HOUSTON - If there’s a silver lining to what happened Sunday afternoon, it’s that the Buffalo Bills are still in first place in the AFC East.

Hey, it’s something.

Even though they suffered a disheartening 23-20 loss to the Houston Texans on a 59-yard final play field goal by Ka’imi Fairbairn, their 3-2 record is still the best in the division because like Josh Allen, the Jets’ Aaron Rodgers could not complete a comeback from an early 17-point deficit and New York lost in London to the Vikings to fall to 2-3. And Miami’s win in New England only pulled its record up to 2-3.

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How much longer the Bills can stay in first place, though, is the question because right now they do not look at all like a first-place team thanks to an incompetent passing game, an injury-ravaged defense, and a schedule that is already starting to grind them down.

“They’re down,” coach Sean McDermott said of his players. “There’s no moral victories (in nearly coming back to win). I did like how they battled; to battle back after getting down like we did. We’ve got a lot of young guys out there, in particular on the defensive side, playing and battling, giving us great effort in all three phases really. The margins in the NFL are slim and we’ve got to continue to work to improve ourselves, get some guys healthy at some point here. That would help and yet that’s not an excuse. We’ve got to find ways to pull these out.”

Here’s how I graded the Bills:

PASS OFFENSE: F

I’m not sure I have awarded this grade to a Josh Allen-led offense this decade. If I did, I apologize for not remembering. Ah, never mind, I just remembered. It was that disgraceful loss to the Jaguars in 2021. Yeah, this performance by Allen and his misfit cast of receivers was every bit as egregious as that game, and it was the primary reason why the Bills lost.

The Bills have one of the greatest talents in the NFL as their QB, but even the great ones are helpless when they have no help, and that’s the case for Buffalo. Not having Khalil Shakir was tough, but the fact that no one stepped up and picked up the slack was a failure of the highest order.

If the Bills are still preaching this silly “everybody eats” mantra then perhaps they should scrap the Weight Watchers menu and start eating real food because this offense is in starvation mode.

Allen completed just 9 of 30 passes for 131 yards and his WRs - Keon Coleman, Mack Hollins, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Curtis Samuel and Tyrell Shavers - were targeted 18 times and caught four for 76 yards, and 49 of those came on one play, Coleman’s third-quarter TD. Some of that was Allen struggling with his ball placement, some of it was Allen was running for his life because the offensive line could not keep the pocket clean, and some of it was that those guys - and I’ll include TE Dalton Kincaid, too - just can’t get open. It was a nightmare from start to finish.

RUN OFFENSE: B+

James Cook was far and away the best player on offense for the Bills. The line blocked pretty well in the run game and Cook was able to slither for 82 yards and a TD on 20 carries. Unfortunately, offensive coordinator Joe Brady decided not to trust Cook on the Bills’ fateful, disastrous final possession when they couldn’t run out the clock because Brady called for three pass plays, all of which fell incomplete and ran almost no time off the clock.

Yes, the Texans had all their timeouts and would have been ready for the run, but maybe, just maybe, Cook could have found a crease and made some positive gains on three runs, perhaps even enough to get the elusive first down the Bills so desperately needed. With Allen adding 54 yards, the Bills finished with 150 yards and a 5.4 average.

PASS DEFENSE: D-

Texans QB C.J. Stroud is the real deal and he had his way with the Bills’ normally reliable pass defense as he completed 28 of 38 for 331 yards, and he did most of that without his best WR, Nico Collins, who came into the game leading the league with 489 yards. Collins caught a 67-yard TD pass in the first quarter, but he suffered a hamstring injury on that play and was done for the day.

So, guess who stepped up for the Texans? Yep, Stefon Diggs who caught six passes for 82 yards, single-handedly out-producing the entire Bills’ WR corps. Stroud killed the Bills on third down as the Texans were 8-for-16 overall, and five of those conversions came on passes when it was third-and-5 or longer. He completed nine passes of 14 yards or more.

The pass rush was inconsistent and Stroud was sacked just once, though that was a big one because Dawuane Smoot forced him to fumble and Dorian Williams recovered at the Houston 15 in the fourth quarter. He was hit only six times in the game (three by Greg Rousseau), and that allowed him to make some of the key third-down throws. His one bad pass was the interception by Terrel Bernard which cost the Texans a scoring chance early in the fourth quarter.

RUN DEFENSE: D

The Texans played without their two top running backs, Joe Mixon and Dameon Pierce, yet they still managed to run for 94 yards including a 15-yard TD run by Cam Akers on a play where he was hardly touched.

Of course, the Bills played the game without defensive linemen Ed Oliver, Austin Johnson and Von Miller, plus safety Taylor Rapp and nickel corner Taron Johnson, and they had to go with four rookie defensive linemen and a rookie safety, Cole Bishop, and that was certainly one of the reasons why the Texans finished with 425 total yards. One of those rookies, DT DeWayne Carter, made several noticeable plays including two tackles for loss.

Williams led the Bills with 11 tackles while Damar Hamlin had nine and Cam Lewis eight.

SPECIAL TEAMS: C+

Sam Martin punted only 12 times in the first four games, but he was called on eight times in this one and he was arguably the Bills’ best player. He averaged 41.9 net yards and five times he pinned the Texans inside the 20. On his punt at the end of the first half, a 59-yarder, he outkicked his coverage and Robert Woods ripped off a 36-yard return that set up a Fairbairn field goal on the final play of the second quarter, part of what was quite a day for him as he made kicks of 50, 47 and then the winner from 59.

Brandon Codrington had a five-yard punt return and a 26-yard kickoff return, while Woods has a 31-yard kickoff return for Houston so yes, coverage wasn’t great.

Tyler Bass was perfect as he made both his field goals and both his extra points.

COACHING: F

The Bills botched their final possession and on a day when so much was happening, all you had to do was boil this loss down to that failure. They needed to find a way to get more time off the clock in that situation, but calling three failed pass attempts was just about the worst thing they could have done.

Brady was unable to scheme much of anything in the passing game, the fourth-down play that resulted in Coleman’s TD being the exception. True, the pieces on his chessboard can’t win on the bulk of their routes, but that’s on Brady to find ways to put them in better situations and in the last two games, he hasn’t been able to do it.

Unlike Brady who had everyone at his disposal except Shakir, defensive coordinator Bobby Babich is trying to piece things together with multiple players out injured. With all the youth and backup level players on the field, it’s no surprise that the Texans piled up big play after big play and really, holding them to 23 points was pretty impressive. That used to be good enough for Allen and the offense to win games, but 2024 is an entirely different year for the Bills.

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

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This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bills report card: Buffalo incompetent in nightmare loss to Texans