Sure, you can shrug off preseason box scores. But when your team sleepwalks through a primetime dress rehearsal in Chicago, it’s hard not to hear the alarms. Sunday night wasn’t really about Caleb Williams flashing on the opening drive; it was about Buffalo’s lifeless response. This was not just about a loss. The Bills put out the kind of flat effort that makes a head coach want to grab the fire hose.

Oh, and you just know Sean McDermott didn’t exactly bite his tongue. After the game, he came off more frustrated than forward-looking. That’s rare for him. This was meant to be an audition for depth pieces, but instead? It was a horror show of complacency. And his message landed like a locker-room subpoena.

“Tonight was a chance for us to evaluate other players on our roster and keep our starters healthy as well. Was looking forward to guys stepping up and I didn’t sense that. Not up to our standard, no matter whoever is out there. I don’t feel like effort (was a problem), but when you lose the way we did, it’s probably a little bit of everything,” he said. And if you watched the game, this is probably the nicest way he could describe what happened.

You can feel it, tonight was his breaking point. The Bills dropped to 0-2 in the preseason, getting outscored 72–25 across two games. And yeah, August records don’t mean much, but that kind of lopsided point differential is not the energy you want from a team that’s supposed to be chasing a Super Bowl.

And if tonight was about earning trust, too many Bills handed it right back unopened. Preseason’s supposed to be when bubble guys pop and second-year pros show they’re more than just offseason workout clips. Instead, Buffalo rolled out a performance that screamed “sloppy” in permanent ink. The score is one thing, but the real story is McDermott basically daring his locker room to own the tape.

And he didn’t even need to single anybody out. The scoreboard did that job for him. Buffalo got boat-raced 38–0, and sure, Josh Allen never touched the field. The passing work went to Mitch Trubisky (7-of-13 for 55 yards), Mike White (4-of-11 for 54), and Shane Buechele (1-of-4 for 11).

But the standard McDermott preaches isn’t a “starters only” deal. He wants everyone to step up. Starters or complimentary pieces. Tonight, no one did. And that’s concerning going into week 1. Let’s look at exactly what went wrong.

What went wrong for the Bills against the Bears

Let’s start with the basics. Buffalo got shut out 38–0 and outgained 528–180. That’s not just a rough period; it was a full-fledged fourth-quarter identity crisis. Chicago snapped 83 plays to Buffalo’s 43 and doubled them up in time of possession, 39:12 to 20:48. That’s how you get run out of the building in a preseason game that’s supposed to be about equal rotations.

But the situational football made it look even uglier. The Bills went 0-for-8 on third down, 0-for-2 on fourth, and never even sniffed the red zone. 0 for 0. Add in 10 penalties for 96 yards, and it was failure piling on failure. Hard to judge bubble guys when the whole operation keeps stumbling over itself. Absolutely nothing went right.

Sure, context is important. Josh Allen and a bunch of starters sat. But the backups still have to run a functional offense. Instead, Bills quarterbacks went a combined 12-of-28 for just 103 net passing yards and took two sacks, with the only turnover coming on a Frank Gore Jr. fumble. If the backups cannot put down a single TD, that’s something to worry about.

Just look at the Bears. They looked crisp and organized. Beyond Caleb Williams’ early touchdown, they gashed Buffalo for 171 rushing yards and went 9-of-16 on third down, slowly suffocating a defense that couldn’t get off the field. It was four quarters of stacking clean, winning snaps.

There will obviously be more intensity in a league game. But if you’re losing 38-0? You cannot just magically pull off a win when the real things comes around.