MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. - There was certainly nothing unusual about the end result Thursday night at Hard Rock Stadium as the Buffalo Bills blew the Miami Dolphins right out of their own venue.

Tell me something new, you say? After all, the Bills have now won 14 of the 16 games against their fierce AFC East rival counting the postseason since Sean McDermott took over as head coach in 2017 and in the losses, both in South Florida, the Bills were on the brink of winning but fell just short in each.

OK, how about this: Josh Allen, who usually treats the Dolphins the way hurricanes treat the Gulf of Mexico, was nothing more than a category 1 windstorm swaying the palm trees in the 31-10 rout.

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“It’s a beautiful thing,” offensive tackle Dion Dawkins said of Allen, who looked more like a game manager that he did his typical Superman self. “Josh is still Superman, whether he’s shown it or not, he’s still Superman. But it’s a beautiful thing that we could do it without him overexerting himself and really finishing that S, where he has a half of an S.”

If it wasn’t so grossly hot and humid, Allen would have barely broken a sweat as he attempted only 19 passes, completing 13 for 139 yards, and running just twice for a grand total of two yards.

Josh Allen stats vs Dolphins

Consider all the horror Allen has wreaked on the Dolphins in the 14 games he has played against them - 3,852 passing yards, a 66.4 completion percentage, 37 passing TDs to just nine interceptions, 658 yards rushing and five more TDs. So for him to have as quiet a night as he did, and still the Bills won by three touchdowns, that had to be galling for the Dolphins.

Perhaps speaking for all the Dolphins, offensive lineman Austin Jackson said of Buffalo’s domination Thursday, and of it dating back several years, “I’m sick of it. I’m not the only one who’s sick of it. The whole team is sick of it.”

The flow of this game was unusual for the Buffalo offense, thanks to the spectacular work of the defense. With three interceptions of Tua Tagovailoa plus a turnover on downs, the Bills started three drives inside Miami territory, and after one of those interceptions, there was no drive start at all because Ja’Marcus Ingram returned his second pick 31 yards for a touchdown.

And after the turnover on downs that came via an Ed Oliver sack, James Cook scored on the very next play, a dazzling 49-yard run, so Allen had nothing to do with either. Well, except that he handed the ball to Cook.

Allen, of course, had no complaints.

“You look at the stat sheet, I don’t know what our numbers were, but I know we were really low in time of possession (barely 23 minutes) and we were probably really low in total yards (247),” Allen said. “But still managed to put up 31 points and that means your defense is doing something right.”

Now, one thing to keep in mind is that this game was an outlier. Allen is going to need to don that S on his chest that Dawkins referenced over the next four weeks when the Bills have a brutal stretch of four games - home against the Jaguars, then at the Ravens, Texans and Jets.

And the question then becomes, who can he rely on when the Bills are forced to go on extended drives in order to score?

Bills wide receivers a non-factor vs Dolphins

Khalil Shakir, for sure. He’s the best wide receiver on this team and it really isn’t close, and it’s clear that Allen trusts him the most. He had five catches for 54 yards while the other four receivers who played - Curtis Samuel, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Keon Coleman and Mack Hollins - were inexplicably invisible. Each had one target, and the only ball that was caught was by Samuel for a three-yard gain.

The Bills had almost zero downfield passing. On the only sustained possession of the game, the 85-yard drive in the second quarter capped by Cook’s one-yard TD run, Allen produced his only two big plays. He hit Shakir over the middle for 21 yards on a second-and-11, and then on a third-and-12 at the Miami 34 he rolled out and threw a dime to running back Ty Johnson for 33 yards.

His only other completion of at least 10 yards was a throw to Cook in the left flat that Cook turned into a 17-yard TD to open the scoring.

“We’re just trying to find the open guy and get everybody involved,” Allen said. “But guys are stepping up to the plate and making plays when their numbers are called. Tonight is a weird one because you got the ball so close to the end zone three different possessions. Again it’s not going to be eye-popping numbers on the stat sheet, but when you can put up those type of numbers on the scoreboard that’s all you care about.”

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: Josh Allen had quiet game vs Dolphins, but Bills will need more from him