JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Across more than 35 years covering Buffalo Bills games, preceded by about 20 years of actively following the team as a young fan growing up, I – just like all of you – have seen my fair share of abhorrent football, mind-boggling losses, and egregious performances that left you shaking your head in disbelief.

But Sunday afternoon, whether you were here among what seemed like about 20,000 Bills fans at TIAA Bank Field, or you were back home throwing things at your HD television, I think we can agree on this point: We may have all just watched the worst of the worst losses this team has ever suffered.

It sounds incredibly hyperbolic, a total knee-jerk, prisoner-of-the-moment type of reaction, until you digest what exactly went down in this place where the Bills – if at all possible – shoulder never, ever hope to return because it certainly brings out the worst in them (2017 playoff game ring a bell?)

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Here’s where I’m coming from. Yes, there have been countless one-sided defeats; there have been heartbreaking failures including some on the biggest stages; and there have been endless strings of losses during the worst Bills seasons in history. But unless my mind is failing me – which is entirely possible – I can’t ever recall one quite like this.

One where a Bills team who we thought was a legitimate Super Bowl contender (I have serious doubts about that right now), went in as a 14.5-point favorite and lost to an opponent as talent-deficient as the Jaguars. This was a 1-6 team that before Sunday was clearly in the running to pick No. 1 overall in the 2022 draft for the second year in a row.

It was missing key players. It plays for a coach who belongs in the college ranks and who, reportedly, had lost his locker room weeks ago when he didn’t fly home with his team after a Thursday night loss and got caught on video getting grinded on by a young female in a bar.

Help me out here. Is there a loss that I’ve missed along the way that was more shocking than this?

Never in a million Sundays did I envision I’d be writing a column toned like this one from the Jacksonville press box. It never entered my mind that the Bills could lose to this team, especially given they had lost a gut-wrenching game in Tennessee, sat on that during their bye, and then played poorly much of the way last week before finally dispatching the Dolphins.

It was just natural to assume that the Bills would come out with their collective hair on fire and blow the Jaguars out of the building, then move on to New York next week and do it again.

Instead, here we are, trying to understand how this could have happened.

“You gotta come every day ready to play,” said safety Micah Hyde. “This is the National Football League, we understand that. Doesn’t matter what the record indicates, every week, and I don’t think we were ready to play today.”

Well, that’s quite a thing to say, and a damning comment, too, one that coach Sean McDermott and his coaching staff will have to chew on before they get ready for the next alleged cupcake on the schedule, the Jets next week in New York.

Who could argue with Hyde, though? The Bills didn’t look ready to play and this was the sobering result.

Let me amend that. The defense was fine. It was the offense that didn’t look ready to play. In fact, it looked like the offense didn’t take a practice rep or watch a second’s worth of tape in the leadup to the game. The offense was horrendous, which may be under-selling it, and it was the sole reason why the Bills lost the game.

Josh Allen and the crew had put up gaudy numbers in blowouts against the Dolphins, Texans, Chiefs and Washington, and that’s why they were leading the league in points per game. It was always a point of contention for me that those games were against four of the worst defenses in the league, but give the Bills credit: They rolled it up against teams who should have been rolled on.

The same thing was supposed to happen Sunday. Jacksonville ranked 28th in points allowed per game, 26th in yards, had recorded only 11 sacks in seven games and forced only two turnovers. The only matchup that seemed troublesome was Jacksonville’s Josh Allen going against whomever he lined up against on the Bills offensive line but come on, one guy can’t win you a game, especially a defensive player.

Welp.

Jaguar Josh tormented Buffalo Josh as he sacked him once, recovered his massively costly fourth-quarter fumble, intercepted one of his passes, and made a game-high eight tackles. If he doesn’t win AFC defensive player of the week, there needs to be an investigation.

“Credit to them, they came out and they wanted it more,” Buffalo Josh said with a ghost-like look on his face, still spooked by what took place. “We had a lot of little things add up to big things. I put the ball in danger too often and it bit us in the butt. I got to be better for this team. But again, those guys on defense get paid too and they had a good game plan.”

It was stunning to watch. Possession after possession you just thought this was the one where the Bills are going to figure it out, the one that will finally give them control of a game that by all rights should have ended with Davis Webb taking his first NFL regular-seasons snaps in fourth-quarter mop up duty.

Never happened. The Bills never had a three-and-out, but on their last seven drives they never made more than two first downs and they never reached the red zone let alone the end zone. Three of those ended with Allen turnovers, three on punts, and the last one on downs.

McDermott had no answers when he spoke to reporters afterward. How could he? I guarantee you, though he’ll never admit it, he was as shocked by the result as any of us.

“It’s a one-week-at-a-time league, you guys know that,” he said. “We preach that. Give them the credit. They were ready to play and we weren’t.”

No, they weren’t. Another thing they won’t admit is that they overlooked the Jaguars, but it was obvious they did. And to be honest, that better have been the case because if they gave the Jaguars their full attention and respect last week in practice, and played that way, then this team has more serious problems than we think.

Insult to injury, the Patriots have won three in a row and are starting to become the Patriots again. The Ravens won again, the Browns, Broncos and Chargers all won and have as many wins as the Bills, just as the Patriots and Bengals do.

Class of the AFC? That’s what the Bills were supposed to be, but right now, that’s not even remotely the case. They’re just another AFC team in the middle of the slog, a team that has to do a whole lot of soul searching in the days to come.

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bills' dreadful loss to Jaguars ranks among worst ever