Josh Allen racked up four total touchdowns in the first half to lead the Buffalo Bills to a 41-31 victory over the Detroit Lions on Thursday Night Football, spoiling the grand opening of the new Highmark Stadium while head coach Dan Campbell’s squad struggled to overcome a massive early deficit.
Josh Allen and the Bills Dominate Highmark Stadium’s Debut
The house that Josh built open for business. New Highmark Stadium opened its doors for its first official Bills home game, and Josh Allen opened the floodgates. Allen captained his Bills to a statement-making 85-yard touchdown drive to open the festivities, sneaking in from a yard out for the first score in the venue. He followed with the first, second and fourth TD passes in the stadium’s one-night chronicle, racking up four total TDs in one half’s worth of work. Looking every bit like a man on a mission just getting started, Allen’s arm was strong and the Bills’ run game was mighty. In that opening half, Allen threw for three scores and 164 yards, while rushing for 40 more as lead partner in crime James Cook topped 100 yards before halftime. Head coach Joe Brady’s offense rolled over the Lions defense by air and ground, piling up 299 total net yards to earn a 27-7 advantage at intermission. When Detroit opened the second half with a score, Allen emphatically answered, commanding a 75-yard drive with the rebuttal of a 2-yard TD run. At evening’s end, Allen had 248 yards and three TDs on 20-of-31 passing to go with a pair of TD runs and 69 yards on the ground. It was the Bills superstar’s fourth game with three-plus passing and two-plus rushing touchdowns, joining Kordell Steward as the only players in NFL history with multiple such games. A master of ceremonies for a grand opening of the new Highmark, Allen is playing like a quarterback possessed with Super Bowl aspirations. Lions are sacrificial lambs.
Detroit’s Slow Start and Dan Campbell’s Halftime Frustration
Just four days after outlasting the Saints for an overtime win, there was no rest for the weary Lions. Detroit was at the wrong end of a first-half blowout. Credit to Dan Campbell’s squad for failing to go gently into the Western New York night, but the Bills kept their foot on the gas, and the Lions just looked gassed for much of the game — the first half really, before seemingly getting a second wind when it was already too late. Jared Goff was sacked on an opening-drive three-and-out and then fumbled twice before a second-drive punt. By the time Goff hit Jahmyr Gibbs for an 11-yard touchdown, the Lions were already down 21 points. It might just be as simple as the Lions being in the wrong place at the wrong time in this one, facing a jacked-up Josh Allen and Buffalo squad who wouldn’t be denied on such a night. That’s the hope anyway. The Detroit Lions got humbled in the first half of Thursday Night Football, trailing 27-10 to the Buffalo Bills. The Lions needed to figure out what went wrong if they want to turn things around, and head coach Dan Campbell was asked what went wrong in the first half. Campbell let a profanity slip, and the NFL fans took their chance to jump on Campbell. Campbell acknowledged that the first half was a disaster. He spoke about how little things were killing them, but with a curse word inserted instead of things.
“We’ve got a lot of room to grow, and that’s encouraging,” Campbell said. “We’ve just got to clean up a lot of things on defense right now, particularly in the back end. . . . It wasn’t good enough.”
Despite a spirited second-half push that included a touchdown from Amon-Ra St. Brown, the Lions’ magic ran out quickly. Campbell expressed optimism about the way the Lions can use their extra three days after playing on Thursday night to prepare for Week 3 against the Jets. It’s early, we’re in Week 2, we’ve got a long season, and the most important thing is that we get better,
Campbell said. We just need to get better than we were today in all three phases. We need to play better against the Jets, and I think we will. We can, and we certainly will.
Campbell credited Bills head coach Joe Brady for having his team ready to play. They got after us and we didn’t play good enough and we didn’t coach good enough. That falls on me,
Campbell said. It certainly needed to be a lot cleaner than that.
Ground Attack and Defensive Standouts Shape the Matchup
RB battle goes to QB. This was a matchup featuring two of the top running backs in the game today. But the night belonged to a quarterback. Over his first 11 carries into the final quarter, Allen had 72 yards (6.5 per carry), two touchdowns and three runs of 10-plus yards. Perhaps most impressive was his 100% success rate. Allen’s rumbles have guided the Bills to success for years and did again on Thursday. Still, the Cook-Gibbs matchup wasn’t without its merit. Cook had 101 yards in the first half and 135 with a touchdown for the game, Robin to Allen’s Batman. Gibbs had his moments, but overall, he was held in check (16 carries for 52 yards) and this performance could be seen as worrisome. In Week 1, Gibbs had 33 touches. Five days later, he had 22 more. Why he and Goff were still in the game trailing by 17 points with less than three minutes to go is also a valid quandary. Thursday’s loss shouldn’t sully the Lions’ high hopes for 2026, but Detroit isn’t going anywhere without its bell cow Gibbs. Just need to make a decision on how much they can ring that bell.
Rousseau emerging as force. Through two games, 2021 first-rounder Gregory Rousseau has four sacks. He’s clearly flourishing under new defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard. “Groot” is already halfway to his season-high of eight sacks (2022, 2024). Rousseau had a game-best six QB pressures on Thursday night, per Next Gen Stats.
Worth a look
