Sports

The Buccaneers were able to take the ball away from Josh Allen and the Bills three times in Buffalo on Sunday, but none of those takeaways came in the fourth quarter of the game.

After Sean Tucker's touchdown run put the Bucs up 32-31 with 13:38 to play, the Bucs gave up back-to-back touchdown drives of 86 and 70 yards. Those scores pushed the Bills to a 44-32 win and the inability of the defense to get off the field rankled head coach Todd Bowles.

"You score 32 points, you’re supposed to win the game," Bowles said, via the team's website.

Allen threw for three touchdowns and ran for three more while creating a number of big plays over the course of the afternoon. Bowles said the reasons for the breakdowns varied and that the team has a lot to clean up as a result.

"Sometimes it's coverage, sometimes it's pass rush," Bowles said. "But at the same time, it's got to get fixed. We're playing hard, but then we have lapses here and missed tackles there, and we give up big plays. That's what happened in the second half and two times in the first half. When we're covering, we can't get to the quarterback; when we get to the quarterback, we're covering wrong on the play. We'll get that fixed going forward."

The Bucs have now lost three of their last four game and hold a half-game lead on the Panthers in the division heading into another tough road game against the Rams in Week 12. Bowles said he thinks the team is in a "good place mentally" as they try to fix what's been ailing them, but the proof will have to come on the field for the season to end with another NFC South crown.

The Dolphins won on Sunday when cornerback Jack Jones intercepted Commanders quarterback Marcus Mariota on the first play of overtime. Jones knew it was coming.

Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks revealed after the game that Jones went up to the Dolphins' front seven just before the interception and told them that Mariota wasn't capable of beating them, so as long as they stopped the run, Jones would take care of the rest.

"His exact words: He said, 'Y'all stop the run. He's gonna throw me the ball because he can't throw,'" Brooks said.

Jones was correct: Mariota attempted a pass to Commanders tight end Zach Ertz, but Jones stepped in front of it and picked it off. The Dolphins were already in field goal range from the point of Jones' interception, ran a few more plays to get a little closer, and then kicked the game-winner.

With the Lions trailing 16-9 late in the fourth quarter on Sunday night and needing one third-down stop to get the ball back and potentially win the game, the defense got that stop on an incomplete pass — only to have the officials rule that Lions cornerback Rock Ya-Sin had committed pass interference.

Replays showed there was no pass interference on the play, but replays can't overturn pass interference calls, and so the Eagles were awarded an automatic first down. Afterward, Lions coach Dan Campbell said he wouldn't change a thing about Ya-Sin's coverage of A.J. Brown.

"I thought he played defense like he did the whole game," Campbell said of the play in question. "Played it like he played the very first rep that we played man to man, so I wouldn't tell him to do anything different."