It’s been impossible not to notice Matt Milano this season.
The Buffalo Bills’ linebacker has been all over the field during his team’s 2-1 start, including during Sunday’s 43-21 victory over Washington at Highmark Stadium. Milano finished with six tackles, including two for a loss, one pass defensed and one fumble recovery in the win, continuing what has been an excellent start to the 2021 season.
The Buffalo Bills forced three turnovers Sunday, and the Washington Football Team finished with 290 yards of offense, unable to keep up with the Bills and sustain drives.
According to analytics website Pro Football Focus, Milano is the highest-graded linebacker in the NFL among those who have played at least 125 snaps. His 89.8 grade (out of 100) speaks to the job he’s done since signing a lucrative, four-year contract extension to stay with the Bills this offseason.
“Matt seems to be playing with so much more confidence,” defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier said Monday. “You can see it in his urgency, the way he's practicing, the way he's playing. He's much more vocal than he's ever been. There's just another whole level to his play.”
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Milano is tied for the NFL lead with Denver’s Von Miller with six tackles for loss. Since coming to the Bills as a fifth-round draft pick in 2017, Milano has a team-leading 36 tackles for loss.
Zack Moss has gone from being a healthy inactive to leading the Bills’ running backs in playing time in the span of three games.
“These first three games, he's been a good player for us all along, which is one of the reasons we re-signed him to a good contract, but he's taking his game to another level from an intensity standpoint,” Frazier said. “It’s really becoming infectious with the rest of our players, so I just love the energy that he's bringing and the fire that he’s playing with, and hopefully that will continue.”
Here are four more observations from Monday’s video conferences with Sean McDermott, Brian Daboll and Leslie Frazier.
1. Daboll credited two other staff members for an unlikely field goal to end the first half. Taking over with 26 seconds left on their own 20-yard line might have been a time most teams took a knee and headed to halftime, but the Bills, with all three timeouts, went for points. The drive got them in position for a 48-yard field goal by Tyler Bass at the end of the first half.
“Give a lot of credit to Dennis Lock and to Mark Lubick, they do a great job up in the box with me in terms of situational football and game management,” Daboll said of the Bills’ director of football research and game management coordinator, respectively. “I just can’t say enough about the two of those guys. And then communication between those two and Sean and myself. Sean does a great job of putting us in different situations throughout the week. It’s kind of how we start practice on Wednesday and Thursday in different situations, usually at the end of the half or at the end of a game.
“The communication when you’re up in the box of, ‘Hey, what’s the next step? What are we planning on doing?’ And we’re all on the same page. 'Let’s be aggressive here. We’ve got three timeouts.' So, look, you practice those things. You have an idea of what you want to call. Maybe those things get tweaked based on how you’re getting played.”
Give quarterback Josh Allen and offensive coordinator Brian Daboll big assists in preventing the Washington Football Team from getting a single sack in the Bills’ 43-21 victory.
2. McDermott explained the breakdown on special teams. Leading 21-7 in the second quarter, the Bills let Washington back into the game by failing to recover a kickoff. Washington’s Dustin Hopkins kicked off short, and Bills returner Isaiah McKenzie wasn’t able to run up and field the ball before it bounced, with the ball eventually being recovered by Hopkins.
“They were trying to hang it up there a little bit and they did a good job of that,” McDermott said. “That being said, I thought we could have handled it a little bit better on our end, also. So that's an opportunity for us to learn from that football game. I know the guys are hard at work already talking about it early this morning, and then working on it. They'll be working on it here in the next day or two.”
Sustained winds of 20-30 mph blowing toward the tunnel end of the stadium presented a challenge for McKenzie, McDermott said.
“It can be tricky,” the coach said, “the way that ball hit basically a wall of wind and then went almost straight down made it a little bit challenging. That's the life of a returner, in particular where we live, and so we've got to be able to do a better job of that. We'll work on that this week.
3. Jordan Poyer is day to day. The Bills’ safety left in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s win with a left ankle injury.
“We'll just continue to monitor it as it goes here,” McDermott said.
Sanders finished with five catches for 94 yards and a pair of touchdowns in the Bills’ 43-21 win over the Washington Football Team.
4. Josh Allen is a finalist for the FedEx Air NFL Player of the Week. Allen went 32 of 43 for 358 yards and five total touchdowns with a 129.8 passer rating in the win over Washington on Sunday.
“I thought he got off to a good start,” McDermott said. “The third-down completion to Gabe Davis over the middle was a laser, and from there he got into a really good rhythm, quite honestly. The offensive line played a big part in that. I like how Josh took what the defense was giving him at times, and other times, he created on his own. I think there was a good balance.”
Fans can vote for Allen at nfl.com/FedEx through 3 p.m. Wednesday.
