It’s been a physical opening 30 minutes of this NFL playoff Sunday, which is to be expected with these two hard-nosed teams taking on each other.
The Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills started off the game with just a handful of first downs in the opening 10 minutes before Josh Allen led his team down the field to a field goal to open the scoring.
On the ensuing drive, Trevor Lawrence answered by leading the Jags to a touchdown, finding Brian Thomas Jr. for a three-yard pass that put his team into the lead. The Jags had a chance to extend the advantage after recovering a fumble on the kickoff that followed the touchdown, but Lawrence was ruled short on a fourth-and-2 rush up the middle and the Bills escaped danger.
The main storyline for the half showed up later in the second quarter as Allen appeared to suffer a few different pain points on the way to scoring a touchdown that gave the Bills a 10-7 lead.
After being evaluated for a concussion earlier and passing protocol, Allen suffered two injury worries on the touchdown drive. First, he hit his hand on a Jags defender’s helmet on a pass. Then, on the touchdown run, Allen’s knee bent awkwardly when defenders tried to stuff him at the goal line.
Allen would return and keep playing, but his health will likely to prove a major plot point for the rest of this one.
Both teams traded punts to end the second quarter as the defenses bottled up these two talented quarterbacks and their offenses. Lawrence connected on a long pass to move the Jaguars over midfield as the clock ran down on the first half, but had no timeouts remaining. The Jags rushed to the line and snapped the ball, catching the Bills offside as the clock expired, earning themselves one more play.
The Jags’ powerful kicker Cam Little, who holds the NFL record for the longest field goal in history at 68 yards, lined up but he pulled the kick wide left and the Bills could exhale going into the locker room with the lead.
Halftime score: Bills 10, Jaguars 7