ORCHARD PARK – The Green Bay Packers can do the Buffalo Bills a favor on Thanksgiving night by defeating the Miami Dolphins, a team that has suddenly won three games in a row and is Buffalo’s closest pursuer in the AFC East.
Sunday, the Packers certainly did not do the Bills a favor when they embarrassed San Francisco 38-10 at Lambeau Field because next up for the Bills is a Sunday Night Football matchup against those wounded 49ers who will come to Highmark Stadium as a dangerously desperate team.
“That’s about as bad as it can get, probably one of the worst ones I’ve been a part of,” 49ers linebacker Fred Warner said of the beatdown the Packers inflicted. “It’s embarrassing. You’ve got to take it on the chin, take it like a man, and move on.”
Sign up for the Bills Blast newsletterDelivered straight to your inbox, additional Bills analysis, insight, stats, quotes and team history from Sal Maiorana
The defending NFC champions are now 5-6 and they sit in last place in the NFC West, although that only means they are one game behind co-leaders Seattle and Arizona. The 49ers are far from out of it, not only in their division race but in the NFC wild-card hunt because currently, fading 7-5 Washington is clinging to the seventh seed.
However, the 49ers have dropped back-to-back games (they lost at home to Seattle on Nov. 17) and if they don’t get things back on track quickly, they won’t get the opportunity to defend their NFC crown.
In Green Bay, the 49ers played without four key players – QB Brock Purdy, LT Trent Williams, DE Nick Bosa and CB Charvarius Ward – and it showed. They managed just 11 first downs with Brandon Allen at QB, they had three turnovers plus a turnover on downs, their defense allowed 169 rushing yards including 106 and three TDs to Josh Jacobs, and they committed nine penalties for 77 yards, the third time in four games they’ve had nine infractions.
“The whole game was [disappointing],” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “When you have those penalties, we didn’t stop the run, and we had those three turnovers in the second half. That’s how you get embarrassed.”
Yeah, this is going to be an angry and motivated team coming to Orchard Park, one that has reached the NFC Championship Game in four of the previous five years, and all four of those star players who sat out could be back against the Bills for a game the 49ers really need to win.
Return to action after their bye ready to go, something they’ve always done under Sean McDermott. Since he arrived in 2017, the Bills have never lost in the week after their bye, a perfect 7-0. This year’s bye came at an opportune time because the Bills had some injured players who benefited from the week off. TE Dalton Kincaid, WR Keon Coleman, and OT Spencer Brown all missed the huge win over the Chiefs, but could be ready to go Sunday.
The only downside to the bye coming when it did is that it interrupted the roll the Bills have been on. Since their back-to-back losses to the Ravens and Texans, they have won five straight and have scored at least 30 points in the last four so they need to shake off any rust quickly against a talented 49ers team with its back against the wall.
Whether Purdy plays or not, the 49ers need to get RB Christian McCaffrey going. After missing the first eight games, McCaffrey has not been the same player who was the 2023 NFL offensive player of the year when he led the league in rushing (1,459 yards) and yards from scrimmage (2,023).
So far he’s averaging just 49.7 yards rushing and 3.5 per carry with 13 catches for 132 yards and has yet to find the end zone. All season, opposing defenses have tried to take away the run game (even when McCaffrey was out) and dared the 49ers to throw. They have faced light boxes (meaning six or fewer defenders at the line of scrimmage) at the lowest rate in the NFL, just 27.8% of the time, and they have seen stacked boxes (at least eight men at the line) a league-high 32.3% of the time.
The Bills, in their base nickel defense, have been in a light box 52.2% of the time which is ninth-most and they rank 30th in yards allowed per rush at 4.9, so this might be a chance for McCaffrey and his backup, Jordan Mason, to do some damage against a defensive alignment they don’t see too frequently.
For the third week in a row, Bills WR Khalil Shakir, who gets the bulk of his snaps in the slot, will be confronted with an excellent slot CB in San Francisco’s Deommodore Lenoir. Shakir had to deal with the Colts’ Kenny Moore in Week 10 and he produced six catches for 58 yards, then faced the Chiefs’ stud, Trent McDuffie, in Week 11 and had eight catches for 70 yards.
Shakir leads all NFL WRs in catch percentage at 84.8, and his 473 yards after catch is second only to Ja’Marr Chase of the Bengals. But among all slot CBs, Lenoir’s 65.7 passer rating against is No. 1, and among slot CBs with at least 250 snaps, his 8.5 snaps per reception allowed is third-best. Shakir has become the most important WR on the team, so this is a matchup he needs to win.
If Miami loses Thursday, the Bills will take the field with a chance to wrap up their fifth consecutive AFC East title. If Miami wins, that’s all the more reason for the Bills – who have to go on the road to the Rams and Lions after this – to want to take care of business and keep the Dolphins on the brink of extinction in the division race.
San Francisco’s health will be a major factor. It’s too early in the week to guess at whether Purdy, Williams, Ward and Bosa can return, but there are indications that all four of them will do so, making Buffalo’s task much more difficult than Green Bay’s was. Still, the Bills are at home where they’re 5-0 this season and 32-6 since the start of 2020, and that could prove to be the eventual difference.
Kickoff is set for 8:20 p.m. at Highmark Stadium
The Bills have opened as a 6.5-point favorite for the game. The money line is Bills minus-275 (bet $275 to win $100) and 49ers plus-225 (bet $100 to win $225). The over-under is 46.
Cable/Network TV: NBC. The game will be available locally via the following stations: WHEC channel 10 (Rochester area), WGRZ channel 2 (Buffalo area), WSTM channel 3 (Syracuse area), WKTV channel 2 (Utica area), WETM channel 18 (Elmira area), WNYT channel 13 (Albany area), and WBGH channel 20 (Binghamton area).
Online streaming services: You can watch games on NFL.com and the NFL mobile app, and you can subscribe to NFL+, the league’s own streaming service, though you can’t cast the games to your TV – you must watch on your phone or tablet.
TV streaming: You can also stream if you have subscriptions to Spectrum, DirecTV, fuboTV, Sling, Vidgo, Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, and Peacock.
You can listen on SiriusXM satellite radio on channel 225 (Bills feed) and channel 226 (49ers feed), and on traditional radio, the Bills Radio Network has stations all across the state. Chris Brown has the play-by-play, Eric Wood is the analyst, and Sal Capaccio is the sideline reporter. The network includes:
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades including 35 years as the full-time beat writer for the D&C, and he has written numerous books about the history of the team. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social. Sign up for his Bills Blast newsletter here: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
