'TNF' takeaways: Josh Allen dominates as Bills roll over Lions in stadium debut

The Buffalo Bills opened the new Highmark Stadium on Thursday night with a dominating 41-31 win over the Detroit Lions, improving them to 2-0 on the season.

Here are some takeaways from a game that was not as close as the final score would indicate. 

Key takeaway: Lions look nothing like Super Bowl contenders

We will get to the Bills in a minute. But the Lions aspect of this game is eye-opening because they do not look right.

Even though the Lions entered Thursday's game coming off a Week 1 win against the New Orleans Saints, there was nothing overly pretty about it as they let a 21-0 second-half lead slip away and needed a lot of big breaks to go their way to win. 

The defense was especially bad in the second half, and it was not much better on Thursday.

The Lions allowed Buffalo's offense to score a touchdown on its first four possessions of the game, and made only two actual stops the entire night.

One of those stops was right before halftime.

What makes it even worse is if you go back to second half of their Week 1 game against the Saints, the Lions defense played 17 series over nearly seven quarters of football (including overtime in Week 1).

The results of this possessions:

• 10 touchdowns
• two punts
• One field goal
• One missed field goal
• Two takeaways
• One end of game kneel down

That is not good enough, and it is not going to get the Lions back to where they want to be.

Going back to the 2025 season, after starting that season with wins in four of their first five games the Lions are now just 6-8 in their past 14 games and have allowed at least 30 points in six of those games.

The Lions entered this season with the expectation of bouncing back after a disappointing 2025 season that saw them finish in last place in the NFC North and out of the playoffs. It is a long season and they still have 15 games remaining, but they are not doing anything to justify that expectation through two games. 

Player of the Game: Josh Allen, quarterback, Buffalo Bills

There was only one choice for this.

Allen was at his absolute best from the very first drive of this game and completely took over the game.

He completed 20-of-31 passes for 248 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions, while also rushing 14 times for 69 yards and two additional touchdowns.

There was simply no stopping his arm or his legs. 

He delivered an emphatic statement on the game's opening drive by rushing four times for 40 yards, capping it off with a one-yard quarterback sneak for the first official touchdown in the new stadium.

Play of the Game

After opening the game with a touchdown run, Allen followed that up on the Bills' second drive by finding a wide-open Joshua Palmer to give them a two-score lead.

The Lions never got any closer on the scoreboard.