ORCHARD PARK - Even in a year when the Buffalo Bills may not have the same quality roster they’ve had the previous few years, they still have Josh Allen, and that makes up for an awful lot of deficiencies.

On a windy and unseasonably cool Sunday afternoon at Highmark Stadium, the Bills seemed primed for a Week 1 flop as they fell behind the Arizona Cardinals 17-3 late in the first half.

The defense had no answers for Kyler Murray, and the offense was killing itself with penalties and an Allen fumble that ruined an early scoring chance.

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That’s when Allen donned his Superman cape and started doing the things that make him one of the very best quarterbacks in the NFL as he produced four touchdowns which proved just enough to avert disaster and pull out a 34-28 victory.

“We got Josh Allen, man, so we always have a chance in games,” said Von Miller. “It didn’t matter how much we were down. It didn’t matter what it looked like. We just got so much trust in Josh Allen and that offense.

The man knows what he’s talking about. Remember, he played with Peyton Manning back in the day in Denver, not to mention the previous two seasons here in Buffalo with Allen, so he’s seen what a superstar quarterback can mean for a team and like Miller said, when you have Allen, you have a chance. Always.

“Serious love for that guy and everything he does, not only in his preparation, but just him as a guy as well, man,” said Khalil Shakir. “He’s a great dude. Follow that guy in the battle any day.”

Make no mistake, this was a battle, perhaps more than many in the fan base had anticipated. But the difference, as it so often does, came down to Allen making the plays that turn losses into victories and because of that, the Bills joined the Dolphins and Patriots at 1-0 in the AFC East.

The key reasons why the Bills won

▶ The defense found its footing: After a terrible start in allowing the Cardinals to score on all three of their first-half possessions, the defense really turned things around in the second half. It allowed 14 first downs, 190 yards, and 5 of 7 on third-down conversions in the first 30 minutes, but in the second half Arizona had five possessions and managed only a field goal, four first downs (with two third-down conversions), and 90 yards of offense.

The only reason the game came down to the wire was the 96-yard kickoff return touchdown by DeeJay Dallas which kept the Cardinals in striking distance.

The Bills needed two stops after that play to close out the game, and they got them. On the first they were trying to preserve a 31-28 lead and it was a three-and-out as Miller ended it with a sack of Murray. After the Bills pushed their lead to 34-28, the Cardinals had one last shot with 1:56 left, and they were given a great start at the 40 when Tyler Bass kicked off out of bounds.

Here, they moved to a first down at the Bills 32, but three plays went nowhere and on fourth-and-7, Murray tried to hit Greg Dortch near the goal line and reserve corner Ja'Marcus Ingram had great coverage and the pass fell incomplete to end the game.

▶ Cardinals inexperience began to show: There are 39 players on the Cardinals 2024 roster who were not with the team prior to the 2023 season when coach Jonathan Gannon and GM Monte Ossenfort took over the club. That’s a 73.6% roster turnover, with 20 of those in their first or second NFL season. This year, they have seven new starters on defense and that eventually caught up with the Cardinals.

After their great start, they started to make mistakes, compounded by the fact that the Bills began to find some traction on both sides of the ball, and at the end, when they had two chances on offense in the final five minutes to pull it out, they fell short.

▶ The offense had balance: Allen was at the hub of everything, but the Bills showed patience with their running game and finished with 130 yards on 33 attempts, James Cook leading the way with 71 and Allen chipping in 39 and his two scores.

And then in the passing game, as we expected, there was no one favorite target for Allen. He spread it around on his 23 attempts and rookie Keon Coleman led the way with four catches on five targets for 51 yards. Ten different players were targeted, nine caught at least one pass.

The plays that proved critical

▶ Early in the game, two penalties cost the Bills an eight-point differential. The first was an utterly horrible personal foul penalty on Ingram as Murray was sliding down short of the first down on Arizona’s first possession. Ingram barely touched Murray but he was flagged and the automatic first down led to the Cardinals’ first TD. Instead of holding them to three points, it wound up being seven. Then on Buffalo’s second possession, Allen scored on a third-and-goal play from the 4, only to have it wiped out by a facemask penalty on O’Cyrus Torrence. The Bills settled for a field goal, losing four points of their own. Those almost came back to haunt Buffalo.

