The Buffalo Bills recovered two fumbles committed by Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud en route to earning a 36-31 win at the Texans this past Sunday.
Buffalo leaving Texas with the victory has made it somewhat easy to forget that Bills running back James Cook III nearly gifted the Texans with a turnover when he lost control of the football early into what became Buffalo’s game-winning scoring drive. While speaking with reporters on Tuesday, first-year Bills head coach Joe Brady revealed how Cook responded to that miscue.
James Cook III was mad at himself after near catastrophe
“He was p—,” Brady said of Cook, per Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk. “I talked to him on the plane. He knows how important he is to our football team. He understands that when he has the ball, he has all of our jobs on the line. He was not happy after that. Even through the win, we’ve got to clean that up.”
Cook also probably doesn’t love that he was largely held in check by a menacing Houston defense, as he tallied just 57 rushing yards on 13 carries. He also caught three of four targets for 12 yards.
Joe Brady credits hero for collecting James Cook III fumble
The Texans would have had an opportunity to possibly run the clock out had Buffalo offensive lineman O’Cyrus Torrence not recovered Cook’s fumble with roughly three minutes left in the Week 1 game. Instead, Bills quarterback Josh Allen was able to later connect with Joshua Palmer for what became a game-winning 34-yard touchdown pass.
“We put the ball on the ground there,” Brady said about Cook’s fumble. “If our offensive line isn’t doing the little things we ask and run to the football, and [Torrence] doesn’t recover that football, and we end up losing that game, a lot of people will point to the fact that we fumbled. And we did fumble. It can’t be just because we won the football game that, ‘Oh, that didn’t happen. We had no turnovers.'”
Cook and Co. will look to clean things up when the Bills host the 1-0 Detroit Lions on Thursday night. As of Wednesday morning, DraftKings Sportsbook had Buffalo as a 5.5-point home favorite for that game.
