Hapless Bills Fan

https://www.newyorkupstate.com/buffalo-bills/2021/12/bills-micah-hyde-discusses-exchange-with-reporter-that-went-viral-after-patriots-loss.html I thought Matt Parrino's article here was pretty fair. Pointed out that there's been mixed reaction to the exchange, with some (Colin Cowherd) feeling it was a disrespectful phrasing and others (Mike Wibon, who?) saying Poyer and Hyde were "soft hearted" in how they handled it. I think this is a core part. Hyde and Poyer feel that by treating the press respectfully and by talking regularly and consistently to the press, win or lose, and by building relationships, they should be treated more respectfully by the press: Yes, This. Although I think Sully is so clueless that he actually for-reals thinks that's a "tough question" vs. some of the questions that were asked of Hyde and Harrison Phillips today that I think were actually much tougher (but respectful) questions - basically to the effect of "there have been several games now where you keep giving up long runs and big rushing yards, is it the same reason?"

Great post. Thank you for putting this up. Vernon Butler was also a 1st round pick (30th overall in 2016) So our offense has 1 (maybe 2, if you count Diggs) first-round picks Our defense has 7 first-round picks LOL at the "Vlad Ducasse has incriminating pictures of me" I used that train of thought myself in those days. I will say though, that there may be something to the "coaching" or "play design" notion as well. Other teams seem to get satisfactory play out of backup-caliber players on OL. NE was notorious for this for years. They would put a bunch of rookies or JAGs out there with Solder on one end and Vollmer on the other and it was like Brady had the freakin' Steel Curtain in front of him. Singletary was drafted #74 in the 3rd. Damien Harris was drafted #87 in the 3rd that same year. Clearly the Pats are getting a lot more out of him this year. Yet, his first two years and particularly his rookie season, you might have looked at the numbers and said for sure, he's the better back. There has to be something with the way these guys are being coached and schemed (IMO)

If they don't stop hitting the snooze button and wake up and play, they're gonna sleepwalk their way right out of the playoffs

I see that "soft" is gonna be one of those terms like "franchise QB" that turn out to mean whatever the author wants them to mean. To most of us, "hard" is not a synonym for disciplined, and "soft" is not a synonym for "undisciplined". A team can be disciplined and crisp in their play - routes, coverage etc - but yet play "soft" in that they give the opposing offense a cushion and don't get push off the LOS on offense or make receiving plays against "sticky" coverage on. A team can be undisciplined and sloppy in their play - sloppy in their routes, don't get their toes down, lots of penalties - etc etc - and yet be a hard, physical team that moves the DL around in space, stuffs the opponents OL, hits hard, and so forth. Not to break into your rant with some facts, but if it weren't a game to kick field goals, the Pats would have won it 8 to 7 instead of 14 to 10, since they kicked two field goals and we kicked one. So perhaps the reason McDermott couldn't fathom "This was the obvious game to never kick FGs or Converts" was because it wasn't true.

True on the medical experience I guess I was thinking could have lost control of the car for some reason - brake to avoid a kid or a squirrel, distracted, tire blew, whatever?

This source states that in 40 degree water, exhaustion or unconsciousness can result in as little as 30 minutes and survival time may be 60-90 minutes https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO Documents/5p/CG-5PC/CG-CVC/CVC3/notice/flyers/Cold_Water_Survival_Hypothermia.pdf Also sounds as though heart attack can occur on the initial shock of immersion

And yet, that one throw he made in the 1Q where Jonnu Smith made an incredible circus catch to haul it in - I have to believe that was quite calculated. It was a shot across Frazier's bow saying "don't sell out to stop the run on us, because next Q when we have the wind, we just might have our boy sling it - and we got the guys who can go up and get it, too." Aside: it really chaps my ass that we have guys who apparently can't catch a ball that hits them in the numbers or in the wrists, while the Patriots have several "circus act" pass receivers who have been helping Jones out all season.

In your OP write-up, you said it looked like it was on Allen. Not to pick a nit, but that's why I spoke up, was because I disagree with what you initially wrote and so did Peyton Manning (FWIW)

Played. Took 53% of the snaps which is an unusually high number considering Phillips, whom he usually rotates with, took 65%. I think he came back slower (he's older).

