Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills kicked off Week 2 in the NFL with another spectacular performance on offense.
Allen had five touchdowns total and the Bills beat the Detroit Lions 41-31 on Thursday night.
After the league tied a record for points in an opening week — an average of 49.4 per game — the Bills and Lions put up 72.
Why are scores soaring?
“I can’t (explain it) because typically it’s like the other way — offenses are trying to get going and defenses can be ahead,” Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles said. “I watched some around-the-league stuff, and it felt like guys just were making plays. There (were) a ton of plays being made after the catch, but you bring it up — defenses are so limited with what they can do based on the rules (before) you get to live tackling, and it’s a different ballgame.”
Poor tackling contributes to more scoring. Tackling is poor because teams don’t practice it as often.
Contact is prohibited throughout offseason workouts per the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union.
There’s a five-day acclimation period at the beginning of training camp. Teams are limited to 16 padded practice days during training camp, down from 28 under the previous CBA. Even during padded practices, there isn’t live tackling every play. Teams can’t have no more than three consecutive days of padded practices during three of the five camp weeks and no more than two consecutive days during the other two weeks.
Long gone are the days when teams used to hold two-a-day full-contact practices in camp.
“We don’t bring players to the ground. I mean, we’re pros at the end of the day. But we’ve all played football before. We all should be able to know how to tackle,” Texans All-Pro edge rusher Will Anderson Jr. said.
Houston’s defense, which was No. 1 last year in fewest yards allowed, was shredded by Allen and the Bills last week.
"Coaches put us in a lot of positions to be able to get guys down on the ground and finish the right way. There’s really no excuse. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t play in preseason or not. When the ball is snapped and you’re in front of the TV and you’re a professional football player, you have to go out there and perform the way you need to perform,” Anderson said.
Denver, which allowed the third-fewest points in 2025, couldn’t stop Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in a 31-10 loss on Monday night.
“I think it just all goes in toward effort,” Broncos two-time All-Pro cornerback Patrick Surtain II said. “Tackling is one of those things where you have to be intentional with it. You have to bring pads, feet and you have to wrap your arms. I just feel like we were assuming that the ball carrier was going to go down at the moment rather than finishing at the end of the day.”
The Texans have another tough challenge this week facing Joe Burrow and the Bengals. Coach DeMeco Ryans won’t stand for another terrible effort.
“The expectation for us defensively is for everybody to improve. Last Sunday wasn’t good enough, not from any one position,” Ryans said. “We play collectively as a defense and when we play together and everybody’s doing their job, being where they’re supposed to be, doing what they’re supposed to do, we play really good defensive football."
With so many teams holding players out of preseason games, joint practices have become the best way to get ready for the regular season. Still, it’s a controlled environment, quarterbacks aren’t getting hit and nobody wants to risk injury.
The first couple weeks of the season are an extension of training camp. Players on offense and defense are still acclimating to the physical nature of the game.
It used to be an advantage for the defense because offenses didn’t get enough reps to get in sync. Seventeen games in, it’s the other way around.
Of course, Allen and the Bills and Jared Goff and the Lions run two of the league’s most dynamic offenses. They make even the best defenses seem pedestrian.
See AP’s full NFL coverage here
Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen (17) scores a rushing touchdown as Detroit Lions' Levi Onwuzurike defends during the second half of an NFL football game in Orchard Park, N.Y., Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes )
Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen (17) runs the ball against the Detroit Lions during the first half of an NFL football game in Orchard Park, N.Y., Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
Russians on Friday began three days of voting in the country’s first wartime parliamentary election, which features virtually no opposition and is all but certain to secure the Kremlin’s political dominance.
Authorities spread the election over the weekend in a bid to boost turnout among the 111 million eligible voters and even allowed electronic balloting. Polls opened Friday and will close Sunday.
The Kremlin wants the parliamentary election — the first since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — to underline public support for the war and give a veneer of legitimacy to its action. It has sought to avoid any political risks by stamping out even the slightest sign of dissent.
