ORCHARD PARK - One of the funniest lines I’ve ever heard in my nearly four decades of covering the Buffalo Bills was uttered back in 1991, and it came from the mouth of Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas.

On the heels of having infamously missed wide right in Super Bowl 25, kicker Scott Norwood was having one of the worst days any kicker has ever had during a Week 15 game in Los Angeles against the Raiders.

In the second half, Norwood missed three field goals - cruelly all wide right - from 49, 32 and 36 yards, plus an extra point, though that was wide left. The last field goal miss came with 15 seconds left in regulation, occurring right after the Bills had tied the game when Norwood made the PAT following a Jim Kelly to James Lofton TD pass and then gotten the ball back thanks to a Nate Odomes interception.

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It was a jaw-dropping level of failure, but in overtime, Norwood was given one more chance and he summoned something from deep inside and nailed a 42-yarder for a 30-27 victory that clinched a first-round playoff bye for the Bills.

Afterward, Thomas - with a smile on his face, mind you - said that if Norwood had missed that last field goal, the Bills would have thrown him out of the plane on the way back from the West Coast.

To my knowledge, no one has ever joked about tossing Tyler Bass out of the team plane since he joined the Bills in 2020, and that’s partly because Sean McDermott has instilled a caring and winning culture inside the walls at One Bills Drive. It might be the most overused cliche in the book, but the Bills’ truly do win as a team and lose as a team.

There was no greater example of this than the emotions that poured out last Sunday when Bass drilled a clutch, game-winning 61-yard field goal to beat the Miami Dolphins. Despite the struggles he has endured dating back to 2023, the Bills believed that Bass would come through and wow, did he ever.

“It’s very emotional,” said Bass, who was battling to keep his job just a couple weeks earlier. “To go out there and help my team win, man, it's emotional. And for the fans, to give them something to cheer about, it means a lot.”

Bass became the ninth kicker in NFL history, and the first since Greg Joseph of the Vikings on Dec. 24, 2022, to make a game-winning field goal of 60-or-more yards in the final two minutes of regulation or in overtime. It was also a Bills’ record for longest field goal.

“I just think overall that here’s a young man that has been going through it and the journey that he’s been on week to week, the questions that have been asked of him, of me … it’s natural, it’s the business we’re in,” McDermott said. “It’s a great example of mental toughness. I think it’s a great example of perseverance, resilience for young kids out there. Here’s a player that was under the microscope pretty darn hard.”

Here’s something many Bills fans might not believe, but Bass has now made his last 16 field goals in the second half that either tied a game, or gave the Bills a lead. It’s the longest active streak in the NFL, and yes, before you say it, this is regular season so it does not include the postseason miss against the Chiefs last January.

“What a showing of resilience by him having a little bit of a tough start to the year,” long snapper Reid Ferguson said. “He’s certainly not hiding from it but working through things. Coach said it after in the breakdown here in the locker room, just coming back and you couldn’t write this story any better after the last couple weeks. Signing a guy, we had an extra guy here competing for a couple weeks, and it’s just a testament to T-Bass and how he handles his business and how he goes about his business and I think we’ll look back as just a bump in the road.”

We'll put the question about Bass on the back burner for now, but here are three other questions I have heading into the Week 10 matchup with the Colts:

1. Can the Bills keep their eye on the prize?

There is rarely a time in the NFL where a team that has just crossed the midway point of the season is as far ahead in its division race as the Bills are in the laughable AFC East. At 7-2, the Bills have won as many games as the Jets (3), Patriots (2) and Dolphins (2) combined. That has resulted in a four-game lead (plus the tiebreaker advantage) on the Jets with eight games remaining.

It feels like a foregone conclusion that they will win the division for the fifth straight season, something the Bills have never achieved, not even during the Jim Kelly/Marv Levy Super Bowl era.

However, while it would take an all-time collapse for the Bills to blow this, I always remind people that nothing is over until it’s over. Who knows what might happen in the next two months, with critical injuries always a possibility in the violent world of the NFL, injuries (such as one to Josh Allen) that could derail the Bills in a hurry.

Throughout his tenure, McDermott has been very successful in keeping his teams focused whether they were way ahead in the division race, or struggling to gain traction like they were in both 2021 and 2023 before finally taking charge, most notably last year when that didn’t happen until the fourth quarter of the final game in Miami.

Now he has to do it again, keep the players engaged and taking care of business as they meet a 4-5 Colts team that, like the Dolphins last week, will be playing with an acute sense of urgency given their wobbly status as a playoff contender.

