SEATTLE - The Buffalo Bills have had some pretty impressive performances during the first half of the season on their way to running away with the AFC East, but given the competition Sunday afternoon, their 31-10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks is their best of all.

Beating the snot out of the Dolphins after they lost Tua Tagovailoa, then crushing the hapless Jaguars and Titans were sharp in their own ways, but the Seahawks - inconsistent as they are - began the day leading the NFC West, were coming off a 20-point wipeout of a decent Falcons team on the road, and have a stable of big-time players on both sides of the ball.

So for the Bills to go into Lumen Field, always a difficult venue for road teams, and lay that kind of whipping on the Seahawks, was eye-popping.

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“We knew this was going to be a tough, tough game, and it was,” coach Sean McDermott said. “We knew we were going to have to play well in all three phases and I think we did enough to get the result that we were looking for.”

And who knows how much more lopsided it would have been had the Bills not committed so many penalties, several of which wiped out nice offensive plays, prompting McDermott to add, “Definitely things, again, that we have to improve on - pre-snap penalties and the penalties overall, and then just some decision-making.”

Josh Allen came out firing, putting on quite a show for FOX analyst Tom Brady up in the broadcast booth, and James Cook ran not only with elusiveness but toughness on his way to the third 100-yard game of his career, chipping in two touchdowns as well.

Meanwhile, the Buffalo defense made life miserable for Seattle’s Geno Smith, who clearly missed injured star wide receiver DK Metcalf. Smith began the day as the NFL’s leading passer, but after three quarters he had only 123 yards before piling up some big garbage time yardage after the Bills extended their lead to 31-3 with 11:19 left to play.

“It’s up there,” Allen said when he was asked if this was Buffalo’s best performance. “I think you look at it from all three phases, I think everybody went out there, knew their job and executed at a high level - offense, defense and special teams. We’ll watch this one, get rid of it and enjoy the plane ride.”

Here are a few of my observations:

Josh Allen’s interception-free streak ended

Allen had gone 203 consecutive passes to start the season without an interception until early in the second quarter when he simply threw one right to practice squad call up Josh Jobe as he tried to hit Amari Cooper on a quick slant. The streak actually was 300 passes dating back to the regular-season finale in Miami last year, and encompassed the two playoff games.

However, after Jobe returned the pick to the 7-yard-line, one of the game’s biggest moments occurred and it flipped the game in Buffalo’s favor for the rest of the afternoon.

The Seahawks ran Kenneth Walker for three yards, then Zach Charbonnet for three, putting the ball at the 1, and on third-and-goal, Dorian Williams and Greg Rousseau stuffed Walker for no gain.

Here, Seattle decided to go for the tying touchdown, but Smith tripped over his center’s foot, fell to the ground, and Rousseau touched him down at 7 for a big turnover on downs.

“Huge,” Allen said. “Hate throwing turnovers, but made the tackle. And coach talks about it all the time with something like that, not to put your head down, go make atackle and let your defense come back on the field because you never know what’s going to happen. They went out there and had four consecutive plays of a stop.”

From there, the Bills marched 93 yards in 12 plays to take a 14-3 lead which obviously was a seismic shift in the game script.

Allen was great as he completed 24 of 34 on a rainy day for 283 yards and two TDs, one to Keon Coleman (five catches, 70 yards) and one to Dalton Kincaid (4-31).

Khalil Shakir is becoming a star

Shakir is so vitally important to the Bills’ passing game, to the point where he’s an irreplaceable player. All you need to do is look how terribly Allen struggled in the game Shakir missed in Houston. Without his most reliable receiver, he had one of the worst games of his career when he completed just 9 of 30 passes.

The easy comparison to make in terms of recent Bills history Shakir being the new Cole Beasley, a small, quick receiver who just knew how to get open, especially against zone coverage.

But here’s the difference: Beasley would make a catch and then was unable to pile up yards after the catch because he so often went down on first contact. Shakir makes catches and he has the ability to either elude tacklers or bounce off first contact to find additional yardage.

Part of this is also attributable to Allen’s better ball placement. When Beasley was here that wasn’t a strength of the Allen’s, but now he’s much better at giving his receivers the ball in spots where they can do something with it in their hands and Shakir is the best on the team at taking advantage of that.

