The Buffalo Bills road game against the Texans is a must win contest in my opinion. With the Lions, Patriots, Vikings and Jets on the schedule before the November 2nd bye week the Bills cannot afford to slip to .500 after week four.

The Texans are a flawed team, missing two key starters and with a journeyman at quarterback in Ryan Fitzpatrick. Some feel a loss to former Bills’ QB Fitzpatrick alone would spell disaster for this current Buffalo team. A sign that they have not progressed since parting ways with #14.

Monday night on the Fred Jackson Show on WBBZ-TV Jackson agreed that every game is important, but a loss to Houston would have this team going in the wrong direction. The Buffalo Bills are very young and as we have seen the last fourteen years once a team gets down it’s awful tough to regain momentum.

The critics have had a field day with EJ Manuel this week and with good reason. Manuel was unable to adjust to the Chargers flooding the box with a safety and on obvious passing situations he was often off the mark.

I do not believe EJ Manuel will ever become the second coming of Jim Kelly or even Drew Bledsoe in a Bills uniform. Manuel is a great young man with some talent, but he is not flourishing in the Bills system. There are those in the NFL who feel the offensive system put in place by Doug Marrone and Nate Hackett is not conducive to Manuel’s skill set. Too different than the spread offense he ran down at Florida State, but that’s insider talk.

The reality is the Bills have a young quarterback, a couple promising receivers, two outstanding running backs and a mediocre offensive line. Against San Diego the “O”-line struggled in both the run and pass blocking. The Bills are decent at the tackle positions, but the guards have struggled and that has affected the play of Woods at center.

Defensively the Bills have a strong front four, but are nicked up at linebacker and have only one cornerback playing strong in Corey Graham, who didn’t even get the start against the Chargers. The Bills defense gave up three long drives against San Diego, but well enough down the stretch to allow the Bills offense to get back in the game. It just didn’t happen.

Should the Bills beat Houston and then split their next four games they will be 5-3 at the bye week and will have a skip in their step going into the second half of the season. A loss to the Texans and it can quickly be 3-5 come November with little to play for. To me this is a very BIG game.

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