Blogs

On the Phone with Gailey and Fitzpatrick

The Buffalo Bills enter Sunday’s road matchup with the San Francisco 49ers with plenty of admiration.

After reviewing San Francisco’s 34-0 shutout win over the New York Jets, the very same team that beat the Bills 48-28 at MetLife Stadium, Buffalo’s head coach shared his thoughts on the 49ers dominant win with Bay Area reporters on Wednesday.

“It was pretty impressive,” Gailey said. “They just whooped them in every way and fashion, whipped them in all three phases. It was as dominating as a performance as you’ll see.”

Gailey’s own team is coming off a blowout loss, a 52-28 home defeat to the New England Patriots. Buffalo led 21-7 at one point, but gave up six-straight touchdowns in a one-sided second half performance.

The loss, however, won’t stick with Buffalo entering a key non-conference road game.

“You give them a 24-hour rule and hope they get their mind ready for the next game,” Gailey said of his message to Bills players. “You never know, but you hope you’ve got the right kind of people that understand that our destiny is in our hands. Now, you’ve got to go do something about it.”

According to Gailey, Buffalo will prepare for all of San Francisco’s weapons, even second-string quarterback Colin Kaepernick who rushed five times for 50 yards, including his first-career rushing touchdown last week.

“It’s a lot (to prepare for),” Gailey said. “That puts a lot of stress on your defense to prepare for that. He’s done a good job of running what they put in and they’ve done a good job of keeping it varied so it changes all the time.”

The Bills will utilize backup quarterbacks Tyler Thigpen and Brad Smith as scout-team quarterbacks to copy Kaepernick’s running ability. Buffalo’s own quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, threw for 350 yards last week, but added four costly interceptions.

The Bills quarterback aims to have a short memory this week and said he was pleased with Wednesday’s practice session.

“It was good to get back to work, a fresh week, another tough challenge,” said the quarterback who joined Joe Ferguson and Jim Kelly as the only quarterbacks in Bills history to throw multiple touchdowns in the team’s opening four games. “We’re putting it behind us and moving on. We took last week’s game hard, it was a tough loss for us, especially the fashion that it happened but we’re looking forward to this week.”

Fitzpatrick called the 49ers a “tough team.” He said the Bills aren’t familiar with them like other AFC opponents, but everything they’ve seen on film holds up to San Francisco’s budding reputation.

“It’s going to be a great challenge for us offensively, because from the first snap to the last they play hard and they have a lot of talent over there.”

Click here to listen to Gailey’s conference call

Click here to listen to Fitzpatrick’s conference call