Correct. It's simply mathematically impossible to say we played run-run-pass against the Steelers when we passed 51 times and ran 25, of which 9 were Allen (mostly scrambles on intended pass plays. What happened against the Steelers is that Daboll was expecting "Blitzburgh" and decided he'd come out with a spread offense to beat the blitz and attack Pittsburgh's suspect secondary. We ran 4 or 5 WR almost half the snaps in that game! Knox only played half the snaps, our fullback and 2nd TE only played 2 snaps, and we didn't try putting in extra OLmen. Instead, Pittburgh brought pressure (successfully) with 3 or 4 guys but used post-snap changes and stunts that would have let us gash them big time were we running - but they had no fear of that. That left them with 7 or 8 defenders to blanket the field, bracket our guys, and take them away. Switching tactics and running a few more times with an extra blocker might have been helpful. Yep This is exactly correct. He also doesn't want teams with "meh" front 7 like Jacksonville to be able to dial up exotic pressure packages even "SuperOL" would struggle to adjust and block because they have no concern about being gashed by the run. Colts didn't leave themselves open like that, but they did utilize post-snap changes which we struggled to adjust for to bring pressure and to slow Josh's reads enough to get home. McDermott sees the field as a defensive coach. He understands that when a team has a gap in their game - for example the Ravens, who struggle in the passing game - you can dare them to beat you that way and really lock down and smother what they do well, which is run and short passes to the TE. So he understands how opposing DCs are seeing the Bills - as a spread offense even Jax can shut down, and as a team where running between the tackles is not to be feared and running outside is impossible unless Breida is in there.

I think this is a point worth examining. Certainly relative to Wrex Wryan, McDermott brought discipline and stability. But, there's something off there. His team seems to come into some games totally unprepared (Jags for example) and we don't seem sufficiently agile in making adjustments. We are 9th in the league at penalties against us with 84 penalties for 716 yds.

Again, I understand that POV. But they didn't force Moss to put his head down and run to his gap instead of trying to bounce outside, or Allen to take a sack for 9 yds instead of throwing it away, or Dawson Knox to not be able to catch a contested ball, thus making it 4th and 15 and a missed FG from 33 yds instead of a TD or a FG from 24 yds that might have gone in. Even the 33 yd FG might have been good if they'd have used the 3rd down to position it most favorably. I could go on but you get my point: NE played tough defense, but red zone woes by the Bills are far from unique to this game. And I don't place the Colts loss on the McKenzie fumble. It made it 24-7 at the half, true, but if our D could have made adjustments and stopped their run or at least slowed it, 3 scores is not too much to make up in a half. Putting it all on one player and one play is weak sauce. A missed FG after a sack/fumble that turned 1st and 10 at the Colts 36 into 2nd and 22 at the Colts 48 kept us from going in 24-10 with 2 scores to make up. McKenzie had nothing to do with that. 2 picks in the 2nd half plus another missed kick played their role as well. Maybe if we were scoring some points the D would have taken some heart, but with a 24-7 lead the Colts had every reason to keep running.

Again, I'd like to offer the alternative theory that to some extent, we stopped ourselves.

You guys. Don't let facts interrupt your narrative. OK, True Confession: it was my narrative too. But in fact, Breida got a carry in the 2nd Q, about 10 minutes after his fumble. Can't rule out though, that Breida's planned role got slashed because of that miscue.

I love these people who tell me "I'm not seeing the entire picture" because they have some narrative in their head and don't bother to go look at the box score. We had 2 drives in the 2nd Q. The first was sustained by a 16 yd pass to Gabe Davis for a 1st Then a Josh Allen scramble for 5 yds when his passing options were covered followed by 2 runs to convert a 1st down Then finally shut down by a Delay of Game on a pass play, a sack on a pass play, and an incomplete pass to Dawson Knox (which hit him on the numbers, and would have converted for a 1st) on a pass play. That's 5 probable intended pass plays out of 10 (counting the 5 yd run as an intended pass play where Josh liked what he saw to run) The second drive was run-pass-pass-punt. That's 2 pass plays out of 3. We actually hung our drives on the arm of our $258M man in the 2nd Q to a pretty astounding extent for a windy day, either through drops, coverage, execution, or penalties, we couldn't sustain. Keep in mind gusty winds affect the pass game just as much or more if you're with the wind as against it, for a QB like Josh. The wind can catch the ball and sail it or blow it to the side, causing incompletions or worse, turnovers.

How many times did the Bills pass in the first half? How many times did the Bills pass in the 2nd half? Thanks. Bear in mind that one of the Bills first half drives was curtailed by a fumble, and one of them was short because it started on the NWE 14 Of the 2nd half passes, how many were visibly or by the player's account affected by wind?

Agree. And on a windy night, Diggs is one of the best WR in the league, he can make circus one-hand catches, and he can't bring in a ball that hits him on the wrist? I don't wholly disagree with the people who finger Daboll as the source of the problems. I think he has been a source of the problems at times. I think when it comes to the run game, he has a "low interest rate", and honestly believed "who needs a run game when we have a Cadillac Passing System?" He talks about Week-to-Week opponent matchups, but the Bills had effectively become a Spread Offense, with or without his conscious intent and without (to my understanding) one of the key ingredients that make a spread offense work to whit, a speed threat or two at WR to push the safeties deep. And for whatever reason, we simply have not been disciplined enough on penalties and mistakes (smaller ones like dropping catchable passes or sacks, or drive ending ones like big sacks or turnovers) to make a dink-n-dunk long drive work. There has to be some coaching aspects there, in terms of how players are coached, and how practice is conducted. Bottom line: If you can't sustain a drive with a short passing game, you can't blow by defenders with an effective deep game, and you can't run, you can be stopped. So lacking all those things, is in part on coaches and the FO. But even so, we have had game plans good enough and play calling good enough THAT WE COULD HAVE WON EVERY GAME, without costly mistakes in execution by the players.

