ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — While an accumulation of injuries to key defensive players is the main takeaway from the Bills' loss to the Jaguars, Buffalo's offense didn't do itself any favors in the 25-20 defeat in London.
The Bills punted on each of their first four drives and only had 7 points on the board until two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter. It marked just the second time this season Buffalo failed to eclipse the 20-point mark on offense.
"I'm not going to say lackadaisical but we just weren't as... let's go get it... let's get after it," Stefon Diggs said after the game. "We've got to kind of try to figure it out, but that lack of sense of urgency, it showed, and then we get in that mode of not necessarily rushing...but 'ok we've got to score.' You saw that."
Josh Allen finished 27-of-40 passing for 359 yards and two passing touchdowns along with an interception, but the Bills offense never got in a real rhythm thanks in part to a lack of balance.
Buffalo finished with just 29 yards rushing, led by Allen with 14.
That contributed to a large disparity in time of possession, with the Jaguars possessing the ball for 38 minutes, 12 seconds to only 21:48 for the Bills.
"We came out late in that third quarter or early fourth and felt like we had more urgency and we didn't have that early on in the game so we've got to be better with that," Allen said.
Part of the reason for the sluggish start could very well be blamed on jet lag.
The Bills arrived in London on Friday morning after flying overnight Thursday into Friday. Jacksonville was already in the English capital, staying the week after having played Atlanta the previous week at Wembley Stadium.
"We'll see whatever comes up down the road of us coming back here but we need to evaluate everything because I didn't feel like our energy was good enough early in the game," Bills coach Sean McDermott said. "They had better energy than we did."
The Bills however did not want to blame the travel schedule for the slow start.
"You know it's easy to use an excuse. I'm not an excuse guy so I won't say it but, you're going to have to ask the other guys ... tired or not or whatever ... you're going to get up to play a football game," Diggs said.
"I don't think so," Allen said. "You know at the end of the day we've got to be ready to play on Sunday and it doesn't matter if we traveled on Friday, Saturday, Monday, two weeks ago. It doesn't matter."
Jet lagged or not, the Bills now have a flight back across the Atlantic as they return home to Orchard Park ahead of a home meeting with the Giants on Sunday Night Football.