Despite the result in Houston, the box score can tell us a lot of positive things the Bills defense did in Sunday's game. The biggest of which was the Texans' run game, or lack thereof.
On 24 carries, the Texans managed to accumulate just 37 rushing yards or 1.5 yards per carry. The leading rusher on the day wasn't RB Arian Foster either, who was a game time decision – it was ex-Bill QB Ryan Fitzpatrick with 14 yards on six carries.
Much of this is owed to a defensive line that recorded nine tackles for a loss – DT Marcell Dareus earned four of them. He also tallied his first sack of the season.
The next biggest thing to take away from the day was, well, the takeaways.
The Bills forced three Houston turnovers with two interceptions and one fumble recovery. The one with the greatest degree of difficulty was the acrobatic interception by CB Leodis McKelvin to prevent a deep completion to WR DeAndre Hopkins.
Three takeaways compared to zero against the Chargers is much improved, especially against a team like Houston with weapons like Hopkins, Foster, and WR Andre Johnson.
Like any part of the game, however, there is always work to be done and places to improve.
"We hear a lot of the stats that say if you get three turnovers, or four turnovers, your chance of winning is high," said S Aaron Williams. "But in this game, anything can happen on one play. Just like when E.J. [Manuel] got that single play, bombed it to WR Mike Williams – the game can change just like that. You have to keep playing. You have to pretend that there are zero turnovers. You have to play like we're down, you have to keep fighting no matter what."
Bad news on the day came when LB Nigel Bradham and DT Kyle Williams left the game with knee injuries. The two were the key players on the second interception when Williams batted the pass into Bradham's arms. They both will be re-evaluated Monday.
Even though this is not how things were supposed to go for the Bills, they remain optimistic.
"We're 2-and-2. That's all that matters," McKelvin said. "We just lost this game. It doesn't matter where I was two weeks ago, it doesn't matter. We lost this game. We're 2-and-2. It's a team game, we got to go into the next quarter and win it."