“Every week it's hard,” McDermott. “You can never take a week for granted or, ‘Okay, we'll look at the record and look at the schedule and we're going to win here.’ Nah. Just stay focused on what's right in front of us. We didn't play a great game (against Miami). We can be better, and so we've got to go back and make sure our techniques are sound. Fundamentally, we're better than what we were today. Just a lot to improve on.”

2. Do the Bills care about run defense?

Yes, obviously they do, but sometimes it sure doesn’t seem like it. Case in point was their game plan against Miami. Everyone knows how dangerous the Dolphins are in the passing game with dynamic receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle catching darts from efficient and accurate Tua Tagovailoa, and the Bills prioritized that over stopping the run.

Nickel cornerback Taron Johnson all but admitted after Miami ran for 149 yards that the Bills were OK with giving up some real estate on the ground because the emphasis had to be on preventing the explosive plays that Miami has been known to detonate.

“I just feel as though they have really great weapons on the outside, so (we were) kind of like letting them run the ball, I would say,” Johnson said. “Just not giving up explosive plays which we still gave up, I think too many, but just making sure we limit those explosive plays.”

OK, it’s understandable against Miami, who they also gave up 139 to in the first meeting, but what about the 271-yard yield to the Ravens, the 124 to the Cardinals and the 121 to the Jets? The Bills are allowing the seventh-worst yards per run average (4.8) in the NFL, and they have given up 35 runs of at least 10 yards, fifth-most in the NFL.

One of the key reasons for this is the Bills are never going to deviate from their base nickel defense, so they play light in the box (six men or fewer near the line of scrimmage) a league-high 48.5% of the time. When they bring an extra man down, it’s Johnson and/or safety Taylor Rapp, two players who certainly don’t have much size so if offensive linemen can get to that second level, it’s a problem.

Sunday, the Bills play a Colts team that will definitely try to establish the ground game with its outstanding back, Jonathan Taylor. Taylor has faced the Bills twice, both in Orchard Park. He ran for 78 yards and a TD in the Colts’ 27-24 wild-card loss in January 2021, and then 10 months later he returned to run for 185 yards, the third-highest total of his NFL career, and scored a total of five touchdowns as the Colts blew out Buffalo 41-15.

“For us, fundamentally, I feel like there's a lot of things - even when you look at the first Miami game compared to this Miami game - fundamentally in the run game where we can be a lot better,” defensive coordinator Bobby Babich said. “It's not just good enough to be in your gap. You've got to be able to shed a block, use your block destruction techniques and those type of things. So there's a lot of things we can emphasize which will be really good for us going into this week because Taylor, he's a great back and he's a problem.”

3. How worrisome is the Bills’ wide receiver situation?

In a word, yes, both from an injury perspective, and continued lack of production.

Amari Cooper missed the Miami game with a wrist injury and while McDermott said Monday he’ll be a day-to-day evaluation, his status is at best cloudy for Indianapolis. Same for rookie Keon Coleman who left the Miami game with his own wrist injury and if I had to guess right now, based on McDermott’s tone and verbiage, he may not be available in Indianapolis.

Therefore, the Bills could go into this game with their best man, Khalil Shakir, plus free agent bust Curtis Samuel who continues to be the biggest waste of money on the roster, and mediocre and limited Mack Hollins as their primary threesome, possibly joined by two practice squad call-ups who could be some combination of Tyrell Shavers, Jalen Virgil and KJ Hamler.

Last week against Miami, Allen targeted RBs James Cook and Ray Davis, and TEs Dalton Kincaid, Dawson Knox and Quintin Morris a combined 21 times on his 39 attempts and those plays resulted in 13 catches for 134 yards and two TDs.

Going against tons of zone coverage, 28 of Allen’s passes traveled less than 10 yards in the air, but the Bills piled up 188 yards after the catch which accounted for 80% of his passing yardage, a crazy figure.

“I always stress to the guys, like it doesn't matter how we win, we're just trying to find a way to get one more point and it's going to be different,” offensive coordinator Joe Brady said. “It can be different every game … whether we have to throw it, whether we have to run it a lot, whether we have to be a little more balanced, whether it comes down to just winning third downs. Every game is going to be different. And I think good teams find ways to win football games.”

The Colts have not been a very good tackling team as Pro Football Focus has them charted for 85 missed tackles in nine games, 14 by linebacker EJ Speed and 10 by safety Nick Cross. You may see Allen take another patient, short passing game approach in this game and rely on a similarly big YAC day, especially if downfield threats Cooper and/or Coleman can’t play.

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 Twitter @salmaiorana. https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Buffalo Bills are dominating AFC East. Can they keep focus vs Colts?