Josh Allen racked up 331 total yards and two touchdowns, while Tyler Bass drilled a 45-yard field goal with 1:55 remaining in overtime after Greg Rousseau blocked a field goal attempt, lifting the Buffalo Bills to a thrilling 37-34 victory over the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday night.

Allen passed for 210 yards and rushed for 121 more for the Bills (4-1), who rallied to win a frantic game befitting the teams with the NFL’s last two MVPs at quarterback.

The Bills appeared to be in trouble after James Cook fumbled early in OT, but Allen got another chance – and he finally won an overtime game for the first time in his career while besting Matthew Stafford, who passed for 383 yards and three touchdowns.

“That’s the beautiful thing about football: You get another drive,” Allen said. “You get another game. All you can do is keep moving forward. You’re hoping someone on defense or special teams can make a play, and that’s what happened. Greg Rousseau made a play.”

Stats leaders:

Buffalo Bills

• Passing: Josh Allen, 12/19, 210 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT
• Rushing: Josh Allen, 10 carries, 121 yards, 1 TD
• Receiving: Khalil Shakir, 3 catches, 80 yards

Los Angeles Rams

• Passing: Matthew Stafford, 40/54, 383 yards, 3 TDs
• Rushing: Kyren Williams, 16 carries, 49 yards, 1 TD
• Receiving: Puka Nacua, 17 catches, 138 yards, 1 TD

Cook scored his second touchdown with 1:39 left in regulation for Buffalo, but Kyren Williams scored on a one-yard surge with four seconds left to force overtime. The Bills began by driving deep into Rams territory, but Aaron Donald recovered Cook’s fumble after Nate Landman punched it out.

Stafford drove the Rams to the Buffalo 30, but Harrison Mevis missed his second field goal attempt of the night when Rousseau got a piece of it.

“The kicking game, with our PAT, field goal [unit] – not even close to good enough,” Rams coach Sean McVay said. “It cost us the game tonight. I’m going to evaluate everything.”

Allen then made scrambles of 19 and 13 yards before rookie Bills coach Joe Brady elected to try the field goal on second down with nearly two minutes still on the clock. Bass blasted his kick and ran away to celebrate before the officials signalled it good.

“The confidence I had in T-Bass was, ‘Hey, 45 yards, he’s going to make this kick,'” Brady said.

Allen got more than 100 of his yards rushing on scrambles, repeatedly escaping the pocket and rendering useless the Rams’ tenacious secondary coverage.

“When it’s there, it’s there,” Allen said. “I don’t want to make a living on that, I understand that, but I do know how much of a backbreaker that can be on a defense when you think you’re in pretty good coverage. I felt like there was some room to manoeuvre there and keep the chains moving.”

Cook rushed for 111 yards before a costly fumble added to the Bills’ recent ball-security concerns. Buffalo improved to 4-1, marking its sixth 4-1 start in the past eight seasons.

Puka Nacua hauled in a career-high 17 receptions for 138 yards and a touchdown for the Rams (2-3), who have started below 500 after five games for the fourth time in five seasons.

Rams head coach Sean McVay was furious with another special-teams collapse and also questioned his own decision to call a conservative play on third-and-5 before Harrison Mevis missed a long field-goal attempt in overtime.

“I wish I would have had a better play call and gone for it, got it tighter,” McVay said. “I’m sick right now with myself, and I’m so proud of that group. This is the tough part of sports, but I’m proud of that team. I’m proud of the way we battled, and I’m sick that we came up short.”

Buffalo’s superior special-teams play and Josh Allen’s relentless effort proved decisive as the Bills edged the Rams in another high-scoring shootout. Their previous meeting in December 2024 also produced a classic, with the teams combining for 902 total yards in Los Angeles’ 44-42 victory.

After Davante Adams hauled in his second touchdown catch with 7:14 remaining, capping a game that featured six consecutive lead changes, Allen led Buffalo on a 71-yard drive, using two scrambles to exploit the Rams’ defence.

