10’s Takes: The power of the turnover

This week’s edition of 10’s Takes is all about turnovers.

We can’t tell you Sunday’s loss is one-in-a-million, but it’s at least one-in-246. Entering Sunday, teams with at least six touchdowns and zero turnovers in a game were 245-0. Then, of course, the Bills lost.

We can talk all we want about the late-game coaching snafus, but it’s hard to win games when you give up more than 40 points. In fact, the Rams on Sunday were the first team to do so all season. Teams to score more than 40 points in a game this year were 20-0 before the loss. This brings us to a bigger point.

Let’s look at the Bills points-per-game figure, 20.6. Despite ranking in the top 10 of the league in that stat, they rank 14th in yards per game and 19th in rush yards per game. Where the unit really excels is takeaways. With 24 on the year, they rank third and had zero on Sunday for the first time all year. And the offense has done its part with just seven giveaways.

The Bills defense has a superpower, and it’s the takeaway and without one this past week, they gave up 44 points, the unit’s most since 2018. The Bills defense is good, but they rely on that chaos and those takeaways. So, they’ll regroup for Detroit and we’ll have to wait and see if that can get it done in the postseason.