Buffalo Bills news, notes: Ed Oliver has standout game, McDermott frustrated over non-call

NEW ORLEANS - Ed Oliver, the Buffalo Bills defensive tackle who hails from Houston, was not only playing on Thanksgiving night for a national television audience on NBC, but for about 40 family members and friends at the Superdome.

“I've got a lot of family in Louisiana and a lot of my family is in Texas so I basically played for free,” Oliver said with a big smile. “My mom was in the (luxury) box so I played for free. But I know they appreciate it.”

If Oliver truly was playing for free after paying for all those people to attend the game, the Bills got a bargain that would top anything you’ll see on Black Friday or Cyber Monday during their 31-6 blowout of the Saints.

Oliver is enjoying a breakout season, his third in the league after being Buffalo’s first-round draft pick in 2019. He is starting to become the disruptive force the Bills thought he could be, and against the Saints he was a wrecking ball as he racked up four tackles, a half sack, two QB hits and a deflected pass.

“I get in front of my folks and it’s like, ‘Well, I paid for all these tickets for all of them to come in so I've gotta go hard,’” Oliver said. “Otherwise I’m wasting money, really.”

No doubt, the Oliver cheering section got more than Oliver’s money’s worth.

“Ed Oliver is a stud,” said safety Jordan Poyer. “All our guys come to work every day, but he in particular comes to work every single day with high energy, a high motor and he came in and he balled today. So props to him and he's gonna continue to do that.”

Oliver certainly enjoyed his night, so much so that he wouldn’t pipe down in the locker room while Sean McDermott was expressing his thanks to the team in his post-game speech and the coach had to actually stop and yell, “Hey, shut up!” After a pause, he playfully added, “I’m thankful for your mouth, too, Ed.”

Oliver’s performance spearheaded a tremendous defensive game for the Bills, albeit against one of the NFL’s weakest offenses.

The Saints managed just 44 yards rushing on 25 attempts and QB Trevor Siemian completed only 163 yards worth of passes, was sacked twice and was intercepted by Poyer. New Orleans - playing without QB Jameis Winston, WR Michael Thomas, RBs Alvin Kamara and Mark Ingram, and RT Ryan Ramczyk and TE Adam Trautman - finished with just 190 yards, 12 first downs and averaged a mere 3.3 yards per play.

Just a few days after getting steamrolled by the Colts run game, the Bills clearly took that to heart, especially after McDermott made some changes to the rotation on the line. He sent Boogie Basham and Vernon Butler to the bench and called up Brandin Bryant and Eli Ankou from the practice squad to play in the game.

Beyond those moves, the other members of the line - Oliver, Mario Addison, Jerry Hughes, A.J. Epenesa, Harrison Phillips, Greg Rousseau and Efe Obada - all picked up their play and won the line of scrimmage most of the night.

“By the way they played, the message hit home, right?” said McDermott. “And that's what I expected, to be honest with you. That's what veteran leaders do - they lead by their play. The physicality of our defense, I thought, was where it needed to be.”

Like Oliver, Addison had a notable performance as the 34-year-old sacked Siemian and blew up a fourth-and-2 play by the Saints by tackling Tony Jones for a five-yard loss.

“I felt we needed a fast start, our D-line,” said Addison. “The last game didn't go as planned so we wanted to start fast and jump on them quick. I think it was good for us to do it to get back on track. For us to come up short the way we did (last week), it can be demoralizing. I've been in this league a long time, I've kicked a lot of ass and I've gotten my ass kicked, too. That's just the nature of the beast, but you got to flush that and do it all over again. And everybody had a great mindset going into this game. We were just ready and we showed them when we got out there.”

Here some other observations I had from the game:

It was good to have Dawson Knox back

The tight end missed two games with a broken hand and then was hardly utilized last week in his return during the loss to the Colts, but Thursday night he made two of the biggest plays of the game.

He caught a pair of TD passes, one to open the game, the other late in the third quarter on a fourth-and-2 play which effectively ended the game. He also had a TD wiped out at the end of the first half due to a penalty on Ike Boettger for being downfield illegally.