▶ Down 17-3 and needing points before the first half ended, the Bills committed two false start penalties and seemed to be going nowhere. That’s when, on a third-and-6 play, Khalil Shakir caught a short pass over the middle, bounced off a defender and raced 19 yards to the Arizona 47. With the drive revived, the Cardinals committed two penalties, Allen hit Coleman for a 12-yard gain, and he eventually capped the 70-yard drive with a seven-yard run.

▶ On Buffalo’s first possession in the third quarter it was thrust into a third-and-11 because of a Dion Dawkins penalty, but Allen threw a short pass to Cook on the right side and he turned it into a 25-yard gain to the Cardinals 36. Six plays later, on a third-and-11, Allen threaded one over the middle in the end zone to Mack Hollins to tie the game at 17-17.

▶ Leading 24-20 with 10:43 left to play, Sean McDermott made the decision to go for the first down at the Cardinals 42. On the play before, Allen made this choice possible by hitting Shakir for a 12-yard gain. He then dropped to pass, got flushed out and ran for the first down and four plays later - one a great 28-yard reception by Coleman - Allen scored his second rushing TD to make it 31-20.

▶ That felt like the moment when the game was in hand, until it wasn’t. Dallas returned the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown, and James Conner scored on two-point conversion run to get the Cardinals within 31-28 and that created some uneasy moments down the stretch, but the defense responded and finished off the game.

Bills injury report

The Bills are already without their outstanding linebacker Matt Milano, and now they could be losing star nickel cornerback, Taron Johnson, one of the best in the NFL at that position. Johnson departed in the first quarter with a forearm injury and could not return, and though McDermott didn’t have an update, it seemed pretty clear that Johnson is going to miss some time. Now the question is how much.

Also concerning is the left hand injury Allen suffered while scoring his second rushing touchdown. He downplayed it like he always does when he’s hurt, but it’s something to watch. The good news is that he was able to finish the game, and it’s his non-throwing hand.

The Bills had to play without one of the edge rushers who was certainly going to be part of the four-man rotation as Dawuane Smoot suffered a toe injury Thursday and it was enough to force him out of action. And with rookie Javon Solomon suffering from an oblique strain, it meant the Bills had to call up Kameron Cline from the practice squad and then make him active.

Running back Ty Johnson went into the blue medical tent for a short time with a knee problem, but he returned to the game.

What they’re saying (quotes from the locker room)

▶ WR Khalil Shakir on the comeback: “I think it’s just a belief that we all have in each other. Everybody, you know, looking each other in the eyes and saying, ‘put one foot in front of the other, take it one play at a time, and let’s keep going.’ We know what we’re capable of doing when we’re all on the same track, and just the communication piece, we know the preparation we put in. So it was just communicating with each other to get things going.”

▶ QB Josh Allen on scoring at the end of the first half and start of the second half: “The key was double dipping, being able to get the ball in the second half. We’re a team that defers (on the coin toss), but they elected to receive and gave us an opportunity to score in two minute, come back, get the ball and score again and steal a possession. We had a good halftime, talked to the guys and, just figured out what we’re gonna do and guys went out there and executed.”

▶ DE Greg Rousseau on his three-sack day: “Just being out there with 10 other dogs every single play and having that four equals one mindset on rushing up front, knowing if I don’t get it, somebody else is getting it. We all just got that same dog mindset. When we had our chances, when the game was kind of declared in the one-dimensional, we took advantage of it.”

▶ Coach Sean McDermott on the early third-down struggles: “We weren’t very good at all. And some of it was they were getting into third and manageable situations and that goes back to winning first and second down. So I felt Bobby (Babich) and the defensive staff did a great job at halftime addressing it and then making some adjustments.”

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 ride Josh Allen heroics and defense to rally past Cardinals