Agreed, and I lack confidence that McDermott sees that clearly. He seems to describe it as though it's a fluke. There's something about McDermott's/Frazier's defense that can be "had" and is susceptible to giving up these long runs. I don't know enough to pinpoint it, but I think it's that they ask the front 7 to be fairly aggressive, and count on the safeties to charge up and make a tackle. Which means if the offensive line can trap or wham block, or just plain old shove a guy out of the way the way Tyrell Dodson got pwned on a few plays, it can come down to Poyer and/or Hyde taking the perfect angle to "stop the bleeding". Which usually, they do, but when that's the plan and there are 46 run plays, Dr Poyer and Mr Hyde can be 98% successful and still give up a killer run. The thing is, though, our offense is supposed to be able to score more than 6 points or 10 points in game, in which case, a single long TD run shouldn't matter. Last year, we scored TDs on 60% of our red zone trips. Our defense is designed to work with that, not 2 out of 5 or 1 out of 4.

There's no need to call anyone who disagrees with you "incredibly football illiterate". That doesn't add to the discussion here. The thing is, in a couple of recent games (Jets I think) we actually DID show some creativity with the run game. We also operated from under center in the passing game with play action, and used the threat of a run game to set up the pass. Here's one article about the Jets game detailing how we did this: https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/jim-kubiak-how-play-action-fakes-helped-unleash-josh-allen-bills-offense/article_0f127800-46d7-11ec-ab1e-b76cbdd50fb5.html I don't know why Daboll didn't run more heavy formations OR try to create flow. He did use 2 TE (with Sweeney) 22% of the time, 13 snaps, and an extra lineman (Bates) 7% of the time, 4 snaps. Since we only had 55 offensive snaps that weren't punts, that's almost 1/3. IMHO Sweeney is ineffective - that play where Josh Allen sprawled on the turf then jumped up and tried to make a play? That was Sweeney getting shoved back into him immediately. I don't know why we didn't use him less, and Bates more, or go with an extra man more for better blocking, especially since we did run 25x (45%) Bass missed field goal was the result of the real killer - 1st and 6 on the NE 6, and neither a 1st down or a TD. Run for no gain, 9 yd sack, and an incomplete pass to Knox.

I feel certain that Daboll designed the play for Breida to mis-handle the exchange and fumble, for Knox to drop a pass that hit him in the numbers for a first down, for Diggs to fail to haul in a pass that hits him on the wrists, for delay of game penalty, for offensive holding and false start penalties at bad times etc etc

Williams played in the season finale against the Dolphins, primarily in the 2nd half. He looked good, but he was also playing against a shoulder-slumped team that was already heading for the bus, not the NE Patriots with the bit in their teeth.

This. Right on. However, in Beane's defense, I think that the coaches and he sat down after the game and decided that most of the problems with the run game were fixable with the personnel we had, with the addition of a speed back (Breida) and the assumption that between Ford, Feliciano, Boettger, Lamp, Douglas, and Bates we'd come up with 2 servicable guards. The problem with counting on Breida is that there just may be a reason he could never see the field in Miami and couldn't see the field the first part of this season - and I think we've just seen it - terrible terrible fundamental execution of a handoff, not getting his role in the play call correct whether it be blocking or executing a screen, etc.

Softness, Schmoftness. IMO what's soft and squishy is this analysis. We're not losing because we're "soft". We're losing because we shoot ourselves in the foot with stupid drive killing penalties and errors of execution - dropped passes and fumbles and sacks are the most visible errors of execution, but there are less-visible, similar errors of technique on defense.

Can you demonstrate factually that they waited until the second half or the 4th quarter to "start chucking the ball"? Also, what were the winds at the start of the game, vs. the start of the 4th Q?

Crass to follow my own post, but my intentions are good. The OP I'm responding to hypothesizes we lost because we didn't start throwing until late in the game (this despite all the evidence that passes, even Allen's passes, were being effected and he seemed to be throwing them with more "zip" which made them harder to haul in. Here is a resource that may help (or hurt) the argument: https://nflcdns.nfl.com/liveupdate/gamecenter/58696/BUF_Gamebook.pdf There's a first half summary about page 6. Note that "offensive plays" include punts, so you have to subtract that out to determine run pass balance.