It's hard to draw any strong conclusions from the first game of the season. You can only make observations. You never know what's going to happen in terms of injuries, or simply which teams will fall apart and which teams will figure out how to win.
That said, there are a couple of things to observe about last night's game.
To start with an uncontroversial observation that doesn't tell us too much; yeah, it was a bad performance by the Rams against a great second half performance by the Bills. The Bills had one rookie mistake fumble in the first half, one pass that should have been a completion that Isaiah McKenzie coughed up to the Rams, and one legitimately bad pass from Allen in the first half. In order to go into halftime tied when you've turned the ball over three times, your team is pretty damn talented and adaptable. You've also got a great defense.
On that note, the Bills defense was at the top of the NFL last season. The Bills defense did get better and we were still playing without Tre White. In fact, the Bills weren't afraid to line up Christian Benford, our sixth round rookie corner, on Cooper Kupp.
On top of all of that, the biggest concerns for the Bills on defense last season were stopping the run and the pass rush. The Bills recorded seven sacks with none of them being on blitzes. Cam Akers was held to zero yards rushing. Josh Allen individually out rushed the entire Rams' team.
Finally, Josh Allen has become a superstar because he's the best athlete at the position. He probably has the strongest arm in the history of the league and he can extend plays. His average time from snap to throw last night was 2.2 seconds. People can talk all they want about that being a necessity when you've got Aaron Donald rushing you; but, necessity or not, you have to be able to do that. The ability to do that is predicated on making strong, clear, accurate pre-snap reads. Namely, with the exception of one bad pass out of 31, Allen is playing the position with his brain as much as with his athletic ability.
Also, I don't think that we'll really know if Ken Dorsey is an adequate replacement for Daboll until the end of the season and offenses have to become more creative; but, I saw nothing last night that worries me about him as our new OC.