James Cook then scored the go-ahead touchdown. Matthew Stafford responded by completing six of seven passes to move Los Angeles to the Buffalo 1-yard line, where the Rams opted against using a timeout before Kyren Williams punched in the tying score.

Adams’ second touchdown also brought him level with Larry Fitzgerald for the sixth-most touchdown receptions in NFL history, with 121. Blake Corum added a rushing touchdown, while tight end Tyler Higbee caught five passes for 83 yards.

For Buffalo, Keon Coleman caught Allen’s only touchdown pass of the night.

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Welcome to The Championship Catch-up, a new Sky Sports column in which Andy Hinchcliffe rounds up some of the key stories from the second tier. This week:

• Soaring Swansea City lead the way
• Burnley finally get their first win
• Saints draw line under Eckert saga

Swansea City are deserved Championship leaders

Swansea have been stronger than we thought they’d be this season. It seems that less is more with them because last season Zan Vipotnik scored 23 goals and really carried the team.

This season, he’s only scored a couple of goals and hasn’t played that many games. They’ve shown now, again, that without a star striker they over-rely on for goals, they’re more of a team, both defensively and importantly going forward as well.

You look at them from back to front, they’ve got one of the best goalkeepers in the division and one of the most stubborn, strongest defences in the division. If you’re going to be successful, certainly in the Championship, that really does help.

They’re not a defensive team, they’re a team that defend well. They dominate the ball, they control games and they’ve got a variety of goalscorers now as well. They’re not reliant on just that one centre-forward. Adam Idah’s got four goals, so he’s kind of the main threat, but it’s still not just him and nobody else.

The way they play enables four, five or six players to get into goalscoring positions and score goals over the course of the season. You’re better being that type of team than having that reliance on one central striker. If he gets injured or he’s out of form, things can get really tricky.

They deserve to be where they are right now, and we’re going to learn a lot more this week about whether they can stay the course. They head to Millwall on Tuesday night, then host West Ham on Saturday.

Coaches and clubs are looking at squad depth now. You can’t just be reliant on a few players, even on six or seven players, and keep hoping game in and game out that those six or seven players produce and get the job done for you.

For Swansea, there are maybe five or six attacking players who can change the course of a game.

Every defence they play against isn’t really sure how Swansea are going to line up. You probably know how they’re going to play in terms of their set-up, energy, urgency, pressing game and passing game. But who’s going to be in the team and who’s going to impact the game? I’d much rather have one problem than four or five coming at me.

Vitor Matos has done a brilliant job. You listen to players playing under these coaches talk about them, and Ben Cabango was saying this team will run through brick walls for the gaffer.

I think that drives players on even more.

Burnley get off the mark with a thumping win at Watford

Looking at Burnley’s overall performances, they weren’t performing like a bottom-three team. They were probably around mid-table, but for the club Burnley are, what they’re looking to achieve and the players they’ve got, mid-table performances in this league aren’t really acceptable. They’re much better than that.

They’ve had the big change since relegation. We thought Craig Bellamy was coming in, but that didn’t happen, and Nicky Hayen came in. He and the players have got to get to an understanding, and that can take a little bit of time.

Playing Watford, you’re never really sure what you’re going to get. They’re a struggling team at the moment, but they can suddenly produce. I never expected Burnley to win that game, so to win it so comfortably was impressive.

Looking at all the stats from the game, the expected goals, they thoroughly deserved to win. Their xG was three times higher than Watford’s. It wasn’t a case of scoring four goals from four shots and being lucky to win. It was a game they dominated.

You look at the personnel and the teamsheet and think that’s a team that should win a lot of Championship games. Not necessarily 4-0, but they should be winning Championship games.

Now they’ve won a game, I guarantee the training ground will be a totally different place. Looking at the experience and quality they’ve got, I wouldn’t be surprised if they started to put a bit of a run together.

Let’s see how they back that up during midweek and in that big game against Wolves on Friday night.

Saints win derby against toothless Pompey – and draw line under Eckert saga

The situation rumbled on far too long with Tonda Eckert. I still have to say that I, and most people looking at the situation, were surprised there wasn’t some kind of enforced lay-off when you consider the bans that are given out for other things.

