Bills playoff hopes alive, but many questions to answer vs Cowboys: Here are three

ORCHARD PARK - The Buffalo Bills have certainly suffered some egregious losses in their tortured history, and a few of those have happened in this weird 2023 season.

But wow, the Miami Dolphins blowing their game at home Monday night to the average-at-best Tennessee Titans has to jump up near the top of worst losses any team in the NFL has suffered this season.

That 28-27 defeat, a meltdown that saw Miami allow Titans rookie QB Will Levis to produce 75- and 64-yard touchdown drives in the final 4:34 to overcome a 27-13 deficit could prove quite costly to the Dolphins.

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Now at 9-4, they are no longer the No. 1 seed in the AFC (that’s the 10-3 Ravens) and it shaved their AFC East lead over the Bills to two games. In one fell swoop, Buffalo’s chances to win the division rose to 23% and it’s chances to make the playoffs shot up to 49%.

Here’s why, based on the next three weeks:

∎ The Bills have a brutally tough game Sunday when they host the red-hot 10-3 Cowboys, but then they might be playing a Chargers team minus star QB Justin Herbert, then play the woeful Patriots at home. Combined record of those teams is 18-21.

∎ Meanwhile, the Dolphins may not have star WR Tyreek Hill when they host the Jets, who are coming off a 30-6 victory over Houston, as he suffered an ankle injury against Tennessee. Then they host the Cowboys and have to travel to Baltimore. Combined record of those teams is 25-14.

Suddenly, it doesn’t seem out of the question that Buffalo can get to within one game of the Dolphins before it goes to Miami for the season finale. If that happens, and the Bills win that last game, they would win the division based on a two-game sweep of Miami.

Obviously, a lot has to happen before any Bills fan can start dreaming of that scenario, but at least now it’s a far more reachable goal than it would have been had Miami not coughed up Monday night’s game, or if Kansas City’s Kadarius Toney hadn’t lined up offside Sunday which very well may have saved the Bills from a defeat every bit as loathsome as the one Miami just suffered.

Here are three questions I have heading into the showdown with the Cowboys:

1. What’s going on with Stefon Diggs?

The Bills’ star receiver has suddenly disappeared from the Bills’ offense over the past four weeks.

Diggs opened 2023 with 100-yard games in five of the first six and at one point he was leading the NFL in targets and receptions. In fact, fans and media were starting to get concerned because it felt like Diggs was the only player Allen was looking for.

This was particularly evident during a four-game stretch against the Jaguars, Giants, Patriots and Buccaneers when he was targeted a whopping 51 times and caught 33 passes for 329 yards.

Since then, Diggs has struggled to make an impact. In the last five games, he has just 23 catches on 42 targets for 225 yards and only 11 of his receptions have resulted in first downs. Part of the issue is that he has come up against some very tough competition in these last five games.

He spent plenty of time going against either Cam Taylor-Britt or Mike Hilton in Cincinnati; Patrick Surtain II of the Broncos; Sauce Gardner or D.J. Reed of the Jets; Darius Slay of the Eagles; and L’Jarius Sneed of the Chiefs. However, Diggs is a star in his own right and he’s supposed to rise up against the best cornerbacks. Not surprisingly, with Diggs’ production down, the Bills have lost three of those five games.

Sunday in Kansas City, Sneed - who has had some excellent games this year traveling with the opposition’s best wideout - gave up just one catch for one yard in seven passes into his coverage area. I don’t have the exact matchups against Diggs, but for the game Diggs had a mere four catches on 11 targets for 24 yards, and Diggs had two drops. That was the second-worst game of his Bills career behind only a six-target, four-catch, 23-yard performance against the Colts in 2021.

“The last couple weeks we’ve played really good defenses that, you know, their game plan obviously revolves around Stefon Diggs,” offensive coordinator Joe Brady said. “And so that’s what’s opened up some of the windows for the James Cook’s and the Dalton Kincaid’s, Khalil Shakir’s.

“When he’s not getting the targets or when he’s not getting the catches, he’s opened up the windows for other people. He’s not a decoy, I don’t mean that; we’re calling plays to get Stef Diggs the ball, but if they’re going to take it away, Josh is doing a good job progressing and finding other outlets.”

Perhaps Diggs will be inspired Sunday in the showdown against the Cowboys because CeeDee Lamb, who has a good case to make - with apologies to Tyreek Hill and Justin Jefferson - as the best overall receiver in the NFL is coming to town.

2. Who is going to block Micah Parsons?

The simple answer is as many players as the Bills can realistically use. Buffalo’s offensive line just had a game where, according to Pro Football Focus, it allowed 16 QB pressures of Allen. PFF also gave the Chiefs 34 individual pressures and the disparity is explained this way: PFF awards multiple pressures on the same play if more than one man is chasing the QB, and if it feels Allen is the reason for the pressure (for instance, holding the ball too long), the line does not get dinged.

That 16 pressures allowed by the line was the fourth-highest total of the season (20 against the Eagles, 18 against the Bengals, 17 in the first Jets game).

Now, the until will be facing the Cowboys’ pass rushing menace Micah Parson who is tied for the league lead along with Nick Bosa of the 49ers with 82 pressures this season. PFF has his pass rush win rate at 24.7%, second only to Myles Garrett’s 25.5% for the Browns.

The 6-foot-3, 245-pound Parsons is very often unblockable. He has 12.5 sacks, 44 tackles, one forced fumble and one recovery, so the Bills are going to need two players on him for every snap. It’s not even a debate.

Brady shared an interesting story about Parsons when he was a graduate assistant coach at Penn State and Parsons showed up in Happy Valley.

“Micah came to camp and he was obviously like the top defensive end or top player in the country in high school,” Brady recalled. “And he decided he wanted to play wide receiver for the camp, and he was the best wide receiver in the camp. Everything he’s doing in the NFL doesn’t surprise me at all. An absolute freak of an athlete. And Dan (Quinn, the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator) does an unbelievable job of moving him around and getting him on matchups and mismatches. And there’s really not much that he can’t do, and it’ll be a great opportunity for us to this week.”

In Kansas City, Dalton Kincaid out-snapped Dawson Knox 60-36, but Knox is a better blocker and that may prompt Brady to use a few more two-tight end looks this week in order to keep Kincaid involved in the pass game, but have Knox in to help in pass protection.

3. Is Von Miller ready to turn a corner?

I have advocated for weeks that Miller should not be playing, long before his legal problems that arose during the bye week. He has been, simply put, useless to the Bills defense ever since he made his season debut in Week 5 against Jacksonville.

However, finally, I noticed Miller actually doing something against the Chiefs. Mind you, it wasn’t much, but according to Pro Football Focus he managed three pressures against Patrick Mahomes including two QB hits, both of which led to incomplete passes.

Look, I still don’t think he should have been playing. For the season, he’s now up to a whopping 11 QB pressures with no sacks and two tackles on 186 snaps played. Those numbers alone qualify him as one of the least impactful players in the NFL.

But now the Bills need Miller because it looks like A.J. Epenesa is going to miss multiple weeks with a rib injury suffered on the play when he tipped and then intercepted a Mahomes pass in the first quarter. Epenesa has had a nice season and his loss will be felt, that is unless Miller can suddenly prove he deserves all this trust Sean McDermott has put him in week after week.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana and on Threads @salmaiorana1. To subscribe to Sal's newsletter, Bills Blast, which comes out twice a week during the season, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bills playoff odds are better, but many questions to answer vs Cowboys