“Your choice and resolve will once again demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our fighters, that we are a united people, bound by shared values, historical memory, and love for the Motherland,” President Vladimir Putin told the nation before the vote.
Russian state news agencies reported Putin voted online Friday and released a video of him in front of a computer screen.
The main Kremlin party, United Russia, is all but assured to retain its overwhelming control of the lower house, the State Duma. Several smaller parties of the “systemic opposition” that vote in sync with the government on all key issues also are expected to retain their presence.
Voters cast two separate ballots, filling half of the Duma’s 450 seats by selecting political parties listed on the ballot. The rest are contested in single-seat constituencies, with voters choosing individual candidates.
Russians interviewed by The Associated Press expressed different expectations from the election.
Dmitry Kirillin in Moscow said earlier this week that he would like “to see some changes. To see a different party” at the helm. But Muscovite Alexander Vertukhin believed “what United Russia and the communists are doing is quite sufficient; their platforms cover everything.”
Speaking at a Moscow polling station Friday, pensioner Galina Vavilova said she thought ending the war in Ukraine “is the main thing, of course.”
“That is the most important thing right now. Everyone wants peace, that’s what it comes down to. So that our guys are safe and sound,” she said.
Another pensioner, Lyudmila Kalinina, wished for life “to stabilize for the better” and for “an end to the big divide between the ultra-rich and the extremely poor, because, after all, many people don't live a very sweet life.”
Vladimir Chubarev, a 72-year-old professor, expressed hope “for all the important initiatives our government is undertaking to succeed,” adding: “And, of course, for victory.”
The liberal Yabloko party, the only registered political entity that dared to criticize the war, was removed from the ballot last month by Russia’s Supreme Court, and only has a few dozen candidates in the single-constituency races. Additionally, some anti-war politicians have been imprisoned or forced to flee abroad ahead of the campaign.
The election follows a summer of Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on oil refineries that triggered a widespread fuel crisis. Warehouses belonging to online retailers Wildberries and Ozon also were attacked. The damage has exacerbated problems for the Russian economy and brought the war home for millions.
For the first time, the parliamentary election includes residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed after the war began, but still doesn't fully control. Voting also is taking place in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Voters dropped their ballots in a box at one polling station in the Russian-held part of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine as an armed Russian soldier stood nearby and watched.
Authorities in Kyiv denounced the voting in the Russian-held areas as illegal and urged foreign governments and international organizations not to recognize the election, warning Ukrainians that taking part in organizing the balloting could carry criminal liability.
European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand also called the voting in Russian-held regions “illegal” and said the European Union condemns it.
“These so-called elections represent yet another blatant violation of international law. The European Union does not, and will never recognize either the holding of these, so-called elections, sham elections, in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine or their results," he said.
Wigand said the way the elections are held “underscores the continued and deepening erosion of democracy in Russia," and that the Kremlin “deprives voters in Russia of a genuine choice about the future of their country.”
He also noted that Russia decided not to invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, disregarding its commitments. He vowed the EU will continue to support Russian civil society organizations, human rights groups and independent media.
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Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.
Voters cast ballots at a polling station during Russia's parliamentary election, in the Russian-controlled part of the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
Russian President Vladimir Putin votes online in the parliamentary election, at the Kremlin in Moscow, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Voters leave voting booths during the parliamentary election in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026, with an image of Soviet novelist Valentin Pikul on the wall. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
Voters use an electronic voting system in the parliamentary election in Moscow, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov)
A voter holds her ballot prior to voting in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
Russia's Security Council Deputy Chairman and the head of the United Russia party Dmitry Medvedev casts a ballot in the parliamentary election in Moscow, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (Ekaterina Shtukina, Sputnik, Pool Photo via AP)
A voter casts a ballot in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
Voters cast their ballot for the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
A woman leaves a voting booth to cast her ballot in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
A woman walks to cast her ballot in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
A woman casts her ballot in the parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026. (AP Photo)
