The 2025 Buffalo Bills season has been written, but the book is incomplete. Before we cast our full attention toward the 2026 season, let’s take one last glance back over our shoulder through Buffalo Rumblings’ annual look at the Plays That Defined the prior campaign.
For any newcomers, first and foremost; Welcome! When it comes to the “rules” of this exercise, we’re not voting for our favorite highlight necessarily, but the one that best captures the essence of the game. Put differently, if you had to choose just one play to show someone to explain as much of the contest as possible, which would you choose?
Week 10: Buffalo Bills at Miami Dolphins
The Bills had traded punches with the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 9, and they came out victorious. Buffalo traveled with confidence to Miami to take on the 2-7 Dolphins, a team the Bills had already handled earlier in the year.
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What should have been a cakewalk was a major struggle. Questionable strategy and let’s face it, terrible execution, led to a thrashing at the hands of the inferior Dolphins. No worries, it’s not like the Bills ended up losing the division due to a few regrettable dropped games like this or anything.
If you’ve been reading these over the years, you know sometimes I like to go a bit more abstract/poetic and offer a contrasting play as often it can be fun to “illustrate” something ironically. On Miami’s first drive, we got exactly what I think most of us expected for the game. Tua Tagovailoa heaves the ball looking to keep the drive alive, and arm punts it right to Cole Bishop.
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Honestly, this isn’t a worse outcome than an incomplete pass would have been but it just feels like the game we should have had. We had so much hope for the first couple minutes.
Incomplete pass (Q1; 1:22)
Do you remember how great of a season James Cook III was having up to this point (and afterwards, too, really)? The Dolphins weren’t up by more than two scores until the middle of the fourth quarter. In other words, there wasn’t really much reason to abandon the run. The Bills’ regular-season distribution ended up with 495 passing attempts to 547 rushes.
That sum makes the 22 runs versus 40 passes in this game bewildering. I can’t think of a better symbol for the Bills deliberately abandoning the rushing game in favor of the passing one than the literal embodiment of it here. The result is fitting here too.
It’s not like the defense really did well either. Miami averaged just over 20 points a game last season. Letting them drop 30 is embarrassing. The hope is that cornerback Maxwell Hairston will learn to turn around and play the ball consistently, especially when the ball hangs in the air so long you suspect that it might be filled with helium.
Back to the offense, which was indeed very offensive. Look at the timestamp. At this point in the game, the score was 16-0 in favor of the Dolphins. This was the 14th play of the 9:01 drive. It was nearly the start of a thrilling comeback, but y’know… it wasn’t.
De’Von Achane’s second TD (Q4; 3:24)
Wanna get really upset? This was the shorter of the two touchdowns by De’Von Achane. This was 35 yards, whereas his first was 59. Why go with the shorter of the two? First off, let’s face it. With touchdowns like this where the running back breaks through all the layers of the defense, the distance stops mattering as much. Second, this play was the moment that hope vanished. Down by 10 with just a few minutes to go it was bleak. This made “bleak” look awe inspiring.
We started with an ironic contrast, so let’s end with one. This catch and touchdown by Keon Coleman are what we hope we’ll see from him on consistent basis. Fingers crossed.
Which play best defines the Bills’ loss?
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