One-Stat Recap: Thanksgiving leftovers

It feels like it has already been a week since the Buffalo Bills took down the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving, but I think that’s just the tryptophan still moving through my system. It wasn’t the most fun holiday watch, but the Bills pulled out a 28-25 win at the very end to get the win and move on to the New England Patriots.

Late, game-winning drives seem to have become easier for the Bills the last few years, but what Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs, and Tyler Bass put together on Thursday was still very rare. Since 2001, there have been just 11 fourth-quarter or overtime game-winning drives that started with a kickoff and 30 seconds or less on the clock. The last team do so was the Tennessee Titans in the 2020 season, when they came back to beat the Houston Texans.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Bills have done it once before. Almost 16 years to the day, on Thanksgiving weekend, J.P. Losman, Roscoe Parrish, and Rian Lindell led and finished off a late drive to secure a victory at home over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Obviously we all hope the Bills don’t ever need late-game heroics again, but it’s nice to know they have it in their bag of tricks.