INDIANAPOLIS - There aren’t many days when the Buffalo Bills are going to win when Josh Allen is playing well below his “in the MVP conversation” level which was the case for swaths of Sunday afternoon at Lucas Oil Stadium.

And there are even fewer days that they’re going to win a game when Allen, who threw two interceptions in a game for the first time this season, is trying to complete passes to guys like Curtis Samuel, Mack Hollins, Tyrell Shavers, Jalen Virgil and Quintin Morris against the Indianapolis Colts with Keon Coleman and Amari Cooper out, and then Dalton Kincaid joining them when he left early with a knee injury.

But Allen somehow found a way to get the Bills past a pesky Colts team because he made just enough of those Allen-esque plays to will Buffalo to a 30-20 victory over the turnover-plagued Colts.

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“Yeah, I mean again, guys stepping up, knowing their job, knowing their assignment and going out there and executing,” Allen said. “Can be cleaner, and that's me. We’ve got to play better on offense.”

He’s right, they do. But there were certainly extenuating circumstances in this game and yet still, the Bills piled up 23 offensive points, 416 yards, and went a combined 9-of-17 on third- and fourth-down plays.

“Yeah, I mean, I know he's got a couple throws he wants back, and those are important for him and for us, but just all hands on deck,” coach Sean McDermott said. “What else can you say? I mean, you're out Keon you're out Amari, you're out Dalton for the majority of the game I would say. Joe (Brady), the staff – they didn't flinch. They just kept dialing it up, trying to adjust. I thought the communication at halftime was great by the entire staff, defensively and special teams included. So, just tip my cap to those guys, the staff and the game plan they put together and the players execute.”

And so now, the biggest test of all. The undefeated 9-0 Kansas City Chiefs are coming to Highmark Stadium to play the 8-2 Bills in a game between teams with the two best records in the AFC.

Here are a few observations from Indianapolis:

End of half drives were pivotal

The Bills were somewhat fortunate to be up 17-13 late in the first half, so when they took possession following a Colts punt with 1:10 to go, buried back at their own 11, the primary goal should have been to get to halftime without giving the ball back to the Colts.

And that certainly seemed like the way to go when, after converting a third down with a short pass to Ty Johnson, the Bills quickly got into a third-and-10 from the 27 with just 18 seconds left. But Allen scrambled right and uncorked a pass downfield to Mack Hollins who made the catch going to the ground, got up before he was touched, and raced out of bounds.

In the blink of an eye, that 44-yard gain left the Bills with eight seconds, and Tyler Bass kicked a 47-yard field goal to push the lead to 20-13 at halftime. It felt like a turning point in the game.

“Saw him late,” Allen recalled. “I saw a linebacker kind of underneath him, put one in the air a little bit. He said that window, the sun was kind of peeking through, so he couldn't really see it. So, I'm just glad he was able to secure it. Got out of bounds, and getting points before half was really big for us.”

And then in the fourth quarter, clinging to a 23-13 lead, the Bills regained possession on a Taylor Rapp interception at their own 16 with 9:46 remaining. The Colts were still alive at this point, but the Bills proceeded to choke the life out of them with a magical Allen drive, a game-clinching 13-play, 84-yard march that consumed 6:42 and ended with James Cook scoring from the 2 to put the game away.

Taron Johnson is the Bills’ best defender

The nickel cornerback continues to state his case every week because he’s so valuable as both a pass defender but as a run stopper. He slapped his fingerprint on this game on the Colts’ very first play. He slipped in between Joe Flacco and Josh Downs and when Flacco didn’t see him, Johnson was in perfect position for an interception which he returned 23 yards for a touchdown.

“I'm not sure what he was seeing, but I've seen that play before against a different team,” Johnson said. “And I played it differently. I mean, it was a different call, too. But in the game I seen it, I played it differently, and I felt like they were expecting me to play it a different way. And then I took the ball. And after that, I just scanned the field and took it to the house.”

In the third quarter, Johnson sacked Flacco on a blitz, and it didn’t come easy as he had to work through the protection, though he was helped by some poor pocket awareness by Flacco on the play. And later in the third, he very nearly had a second interception but this time he dropped it. Add to that his usual array of gritty stops in the run, not caring at all about his lack of size and playing with an aggression that he needs to succeed.

“He's one of our leaders,” coach Sean McDermott said. “Everyone is going to make mistakes, but when you can learn from it. This is quite honestly, a copycat league where people try the same plays sometimes week-to-week. And right away, the first play was one of those plays, and he picked it.”

The pick-six was Johnson’s third of his NFL career, and it was Buffalo’s second of the season as Ja’Marcus Ingram had one in Week 2 at Miami. Kudos to Rasul Douglas, too, as he made a key block that helped Johnson find his way to paydirt.

The Bills forced four turnovers in all and that makes it 12 straight games and 17 of the last 18 counting the postseason where the Bills’ defense has forced at least one turnover. Johnson's interception was Buffalo’s first pick-six on an opening drive since Oct. 20, 2013 against the Dolphins when Nickell Robey-Coleman picked off Ryan Tannehill and returned it for a TD.

The Bills could have had four turnovers in the first quarter alone. Austin Johnson made his second interception in three weeks, a play where Von Miller blew past RT Braden Smith to pressure Flacco who threw it right into Johnson’s belly. Later, three Bills whiffed on a fumble, and Terrel Bernard had an interception in his hands at the goal line.

Run defense was a problem, for a while

We all know the Bills are going to maintain the bend but don’t break mentality on defense because they’ve played that way since McDermott came to town in 2017.

They know they’re probably going to give up yards between the 20s, especially when a team commits to the run, because Buffalo stays in its nickel defense which means it plays lighter than most teams. But they bank on being able to keep teams out of the end zone and make them settle for field goals.

But it can also lead to some ugly days for the run defense, and Jonathan Taylor killed the Bills as I figured he would. But that was only the first half because in the second half, the Colts curiously moved away from the run game, even though it was a one-score game heading into the fourth quarter.

The running back who torched them for 185 yards and five TDs in 2021 gashed them again as he had 107 yards by halftime which helped the Colts score 13 points. But he tacked on just seven more yards in the second half.

“Yeah, run defense is usually fundamentally based,” McDermott said. “I thought they did a phenomenal job, again, adjusting at halftime with some good information being shared from the booth and some good communication and collaboration, which it always takes and the players went and executed. Bobby (Babich), I thought called a really good game, in particular the second half based off of what the Colts showed in the first half.”

Tyler Bass had a strong game

That 61-yard game-winner last week might have turned his season around. Bass was outstanding as he made all three of his field goals and his three extra points, one of those coming from 48 yards away because after Allen scored a late second-quarter touchdown, Spencer Brown was nailed for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

Bass made field goals from 29, 47 and 28 yards and there was never a doubt about any of them. Add it up, and on a day when offense did not come easy, he was responsible for 12 points.

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 leads shorthanded Bills to gritty victory over Colts