Bills defying preseason projections by once again asserting themselves as class of AFC East

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Bills defying preseason projections by once again asserting themselves as class of AFC East

2024-11-05 05:41 Last Updated At：05:51

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — So much for preseason projections and concerns over how this might be a down year for the Buffalo Bills.

Clearly, with Josh Allen at quarterback, anything and everything is possible, with Buffalo asserting itself as the class of the AFC East, however flawed the division might be.

And yet, significant questions remain regarding the Bills who, at 7-2, have a four-win edge over their nearest division rival, the New York Jets (3-6), and in the driver’s seat to clinch their fifth straight AFC East title.

Just how good are they? And where might they fit in the entire NFL hierarchy?

The answers should become clearer over a six-week stretch — including a bye week — before the Bills close with two meetings against New England and another against the Jets. With one win against an opponent entering Week 10 with a winning record (Arizona), and losses at Baltimore (6-3) and Houston (6-3), Buffalo enters the meat of its schedule.

It begins with a trip to Indianapolis (4-5) on Sunday, followed by home games against playoff nemesis Kansas City and San Francisco, followed by road games at the Rams and Detroit.

Soft as their schedule has seemed, what can’t be disputed is how the Bills have persevered through injuries and overcome the deficiencies of a team retooling on the fly following an offseason salary cap purge led to the departure of six of eight captains.

Credit GM Brandon Beane for restocking his roster with youngsters capably filling key roles, and coach Sean McDermott for developing them while maintaining the foundation of a selfless, team-first culture the Bills so often lacked before the two arrived in 2017.

Beane and McDermott have met their vision of building a sustainable winner in Buffalo, with the Bills having taken over a division once ruled by the Patriots coach/QB tandem of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.

The one thing missing is playoff success.

The Bills are 5-6 in postseason outings under McDermott, with just one AFC championship game appearance, which ended with a 38-24 loss to the Chiefs in the 2020 season. Buffalo has now been eliminated by Kansas City three times in the past four years, and Cincinnati once.

Is it too much to expect more from the Bills this year, given a roster that features 17 players — nine of them starters — with less than three full seasons of NFL experience? And how much might injuries play a factor, with receivers Amari Cooper and Keon Coleman nursing wrist injuries, rookie defensive tackle DeWayne Carter (wrist surgery) to miss at least another two weeks and starting linebacker Matt Milano (left biceps) not set to return until December at the earliest?

On the flip side, wins such as the one Buffalo pulled out Sunday in beating Miami 30-27 on Tyler Bass’ franchise-record 61-yard field goal with 5 seconds left can be galvanizing for a team still in the midst of establishing an identity.

“Fundamentally, we’re better than what we were today. Just a lot to improve on,” McDermott said. “But we hung in there.”

Stay tuned to a team that remains a work in progress.

Limiting and creating turnovers. Allen’s two interceptions and two lost fumbles account for all four of Buffalo’s giveaways this season. The defense has forced 15 turnovers, including at least one in each outing to match Buffalo’s longest single-season stretch since 2004.

Run defense. The Bills eked out beating Miami by taking away the Dolphins’ deep threats and limiting Tua Tagovailoa to mostly short passing attempts. And yet, the Dolphins kept the score close with 149 yards rushing, the second most Buffalo allowed this season behind 271 in a 35-10 loss to Baltimore.

Bass, who else? After missing his third extra-point attempt of the season, and banking another one in off the goal post on Sunday, the fifth-year player delivered with a clutch kick by splitting the uprights on an attempt that would’ve been good from 65 yards.

WR Curtis Samuel. Signed to a three-year contract this offseason, Samuel has 12 catches for 92 yards while essentially filling the No. 5 receiver slot, based on playing time.

McDermott on Monday announced edge rusher Dawuane Smoot requires surgery to repair a wrist injury and will be placed on injured reserve. Coleman is being evaluated for a wrist injury. Edge rusher Casey Toohill was sidelined by a knee injury. Cooper and starting CB Christian Benford (wrist) did not play.

