed by 15 points with less than five minutes to play – and still won the darned thing. And boy did they ever.
Buffalo needed some crazy stuff to happen to rally back against a Baltimore Ravens outfit, hell-bent on revenge as their AFC divisional playoff setback on these grounds in January, seemed poised to run the home team out of its own building.
And crazy stuff happened to define the first 41-40 score in the NFL’s 106-year history.
Either crazy or divine intervention.
“Glory to God,” Bills coach Sean McDermott, a spiritual man – and maybe even more so now – surmised during his postgame revival, er, news conference. When it ended, McDermott could be seen pointing through the night sky to the heavens.
The Big Guy is a member of Bills Mafia? Who knew?
Then again, the way it all went down leaves us all wondering.
Derrick Henry bulldozed the Bills defense for 169 yards and two touchdowns, but fumbled – take a bow, Ed Oliver, for punching the football out – in crunch time to set up the Buffalo touchdown that made it a two-point game.
It’s no wonder that Henry apologized to his teammates after the game.
“I feel like I put the loss on me,” Henry explained in a somber visitor’s locker room.
Yes, classic games always come with heroes and clutch performers, and with usual safe bets having mishaps at the worst time. And they often come with some serious luck.
Before Henry’s fumble, Keon Coleman caught a 10-yard touchdown pass for the Bills on fourth down that deflected off tight end Dawson Knox, who reached for the pass while running a route in front of Coleman, who caught the pass as he slid across the back of the end zone.
It was that kind of drama.
“It ranks up there,” said Ravens linebacker Kyle Van Noy, pondering the wildest games he’s participated in during his 12-year NFL career. “But it sucks being on the opposite side.”
One man’s misery is another man’s glory.
“You’ve got to play the game for 60 minutes,” summed up Josh Allen, Buffalo’s MVP quarterback, who passed for 394 yards and two touchdowns – and nailed 32-and 25-yard completions on the final drive to set up Matt Prater’s 32-yard field goal as time expired.
Sixty minutes. Easy for Allen to say, true as it is.
Of course, the NFL loves it. The first Sunday night showcase game was filled with fireworks, highlights, suspense – and hey, postgame buzz that had nothing to do with anybody spitting on an opponent.
If you weren’t buying the 60-minute theme and turned off the TV as the game went deep into the night, you sure missed out. But you can’t be blamed. The Ravens seemed to have the game in the bag. After all, they didn’t punt until 6:25 remained in the third quarter.
And Lamar Jackson was in a special kind of zone himself. Jackson passed for 210 yards, ran for 70 and created three TDs. Jackson and Henry demonstrated just how lethal of a 1-2 punch they are during two sequences worth noting. Early in the second quarter, they combined for 48 yards and a TD with back-to-back long-distance jaunts. Then early in the fourth quarter they topped that, combining for 64 yards on alternating runs as Jackson scrambled for 19 yards to set up a 46-yard TD blast from Henry.
Classic stuff. Then a classic comeback to set off the farewell season at Highmark Stadium, with the Bills’ new digs under construction across the street.
For the fans who left in the fourth quarter, shame on them. The place was maybe a third-empty midway through the fourth quarter. You know it happens. Fans want to get an early jump on the traffic as the home team seems destined for a big L.
Those fans left without getting their money’s worth. Tsk. Tsk.
The game goes down as one for the ages. No, the stakes weren’t as high as they were the time when Frank Reich, subbing for an injured Jim Kelly, led the Bills to a 32-point comeback against the Houston Oilers to win an AFC wild-card playoff in January 1993 that is the largest postseason comeback in NFL history.
Yet that playoff magic came at the same place – called Rich Stadium at the time – and I’m guessing that for the Bills fans who experienced it, it had to feel something similar to what went down on Sunday night.
In other words, it was so special. So classic.
Prater, signed late last week as an emergency replacement for injured kicker Tyler Bass, kicked three field goals in his Bills debut. In his 19th NFL season, he’s had his share of game-winning kicks that beat the clock.
But now there’s this fresh classic to welcome him to Buffalo.
After it was over, after the new teammates that he’s barely met lifted him in a mob celebration on the field, it didn’t matter that he’s a seasoned veteran who has been around the NFL block a few times.
Prater said, “I’m still on Cloud Nine.”
Which was one way to sum up a classic.
Contact Jarrett Bell at jbell@usatoday.com or follow on social media: On X: @JarrettBell
On Bluesky: jarrettbell.bsky.social