“Cole was a phenomenal player in his own right,” McDermott said. “He did a lot of great things for this team. Khalil is his own player. What you saw the last couple of weeks with Khalil was he was out there playing injured and finally, this week, I think he started to get back to closer to 100 percent.”

He made two catches for 17 yards on the Bills’ first TD drive, and then two for 24 on the second TD drive. After his 35-yard catch and run early in the third quarter which helped set up Tyler Bass’ field goal for a 17-3 lead, he had seven catches on seven targets for 93 yards, and he ended the day with nine for 107 yards. The only target he didn’t catch came in the fourth quarter, and that’s because the pass was batted at the line of scrimmage.

Bills overcame some sloppy play

The Bills won this game in spite of themselves. It was a dumpster fire in the penalty department, particularly for the offensive line.

Alec Anderson had a holding call, David Edwards had a false start, and Connor McGovern had a hold, all of that on the first drive of the game, yet the Bills still found a way to drive 91 yards and get the ball in the end zone. Later in the first quarter, Dion Dawkins had a false start, and he had another in the fourth.

On the first possession of the third quarter, Spencer Brown had a holding penalty on the first play, and later had one that was declined because it was fourth down. And then on Seattle’s first possession of the third, they would have been facing a quick third-and-10 but Christian Benford gifted them a first down with an illegal contact penalty.

“We were able to run the football, we were able to throw the football, protect, but again, we just kill ourselves with penalties,” Edwards said. “That’s one thing we got to really clean up moving forward if we want to be the team we want to be.”

By game’s end, the Bills were flagged 13 times for 85 yards. Not that the Seahawks were much better as referee Ron Torbert’s crew was all over them, too, calling 11 for 82 yards. This didn’t include several occasions where penalties offset. The 24 combined penalties were the most in the league this year. The previous high was 22 in the Bills-Jets game three weeks ago.

It was one of these NFL games where the officials are simply too much a part of the game. Sure, some of the calls were definitely penalties, but there was also plenty of ticky-tack stuff that mars the NFL every week.

Austin Johnson’s interception was huge

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d type: Defensive tackle Austin Johnson made an interception. Yeah, that was pretty crazy, and not surprisingly, it was the eighth-year veteran’s first of his career, in his 123rd NFL game.

“It’s an awesome moment to get that checked off the list,” Johnson said. “I’ve had a scoop and score for a touchdown in college, but never an interception, so that was cool.”

The Seahawks were on the move midway through the third quarter trailing just 17-3 and looking to get within one score. Smith dropped to pass and got pressured immediately by AJ Epenesa from his left. He tried to get rid of the ball with a throw in the middle of the field intended for Kenneth Walker, but Casey Toohill tipped it and it caromed right into Johnson’s belly to kill Seattle’s attempt to get back into the game.

Asked what his thought was when the ball was suddenly coming his way, Johnson laughed and said, “Catch it! When you get those opportunities, you've got to definitely take advantage of them. If there was no one in front of me, I would have ran. … If you've got a ton of people around you and the offense is rolling and doing an amazing job like they are, I'm just trying to get the ball back to the offense and let them keep on doing their thing. They had an amazing day.”

The Bills took possession at their own 49 with 5:59 remaining, and four minutes later, Cook scooted around left end for a two-yard touchdown and at 24-3, the game was essentially over.

Bills defense muted Kenneth Walker

Without Metcalf, the Seahawks wanted to get Walker going in the run game because he’s one of the best in the NFL, and he has the kind of speed to the edge that might have given the Bills’ defense, playing without linebacker Terrel Bernard.

But Walker was never a factor. He was stuffed on the two big plays near the goal line, and thereafter was barely involved. He finished with 12 yards on nine carries. It was the second-lowest total of his 36-game NFL career.

“Really good running back,” McDermott said. “He likes to get outside and you could tell when they didn’t have him in the stretch of two or three games … you could see a difference in their offense. So we knew that they were going to challenge the line of scrimmage, and they did and they did it early, and we were able to snuff it out a little bit there, which helps to make them more of a one-dimensional.”

It was by far the Bills’ best run defense performance of the season as Seattle finished with a mere 32 yards on 17 attempts with 16 coming on five Smith scrambles.

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: Bills pummel Seahawks with their most impressive win of the season