184 — Number of Allen’s TDs passing to move ahead of Joe Ferguson (181) for second on the franchise list behind Hall of Famer Jim Kelly (237).

The Bills' magic number to clinch the East is down to five, as in a combination of five Buffalo wins or five Jets losses.

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Harris and Trump's final Election Day push brings them to the same patch of Pennsylvania

2024-11-05 05:48 Last Updated At：05:50

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump made their final pitches to voters Monday in the same part of Pennsylvania, at roughly the same time, spending the last full day of the presidential campaign in a state that could make or break their chances.

Focusing on the state's southeast corner. Trump took the stage in Reading, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles from Allentown, where Harris held her own event about half an hour later.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump said. “It’s over.”

Indeed, a Trump victory in Pennsylvania, flipping its 19 Electoral College votes, would puncture the Democrats' “blue wall” and make it harder for Harris to win the necessary 270 votes.

Harris, the Democratic nominee, spent all of Monday in Pennsylvania, the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. In addition to Allentown, she visited Scranton — the birthplace of President Joe Biden — and had a stop planned in Reading before ending with a late-night Philadelphia rally that was to include Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

“Are you ready to do this?” Harris yelled Monday in Scranton, with a large handmade “VOTE FOR FREEDOM” sign behind her and a similar “VOTE” banner to her side.

Trump went first to North Carolina before visiting Reading. He will head to Pittsburgh, at the opposite end of the state, before concluding in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he will hold his last campaign rally in the same place he concluded his 2016 and 2020 runs.

Southeast Pennsylvania is home to thousands of Latinos, including a sizable Puerto Rican population. Harris and her allies have repeatedly hit Trump for a comedian's dig at Puerto Rico during the former president's marquee Madison Square Garden event. The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

“It was absurd,” said German Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered so many people — even many Republicans. It wasn’t right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”

But Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of Trump’s motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico despite his family being Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that’s why he will vote for Trump.

“Is the border going to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about,” he said.

Trump stuck to talking about his proposed crackdown on immigration. He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day after she went missing during a trip to go hiking. Officials say the suspect in her death, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, entered the U.S. illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.

About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory by either side would be unprecedented.

A Trump victory would make him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a felony, after his hush-money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become only the second president in history to win non-consecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.

Harris is vying to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office — four years after she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second in command.

The vice president ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set into motion his withdrawal from the race — one of a series of convulsions that have hit this year’s campaign.

Trump survived by millimeters an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September, when a gunman had set up a rifle as Trump golfed at one of his courses in Florida.

Harris, 60, has pitched herself as a generational change from 81-year-old Biden and Trump, who is 78. She’s emphasized her support for abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion services, and she has regularly noted the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Assembling a coalition ranging from progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris has called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even embraced the critique that Trump is accurately described as a “ fascist.”

Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump by name, calling him instead “the other guy.” She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus.

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillion said on a call with reporters that not saying Trump’s name was deliberate because voters “want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful, patriotic vision for the future.”

Harris talked in Scranton about once being a longshot while running for San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and how she “used to campaign with my ironing board.”

“I’d walk to the front of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because, you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” Harris said, recalling how she would tape her posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me as they walked in and out.”

In Allentown, home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, the vice president rallied with rapper Fat Joe. Later, she’s scheduled to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez, are of Puerto Rican heritage.

Standing in line for Harris’ Allentown rally, 54-year-old Ron Kessler, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for just the second time in his life. Kessler said that, for a long time, he didn’t vote, thinking the country “would vote for the correct candidate.”

But “now that I’m older and much more wiser, I believe it’s important, it’s my civic duty. And it’s important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the country.”

As recently as Sunday, Trump renewed his false claims that U.S. elections are rigged against him, mused about violence against journalists and said he “ shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 — dark turns that have overshadowed another anchor of his closing argument: “Kamala broke it. I will fix it.”

Superville reported from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Barrow reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.