Bills vs. Titans prediction: Don’t sleep on Tennessee defense vs. surging Buffalo attack

The Buffalo Bills put on a show to kick off the NFL season with last week’s blowout win over the Rams. Their next test? The AFC’s top seed from a year ago, which beat them in their Monday night clash a year ago.

The Titans don’t look like quite the same team as the one that shocked Buffalo a year ago, and they enter this Monday as sizable road underdogs. Can they surprise for a second straight year against the Super Bowl favorites?

Here’s how we’re betting Monday night’s contest, which kicks off at 7:15 p.m. ET on ESPN.

You’d be hard-pressed to find bettors eager to take the points on the Titans, who opened as 9.5-point underdogs before respected money pushed this line up to double digits. And that says as much about the juggernaut Bills as it does about their lackluster opponents.

There’s no way around it: this Tennessee offense is in trouble. The Titans scored just seven points in the second half of last week’s loss to the Giants, in part because of their lack of explosiveness at any level. Derrick Henry ran it 21 times for 82 yards (3.9 YPC) – his fourth straight game averaging below four yards per carry – behind this rebuilt offensive line, and Ryan Tannehill completed just one pass over 30 yards to his misfit group of receivers.

That likely won’t change against the Bills defense, which made the defending champion Rams look like also-rans in the season opener. Los Angeles managed just 243 total yards with three turnovers, and only Cooper Kupp posted a single gain of 20-plus yards. That’s par for the course with this group – Buffalo has held its last eight regular-season opponents to an average of 15.4 points, and it will have had 11 days to scheme for this fairly one-dimensional Titans offense.

The bigger question: can anyone slow down this Bills offense? Josh Allen carried the momentum from his brilliant 2021 postseason into the 2022 campaign, compiling 353 total yards and four touchdowns to spearhead a unit that didn’t punt once in that Week 1 win. Buffalo finished 9-for-10 on third down and, if not for a few fluky turnovers, should have dropped 40 on a proud and talented Rams defense.

Let’s not forget, though, that we said many of the same things last year, when the Bills steamrolled through the first five weeks with a 4-1 record and four consecutive wins by an average of 28.8 points. That all came to a screeching halt in Tennessee, where the home underdogs got after Allen all night long and ran through the heart of the Buffalo defense.

This Titans front isn’t quite the same this year without elite pass rusher Harold Landry, though elite defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons and emerging edge rusher Rashad Weaver both finished with two sacks last week in a five-sack day for this aggressive defense. Tennessee also forced a pair of turnovers in Week 1, which will be key in this one.

There’s a chance Allen transcends this matchup and continues to post MVP numbers, especially with Tennessee’s top cover corner Kristian Fulton (hamstring) ruled out and unproven sophomore Caleb Farley taking his place. Still, the Titans have historically given Allen trouble: he’s posted a career 87.7 passer rating with seven TDs and five interceptions in four meetings, and he’s never rushed for more than 27 yards in any of those contests.

If you had to pick a side here, it’s probably the Bills, who have had almost two weeks to prepare for an undermanned Tennessee squad that doesn’t have the dynamism offensively to keep pace. Yet this feels like a game where both offenses could struggle to score – one more than the other, but both relative to expectation. Buffalo is 6-3 to the under when giving double-digit points in the Sean McDermott era, and I’d expect an uglier game in this one in a potential letdown spot for the surging Bills.

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