The Buffalo Bills were rolling heading into their Week 5 matchup against the New England Patriots, with Sean McDermott's team 4-0, the offense with Josh Allen was putting up 30+ points each game, and the defense was in good order.
But like a transformer, there's more to them than meets the eye.
Yes, Buffalo was winning, but as we know, winning masks a lot of things, and the Patriots rolled into Highmark Stadium and shone a bright light on the Bills' deficiencies.
And for Allen, he made a brutally honest assessment of the team prior to the New England loss.
“I think it's a wake-up call, reset, whatever you want to call it,” Allen said. “We had been getting by previous games of maybe not playing our best football, and when you played a team that again did everything the right way, credit to them for coming into our home stadium and having a really good game plan, it does wake you up in terms of, hey, every week we're going to get the team's best, and we got to play up to our standard.
"At the end of the day, this is the NFL, each and every week has got to be earned.”
More: Dalton Kincaid injury update: Buffalo Bills TE added to practice report on Thursday
Bills guilty of skating by?
That is sort of what Allen is saying, as the MVP stated the team had been "getting by" in the opening month, and we know not every team plays perfectly every week, and from the outside at least, it looked like Buffalo was in good order.
Until they weren't.
So, was it a wake-up call the Bills needed? Only those inside the locker room will know that for sure, or maybe it was a loss the team had to have, to reset, get back to what made them so dominant, and to work on their issues.
Because, again, winning masks everything...until the winning stops - and Buffalo just found that out.
More Bills news:
- Tyler Bass injury update: Bills cast doubt on kicker's status for rest of season | Sporting News
- Bills head coach Sean McDermott gives grim two-word answer on health of Max Hairston | Sporting News
- Bills predicted to trade away veteran tight end for 4-INT cornerback | Sporting News
- Bills' Joe Brady discusses Keon Coleman's production with 3 crucial words | Sporting News