Week Four: Winless Rams put up a fight in first half before resilient Bills storm back, raise record to 4-0
Stepping on the gas
Greer’s first TD caps September to remember COMMENTARY
ST. LOUIS — It was late in the first half, when things were looking especially bleak for the Buffalo Bills. Terrence McGee was finished for the day with a sprained knee. Marcus Stroud had just left the field with a minor injury.
So Jabari Greer looked into the faces of his defensive teammates in the middle of the field and hollered, “Guys, we’ve been here before. We’ve been here before, and we just have to adjust and step up.”
Yes, we have been here before, haven’t we? The previous week, in fact. And the week before that. For the third week in a row, the Bills fell behind. For the third straight game, they were losing in the fourth quarter and contemplating their first loss.
Adversity showed its ugly, scowling face again here Sunday. And the Bills did what good teams, contending teams, do. They laughed at it. They shoved a pie in adversity’s face. They pulled together, maintained their composure, and made the plays, both big and small, to pull off another comeback win.
And it was Greer, the resilient, fifth-year cornerback from Tennessee, who made the biggest play of all. But Greer was wrong about one thing. He went somewhere he hadn’t been before: the end zone.
On the first play of the fourth
quarter, with the Bills trailing 14-13, Greer picked off a Trent Green pass and raced 33 yards for the winning touchdown — the first of his NFL career — in a 31-14 win over the Rams.
On the big play, St. Louis was facing second-and-12 at its 11-yard line. Green dropped back and, under a good rush, threw the ball down the right sideline. Torry Holt, the intended receiver, was nowhere near the ball.
Instead, it went straight to Greer, a former NCAA hurdling champion who broke most of Willie Gault’s hurdles records at Tennessee. Greer looked ahead, saw a bunch of Rams uniforms and took off around the right end for the TD.
“I can’t even say what happened,” Greer said. “I really can’t. I was just trying to get to daylight. That was the biggest thing of all, because there were some big boys out there. I just didn’t want to get hit.”
Greer was overjoyed by his TD, for personal reasons, but more so because he had made a big play for his team. He is one of the good guys on the Bills, a deeply spiritual man who is always ready with a smile and some choice wisdom. Greer never seems secure in his job. Every summer, it seems there’s some new hotshot ready to replace him at corner.
But he’s still there. Greer seemed happier for his teammates than himself Sunday. He gushed about Ashton Youboty and Leodis McKelvin, who took on larger roles when McGee went down, and defensive tackle Spencer Johnson, who had a sack.
“I’m just so proud of these guys to face adversity like we did and take it to the next level,” Greer said. “I think that’s the big thing about this team, that we’re a family. And when our brothers are down, that’s the time you have to step up and help.”
As Dick Jauron said, the Bills did not play their best game Sunday. It was a lot like the Oakland game. The offense stumbled early. Trent Edwards got sacked four times in the first half. The defense, which hadn’t given up 100 yards rushing in a game, gave up 146 to the Rams in the first half alone, including long TD runs by Steven Jackson and Donnie Avery.
The Bills believe they are playing to a different standard now. They expect to win now. When a crisis occurs, they expect to surmount it.
“We stay together,” said linebacker Kawika Mitchell. “When things are down, like we were in the first half, nobody yells at each other. We weren’t losing our cool in the locker room. Everybody was cool. We knew we could win this game. That’s big. That’s when you know you have a real team.”
Mitchell should know. He played on a Giants team that came together during the season last year and won the Super Bowl. He knows a big defensive play, like the one Greer made, can make all the difference.
“It didn’t even seem real,” Greer said. “If I had weighed the significance of it before the play, I don’t think I would have made it. If I were to say, ‘OK, this is to go ahead, this is to give our team the momentum,’ I might have dropped that ball.”
A lot of NFL players would be choreographing their victory dance on the way to the end zone. Greer actually seemed grateful for the experience.
“I’m looking forward to seeing it on highlights,” he said, “because towards the last 20, I think I might have slowed up a little bit, started cramping a little bit. So I’m looking forward to seeing how that looks. Hopefully it doesn’t look too bad.”
Ask any Bills fan, Jabari. It was a thing of beauty, like that 4-0 next to the word “Buffalo” in the NFL standings. There are only two 4-0 teams in the league right now: The Bills and the Titans.
It wasn’t a work of art. But when a team can play poorly for a half, get out-gained by 100 yards on the day, and still wind up winning a road game by 17 points, that says something. Good teams win when things aren’t going their way. Bad teams look good for a half and find ways to mess things up.
You take a road win and get out of town. The Bills are 4-0. A perfect September.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Mitchell said. “We’re 100 percent in the first quarter of the season. We can put that behind us now and move on. But it’s nice to have that record. That ‘W’ is all that matters, man. . . . That’s how you get in the playoffs, and if you get in the playoffs, it’s anybody’s game. So we’ll see.”
