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In a way, the Buffalo Bills provided its fans a precursor to the embarrassing way they finished the 2010 season in a 38-14 loss to the Minnesota Vikings. Just as they'd do in horrific efforts in Weeks 16 and 17, the Bills were mistake-prone turnover machines that played bad defense and made dumb mistakes in Minnesota. They snuck two more wins in before returning to this form, so at least there's that.
Post-game recaps: I was on vacation and away from the blog when this game went down, and sort of wish I'd delegated this part of the re-watch to MRW, as well. Matt hit well on all of the key post-game points: injury woes (particularly on the offensive line), the massive turnover issues (five in one game would seem downright pedestrian by season's end), and Leodis McKelvin's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
More from Ron and DJ after the jump.
Ron's O-Line analysis: To put it mildly, there wasn't a single offensive lineman that didn't come out of this game looking bad - except for Eric Wood, I suppose, who missed the game due to injury. There's not an awful lot to point out that Ron doesn't. Andy Levitre, Mansfield Wrotto and Cordaro Howard were particularly awful, Demetrius Bell was just flat-out bad, and every other lineman had his share of poor plays, as well. To this point in the re-watch, this was easily the team's worst performance up front. Minnesota had them off-balance early and often, and the injuries only compounded the problems.
Der Jaeger's analysis: DJ tossed "careless" and "attitude" together in the same sentence, and I can get behind that. Coming off of that devastating loss to Pittsburgh, we hoped the Bills would display a little more resiliency. What we got instead was more in the realm of bravado, as the team repeatedly made mistakes and, really, beat themselves handily. Minnesota didn't need to do an awful lot to win this game, folks.
DJ also went out of his way to give credit to Drayton Florence and Brian Moorman. I'm not sure it was fully warranted for Florence, despite his two picks; he was also beat more often than usual in this game. It was absolutely warranted for Moorman, who has a reputation in this fan base as a player that is fading. That may be the case, as he was inconsistent with his ball-striking and placement once again last year, but in this game - which took place in the comforts that the Metrodome once provided - Moorman was every bit as awesome as he was during his peak playing days.