NFL Week 12 Bad Beats: The Buffalo Beat
Bills Fans Know All About Buffalo’s Missed Opportunities
Errant Field Goals, a ‘Sus’ Call… We Got It All
For our NFL Week 12 Bad Beat, we’ll do it one better (or worse in this case): we have the NFL Week 12 Buffalo Beat. That’s right. A franchise as snakebitten as the Bills deserves its own category, which was encapsulated in their overtime loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. Bills bettors, whether it’s the moneyline or spread, have plenty of bones to pick, given how the game unfolded. So let’s break it down.
Did You Bet the Wrong Number?
Let’s start with the most obvious “bad beat”: Bills lose the NFL game by three points and fail to cover the +2.5 points. Our subject last week was Pittsburgh bettors, who lost against the spread (ATS) because their line moved from +4.5 to +2.5. This is a similar case for Bills bettors who bet on Buffalo too late, as it opened at +3.5.
Once again, we cannot emphasize enough the world of difference a line is once it gets lower than +3.5. Checking the latest NFL lines is one way to avoid getting into this situation. Still, we’re not making excuses for what happened to Buffalo on the field.
Catching a Bad Beat: Referees Job Buffalo
We often hear fans bemoan referees during losses. But they may have a point here as the refs chose to call a late pass in overtime an “incomplete pass” as opposed to a game-ending “fumble.” Jalen Hurts threw a short right pass for A.J. Brown. As the receiver grabbed hold of the ball and took two steps to run, Tyrel Dodson dislodged the ball. The Bills recovered.
Depending on who you ask, that was either a fumble or an incomplete pass. The commentators certainly thought it was an incomplete pass. And it was ruled as such. But just a few hours later, a similar case involving Keenan Allen in the Chargers-Ravens game was ruled a fumble. Huh?
To this day, officials still cannot decide what constitutes a “catch.” It’s a toss-up, a 50/50 at this point. And given that it’s seemingly left in the hands of officials or football gods for the quasi-religious, the Bills got jobbed on this.
Right after, the Eagles called a timeout and scored the game-winning touchdown three plays later.
That’s enough to make for our NFL Week 12 Bad Beat. But we’re not done with this game yet.
Field Goals That Crushed or Cashed Tickets
That “incomplete pass” ruling is sufficient to be the subject of this NFL Week 12 Bad Beat. But arguably, Buffalo would not have needed to depend on a call to save its game had Tyler Bass made one of the two field goals he missed. On the flip side, his counterpart, Jake Elliott, nailed the one he needed to.
While Tyler Bass did drill a 40-yard field goal to put Buffalo up 34-31 in overtime. But he missed a pair of field goals early in the game, one of which was blocked by Jalen Carter. That’s alright, as the conditions were not ideal. It was raining and a bit windy. And yet, all the Bills can do now is ruminate on how they could have beaten the NFL’s top team had a few breaks gone their way.
“Like you just said, we could have nine, 10 wins right now, but that’s in fantasy land, and in real life, we understand what our record is,” safety Micah Hyde said. “It’s the NFL, man, been doing it for a long time, and it’s tough.”
Elliott, on the other hand, made the only field goal he kicked: a 59-yarder to send the game into overtime. It was the second-longest FG he’s made this NFL season as he preserved Philadelphia’s perfect home record.
With that loss, Buffalo drops to 6-6, and its odds of making the NFL playoff bracket now look grim. At -700, the betting odds calculator implies that Buffalo has an 87.5% chance of missing the postseason. Yikes.
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