Archives for December 3, 2012

‘Chan Gailey’s play calling was still questionable, but he did make one smart decision this week: He decided to run the football. A lot.’

‘Both Indianapolis (8-4) and Pittsburgh (7-5) got dramatic come-from-behind wins on the road and Cincinnati (7-5) held off the Raiders in Oakland. And, oh yeah, besides the Bills, Miami and the Jets are also 5-7 and of those six teams, only over the Dolphins does Buffalo have a tiebreaker advantage in the logjam battle for two wild-card spots.’

‘Nobody was complaining about the play-calling.’

‘”It was a real good game for us,” said special teams captain Corey McIntyre, who celebrated one of his two tackles in the fourth quarter with the “Lights Out” dance of teammate Shawne Merriman. “We just wanted to go out there and get better on our coverages. That was a goal for us this week, and we wanted to go out there and complete that goal.”‘

‘In some ways, a game like Sunday’s makes it even worse. Where has it been all year? How could the team that danced all over the Jags be struggling to stay in playoff contention in the sinkhole of mediocrity known as the AFC?’

‘”It’s been a rough few years. It has,” he said. “It gets very emotional on and off the field. It was pretty much the first time I ever had to deal with injuries, especially on this level. You see guys you came [into the NFL] with doing well, and you want to be part of that, especially when you know what you can bring.”‘

‘Coach Chan Gailey didn’t have an update on the condition of any of the players after the game, but Wood’s appeared to be the most serious.’

‘Chan Gailey didn’t need to do anything cute. With rain falling and winds gusting, the game plan screamed for repeated handoffs. Buffalo ran a season-high 46 times and threw a season-low 17 times. Defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt played the short routes on third down, a strategy that helped Buffalo stop Jacksonville on third down 10 out of 11 times and all three times on fourth down.’

‘A sparse crowd of 53,971 watched on an unseasonably warm, but wet and windy day and playing a weak opponent no doubt helped the struggling Bills win. With the victory, the Bills moved their record to 5-7 with four games to play while Jacksonville, coached by former Buffalo coach Mike Mularkey, fell to 2-10.’

‘By running with conviction, giving the ball 25 times to Fred Jackson and 14 more to C.J. Spiller, the Bills cruised. As entertaining as it was to watch, it magnified all those lost opportunities this season when Gailey chose to let the opponent dictate how an afternoon of football should be played, by their rules and not his.’

‘Again, even in a game where the Bills needed to run, Spiller was on the bench as much as he was on the field, especially in the red zone.’

‘The Bills coach didn’t have much of a chance to screw this one up because the weather dictated that he had to pound the ball on the ground, and the Bills responded with a season-best rushing output. Of course, there was the usual misuse of C.J. Spiller to debate.’

‘It’s still a criminal act that Gailey uses Spiller so little, but at least he showed some common sense this week and called more runs (46) than passes (17).’

‘”You still want to strike a balance, but once we found out that was the way to attack these guys and that we could, we stuck with it,” said Gailey. “The conditions made it more so. We had the lead – which helps. All of those things help.”‘

‘”We feel like we know our best players are in the running back room,” Jackson said. “So that’s how we want to approach the game. We have to go out and get started early, we feel like if we do that, then it gives us a good opportunity to win football games. If we continue to do this, we make plays, it is going to take a lot pressure off our offense.”‘