By Jonah Bronstein
ORCHARD PARK — Ready! Set!
Whistle!
The Buffalo Bills hurry-up offense was too quick for its own good in Sunday’s 6-3 loss to the Cleveland Browns.
With three times as many false starts as points scored, the Bills reclaimed the league lead for penalties (44).
In all, the Bills were flagged 15 times, and 13 of those penalties were accepted, setting them back 75 yards.
Even if you just counted false starts, the Bills would have one more penalty than the St. Louis Rams, who held a slim 32-31 lead heading into Sunday. The idle Green Bay Packers have 30 penalties, meaning the Bills also rank first in penalties per game.
“We killed ourselves today,” said center Geoff Hangartner, who had an unnecessary roughness penalty in the first half but was one of the few linemen who did not get called for a false start.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Hangartner continued. “It’s inexcusable on our part. We’ve got to fix it. We can’t even talk about being good offensively if we have that many penalties.”
Lee Evans said the Bills can’t beat anybody with that many penalties.
“It’s hard to move forward when you keep moving yourself back like that,” he said.
Evans was one of five different players to false start. Demetrius Bell, Jonathan Scott, Kirk Chambers and Andy Levitre all did so twice.
Offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt shouldered some of the blame.
“We tried to go a lot on some quick cadences,” he said. “We wanted to get a quick tempo, try to wear them down a little bit up front, and it jumped up and got us. A lot of those were quick counts.”
Two of the Bills’ false starts were inconsequential, as they happened at or inside the 1-yard-line.
An illegal man downfield penalty on Eric Wood was declined, further suppressing the yards penalized total.
Buffalo’s special teams took one of the most costly penalties. After Cleveland’s Eric Wright muffed a Brian Moorman punt and the Bills downed the ball inside the 5, an illegal man downfield penalty was called on Justin Jenkins, then transferred to Ashlee Palmer.
The Bills defense drew just two flags — an offsides penalty on Marcus Buggs, and a pass interference call on Drayton Florence that was declined.
The Browns had three accepted penalties that cost them 29 yards.
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Terrell Owens set a season-high with four receptions, though they all came in the first half. He made two impressive grabs, one while falling out of bounds (although that one may have been ruled incomplete if it had been challenged) and another one on a high throw over the middle in which he absorbed a solid hit.
That play drew perhaps the loudest cheer of the game from the sold-out crowd. Owens also got the crowd excited late in the second quarter, when he gave a recital to the tune of the Black Eyed Peas track “Boom Boom Pow.”
But when the game was over, most of the remaining fans showered the Bills with boos.
Owens said he might’ve done the same thing.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I would,” he said. “They deserve more. I think every week, when we practice, the guys are practicing hard and we come out and try to put forth a great effort and try to get a win, and obviously I think, the game was 3-3 all the way through. Again, we had a big number of penalties and we had a muff on the punt return. So, those things right there kind of kills drives and it kills momentum.”
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Unlike Leodis McKelvin, who insisted after his costly fumble in the season opener that he’d make the same decision to return the ball out of the end zone next time, Roscoe Parrish acknowledged that he probably made a mistake trying to field a bouncing punt Sunday.
“I was basically just trying to make a play,” he said. “That’s what I’m back there for, to make plays. I think I probably should’ve let it go. But the offense wasn’t doing to good throughout the whole process of the game, so I just tried to do what I could to make a play.”
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Owens got behind the defense and had a clear path to the end zone on a broken play in the third quarter, but Edwards’ pass came up woefully short. ... Former Bills tight end Robert Royal kept his habit of dropping the ball at Ralph Wilson Stadium. He couldn’t pull in a very low ball in third down early in the game, but a perfect pass up the seam when Royal was wide open later bounced off of his hands.