I think the FA commission probably looked at it and thought they’d thrown Southampton out of the play-offs and imposed a points deduction. That is unprecedented and a massive punishment for the club and the coach. Maybe they thought piling more agony on Eckert’s shoulders wasn’t what was needed.

The decision drew a line under it, and then Southampton’s performance against Portsmouth drew a second line under it completely.

Eckert showed in that game what a talented coach he is. How he managed it and how he coached his team through it.

We got back to talking about football and him as a coach, rather than someone who did something he has admitted was wrong and that shouldn’t happen in the English game.

He showed why Southampton were so desperate to keep him. They know they’ve got a good guy and a good coach there. Why would you want to get rid of someone you know can do the job? His record and numbers are outstanding, as is the quality of football they play.

From a Portsmouth perspective, the goal they gave away was an absolute shocker. It was a dreadful goal to concede. Collectively and individually, it was so avoidable, yet they didn’t defend properly.

They haven’t conceded an awful lot of goals, with only 11 so far, but it’s the kind of goals they’re giving away. They’re soft goals, and you can’t afford to do that if you want to get anywhere in the Championship.

John Mousinho did his best, looking at how many attacking players he sent on to try to influence things and change the game for Portsmouth after the Southampton red card. Time and again, they got into promising positions, but absolutely nothing came from it.

The main criticism will be that they were toothless. How can they not have a shot on target when they have the extra man and all those attacking players on? It just didn’t happen.

They also lost the game because of the goal they gave away, which should never have happened. Losing a big derby is horrendous anyway, but how they lost it will be so disappointing for Portsmouth when they sit down, watch the game and have a debrief.

England’s Harry Smith knows his side head into the Rugby League World Cup as underdogs, but that is doing little to dampen their belief. England are in Australia with one goal; to win the tournament.

Smith was part of the England side that suffered a 3-0 Ashes series defeat to Australia, with the world’s No 1 side proving too strong across all three Tests.

Since then, there has been a change in the England setup, with Shaun Wane making way for Brian McDermott. The former Leeds Rhinos head coach has arrived with a clear belief that England can find a style of play capable of troubling – and ultimately beating – the likes of Australia.

With that in mind, he believes it was the game plan, rather than the playing group, that was the issue in The Ashes. Now, it is up to many of those same players, particularly in the spine, to play in a way McDermott believes can win them games, starting with their opening match against Tonga in Perth on October 17.

“It is a proud moment for myself and my family, a first World Cup so I am really looking forward to it,” Smith told Sky Sports.

“It is my first time travelling abroad with my country so I am looking forward to it but us pale lads, like me and Zach Eckersley, we might be struggling so we will need plenty of sun cream.

“Speaking to Brian [McDermott] as a spine and also individually, he felt like we missed quite a few opportunities in The Ashes where we were too deep on the add line and not ready to play.

“He wants us to take every play as an opportunity to score so I feel like that is what he is going to push for, especially when you are playing against Australia and New Zealand, those really good defensive teams.

“You don’t get many chances to score so when that arrives and opens up you have to take it.”

After Tonga, England face France and Papua New Guinea as they look to progress through to the semi-finals.

Australia are the firm favourites for the tournament, but England begin with a familiar foe in Tonga in what is a crucial opening clash.

Smith played for England when they last beat Tonga and knows they will face plenty of size as they get their campaign off to a tough start.

Despite that, there is a belief within the England camp that they are good enough to go all the way and become world champions.

“There is a lot of big lads there, especially for people like me. It is exciting, you want to start the tournament well,” Smith added.

“We start against a good team, we are looking forward to that challenge.

“I managed to play against them over here and it was really exciting, a really close game.

“Hopefully we can do the job again and get the win.

“Brian [McDermott] has pushed from the start that we are going out there to win the World Cup.

“From our first meeting he has said that we are here to win. That is the mentality you want and you need.

“Even though we are not the favourites, you need to go in with that mentality or there is no point showing up.”