Bucs stampeded by Bills, blunders Roy Cummings, The Tampa Tribune, published 21 September 2009 You couldn't miss it last week. That one thing that made you feel good about the Bucs? The one thing that gave you hope for their season? Last week, even after a loss, it jumped right out. Not so this week. Forget about the numbers. The Bucs rang up another eye-popping 353 yards of total offense Sunday, but no one on the short side of their 33-20 loss to the Bills was taking any solace in that. Not this time. Not when the bulk of those yards came during a desperate attempt to erase an early run of critical offensive mistakes. "We just dug ourselves too deep of a hole," Bucs quarterback Byron Leftwich said. The hole Leftwich spoke of was dug early. The defense started the process, surrendering a 32-yard touchdown pass to Lee Evans on Buffalo's fourth offensive play. But before the first quarter was over, the offense had finished the job, twice giving the ball away on interceptions that allowed Buffalo to expand its lead to 17-0. "We're not going to win those types of games," Raheem Morris said. "Whenever we give somebody a 17-point lead and we have to come back like that, that's not going to be our best effort. When we have to go out there and throw it around like we did today and we get just 19 rushing attempts, that's not our type of game. But we did fight back and make the thing close again, so give us credit for that." Leftwich completed 26 of 50 passes for 296 yards and three touchdowns. But his overthrow of Cadillac Williams was returned 76 yards for a touchdown by safety Donte Whitner. On the next possession, Buffalo safety Bryan Scott scooped up a low throw that bounced away from rookie receiver Sammie Stoughter, setting up a 31-yard Rian Lindell field goal that made it 17-0. Just as they did in last week's 34-21 opening-day loss to the Cowboys, the Bucs fought back and moved within a touchdown of the lead shortly before halftime. Just as it did last week, though, the defense failed to hold. The Bucs allowed the Bills to run 35 times for 218 yards as Fred Jackson ran 28 times for a career-high 163 yards. Through two games, the Bucs have allowed opponents to run 59 times for 339 yards. That's an average of 5.7 yards per rush, and something the Bucs admit they must clean up in a hurry. "You can't win in this league if you can't stop the run," Barrett Ruud said. "I mean, right now, we're doing just what we have to do to lose. That was pretty apparent (Sunday)." It was apparent in several areas. In addition to struggling against the run, the Bucs also struggled with their discipline as they were penalized 13 times for 112 yards, including four times for 60 yards on face-mask calls. "That's unbelievable," Ronde Barber said of the face-mask penalties. "I've been in this league for 13 years and I've never seen four facemasking penalties in one game. We just can't let that happen." Morris chalked some of those calls up to aggressive tackling, but it was a lack of proper tackling that allowed the Bills to break free from some challenging situations of their own. On three occasions, the Bills started drives inside their own 10. On each of those drives, including one that went for 71 yards, they moved the ball well enough to avoid leaving their defense in a bind. "We should be able to stop them with our big boys up front, with our front seven guys; we weren't able to do that," Morris said. "So they moved the ball out of there and changed the field position on us. That gave our offense the long field and that further eliminated the run for us. If we could have stopped some of those drives and used our running game the way we want, maybe we could have had a different result today."