For the second straight week, the Buffalo Bills offense was stymied and restrained in a meaningful game.

In the team’s Week 9 affair with the New York Jets, sacks were an issue and kept quarterback Tyrod Taylor in a box that forced him against his Achilles heel – the pocket. Against the Saints, Taylor and running back LeSean McCoy had a highlight reel that could end after the first drive of the game. Beyond that point, frustration and embarrassment set in at New Era Field.

198 yards – the yardage Buffalo contributed on Sunday that was dwarfed by the 482 of the New Orleans Saints. If you don’t count Nathan Peterman’s statistics, Tyrod Taylor contributed a whopping 83 yards of offense through over three-quarters of football.

In consecutive weeks, the Bills were out-coached and were at the mercy of the opposing team early on. A major component of the back-to-back losses was the offensive game plan. Buffalo offensive coordinator Rick Dennison struggled to even sleep after the pathetic output in Week 10 and called the Bills offensive line coach, Juan Castillo, to try and formulate a new plan.

“We’re still trying to iron out the detail and the whole thing, to make sure we know what we do best,” Dennison said while speaking to the media on Monday. “That’s what we’re trying to work on right now; that’s why I called Juan last night after the game. We need to iron out what we do best and then we’ll go from there.”

What Buffalo did best the past two seasons was run the football. The Bills finished first in rushing offense in both 2015 and 2016, but have struggled in Dennison’s zone blocking scheme. The team is currently 16th in rushing offense.

Sunday’s game came to a point where Buffalo was forced to abandon the run as the game became out of reach.

Dennison spoke with the media on why he called offensive line coach Juan Castillo and if this is normal for him to do.

“I may not call him after a game, but I wasn’t going to sleep anyway, so it didn’t matter. I just had it in my mind that I wanted to talk to him, took a break and talked to him about it. Just make sure we’re focused on it today, and, we met, we’re going to continue to work on that.”

For Bills fans, the morale is at its lowest point of the season. The team has taken the Bills Mafia on the worst roller coaster ride imaginable and incredibly somehow, someway, Buffalo is still squarely in the playoff race. At 5-4, the Bills own 6th place in the AFC and would make the playoffs if the season ended after Week 10.

The road ahead for Buffalo is tricky and may require more and more of these meetings of the minds between Dennison and Castillo in order for the Bills to pull themselves up. Next week the team will face the Los Angeles Chargers in a game that is no guarantee. The Chargers are already a favorite to win after Buffalo fell flat on their face in the last two weeks. One can only hope that whatever Dennison and Castillo talked about will fix the mess that is the Bills’ offense.