ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- The Buffalo Bills were on fire.
Not in the good way.
"Overall, again, we won, but a lot of smoke detectors going off right now," quarterback Josh Allen said after his offense's five-turnover performance in Sunday's 24-16 comeback win over the Los Angeles Chargers. "We got to clean a lot of stuff up."
"The house was on fire today," coach Joe Brady added. "That's unacceptable."
The Bills scored 24 points in the first half in Week 1 and 27 points in the first half in Week 2, but Allen said it felt like a dream to go into halftime in Week 3 tied 10-10. Running back James Cook III fumbled on the first play from scrimmage, and Allen -- who finished 16 of 26 for 204 yards and no passing touchdowns despite rushing for two -- threw interceptions on two of the next three drives.
So Brady used his halftime speech to take an unlikely stance.
"I told the team at halftime: 'This is perfect,'" Brady told reporters postgame. "I meant that. I wanted to see how we were going to respond. I wanted to see what it was going to reveal. Were we going to be a team that's just going to point fingers when things aren't going well? How are we going to respond?"
It'd be one thing if the speech worked and the Bills came out and body-slammed the Chargers for the next 30 minutes. But the second half was a lot like the first. Two more turnovers. Six penalties for 43 yards. Allen threw for only 82 yards. This was hardly the MVP-frontrunner version of Allen, who glided through the first two weeks of the season seemingly wearing a cape and a utility belt.
And yet, the Bills responded.
"I think it all comes back to Joe Brady," center Connor McGovern told ESPN. "That's what he preaches: We don't break. No matter whether it was the first [turnover] or the fifth or all the different penalties we got, you look at the sideline and we're all ready to go, saying, 'Hey, just put the ball back down.' Until the final whistle blows, we're going to keep playing."
McGovern called it a "full circle" feeling. In the first two weeks when the Bills' defense was struggling and the offense was thriving, the offense would come onto the field with a nod and say "we got you" to their departing defensive teammates. Sunday, the defense was able to return the gesture.
Defensive performances like this one don't come around often. Since 2010, teams that turn the ball over five or more times in a game have allowed an average of 32.7 points per game. This was only the fourth time in the past two decades where a team turned the ball over five times but still won by allowing 16 points or fewer.
Sure, the Chargers made their share of mistakes, too, headlined by quarterback Justin Herbert's interception just outside the red zone when the Chargers had the chance to take a two-score lead early in the fourth quarter.
But to the Bills, the opportunism and the calm confidence they displayed despite moment after moment breaking the wrong way was an indicator of this team's embrace of Brady's "spot the ball" mentality.
"We know how good we can be," McGovern said, "but even at our worst, we've still got that."
