Talk about a long flight home.
The Buffalo Bills could only peer back and ponder the wreckage after watching a 15-point third-quarter lead morph into a season-crushing 38-24 loss to the Oakland Raiders on Sunday.
"It definitely did shock me,"Bills safety Corey Graham said, per Vic Carucci of The Buffalo News. "To have the lead like that and let those guys come back in a key situation like that, it sucks. As a defense, you've just got to get stops, and those guys made the plays and we didn't. It really, really hurt, especially to lose like that. It sucks."
The Bills spent the first two-and-a-half quarters pounding away at Oakland with the NFL's top-ranked ground game. Controlling both sides of the ball, Buffalo seemed poise to put the cherry on top of a Rex Ryan masterpiece after running Mike Gillislee barreled into the end zone to forge a 24-9 lead with 9:01 to play in the third quarter.
Gillislee and fellow runner LeSean McCoy led a ferocious run attack that ripped through the Raiders for 212 yards -- only to dry up when it mattered most. After Gillislee punched it in, Buffalo bumbled their way to three straight punts and a pick while Oakland's offense poured on the points.
"It was crazy. It was one of those situations where everything they did went right and we couldn't make a play," Graham said. "I've never been in a situation like that. Those guys got on a roll and it was like everything they did turned into gold. It didn't matter what they called, what they did, they found ways to make plays. That's why they're 10-2 and No. 1 in the AFC."
Carucci noted that Ryan looked "absolutely dumbfounded" during his postgame press conference, still stunned by a defense that gave up 29 unanswered points over the final 19 minutes of play. On the outside looking in, the Bills likely need to win out and hope for other teams to implode for any shot at January.
"Sometimes you feel that momentum shift and it just snowballed on us," Ryan said. "Sometimes, I think we lose confidence. You can't ever have that happen to you."