“Thankfully, I didn't celebrate too much because I turn around and see the flag, that's always frustrating,” Knox said. “It's just something that happens and we gotta bounce back from it.”

He and the Bills certainly did with a superb second-half effort on both sides of the ball as they outscored the Saints 21-6.

“He's just confident,” said McDermott. “I think over half this game is mental and I think his confidence is where it needs to be this year. He's had success and been able to bounce back from some moments where he needed to reset. I think that shows how mentally tough he is.”

With seven TDs this season, Knox now is tied for the league lead among tight ends with New England’s Hunter Henry, and he set a new Bills single-season record for tight end TDs. With 31 catches for 415 yards, Knox also established career highs and there’s still six games to play.

“He continues to get better when the ball’s in the air especially, just making plays on the football,” said Allen. “He's going to be bigger than most DBs and faster than most linebackers and shoot, maybe faster than most DBs. He's got unreal athleticism, and he's putting it together right now. It's really fun to be playing with him.”

Sean McDermott angry over non-call on Allen

Allen has become one of the stars of the NFL, but the officiating crew Thursday night certainly didn’t look out for his well-being the way officials often do for quarterbacks, particularly those named Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes. There were three plays in the game where they could have flagged the Saints for roughing Allen, and none were called.

Generally, I think officials go way overboard with those QB penalty calls because sometimes it seems like they’ll throw a flag if a defensive player dares to breathe in the same vicinity as the QB. But referee Brad Allen and his fellow men in stripes decided to let a few things go relating to the Bills’ QB.

The one that infuriated McDermott occurred early in the third quarter when defensive tackle Christian Ringo went low on Allen after he delivered a pass and Allen went down awkwardly. It’s a play that almost always draws a flag and Josh Allen got up and looked at Brad Allen asking for one. All he got was a head shake.

“I know we had the one penalty on the quarterback,” McDermott said, referencing a roughing penalty on Oliver against Saints QB Trevor Siemian that was a no-doubter. “I thought they should be called for one, quite honestly, on Josh. I’m really frustrated that that doesn’t get called. That’s clear – clear as day to see that. I just want to protect my quarterback."

There were two others that went ignored, too. There was a play early where defensive tackle David Onyemata chased Allen out of the pocket and took a swipe at his legs after the ball was out. And then in the fourth quarter, Allen scrambled to the left sideline and was pushed out by Kwon Alexander after it appeared he had already stepped out of bounds.

“I’m not gonna get into all that,” McDermott said. “I’m not about distractions. I’m just about what I saw out there from a player safety standpoint, what’s getting called, that one (on Ringo) – I’m sure they want that back."

Extra points

► Josh Allen had his second career game with four touchdown passes while completing at least 80% of his passes. No other Bills QB has ever had one game like that, including Jim Kelly.

► Allen, however, suffered the first red zone interception of his career late in the first half when his arm was hit as he threw and the ball floated into the arms of LB Kwon Alexander. It came on his 251 red zone pass since he entered the NFL in 2018.

► Stefon Diggs turned excellent CB Marshon Lattimore inside out with a magnificent route to catch a five-yard TD pass early in the third quarter. There isn’t a corner in the league who could have stopped that play. “He's a route technician, I think everybody knows that,” said Allen. “I don't know what you're supposed to do when you're out there with him because, one, he's very smart with the way that he sets you up and the quickness and the speed that he kind of gets out of his cuts, it's pretty unbelievable. I saw him open, I just tried to get it to him as quickly as possible before he got too wide. See open, throw open, and he made a great play.”

► How good was the Bills run defense - or, perhaps the better way to say that is how bad was the Saints run game? The 1.8 average per rush was the lowest against a Bills defense that faced at least 25 run plays since 2003 when the Texans averaged 1.2 yards.

► The Bills point differential of plus-144 is their largest through 11 games in team history.

► The Bills snapped a five-game losing streak to the Saints, beating them for the first time since 1998 at the Superdome in a game quarterbacked by Rob Johnson.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Buffalo Bills news, notes: Dawson Knox, Edo Oliver have standout games