Hapless Bills Fan

Ha. *****in. Ha.

Again, Joe B did this. I put the chart up in another thread, search on me as an author and “sets” or something as a search term BadOlBills also gave part of Joe B’s data in text form Spoiler, the 3 WR sets were vastly more productive than the 4 WR sets, and the 5 WR sets were overall negative yards.

Yes, we did run 4 and 5 WR sets at significantly higher rate than last year. Last year 4 WR set: 15% per Sharp Football Stats. 5 WR sets 1%. Yesterday 4 WR set 33% and 5 WR sets 11.5%, per Joe B/Athletic, which as Joe B points out is 45.5% of the plays. And a lot of the 4 WR sets were functionally 5 WR sets because they split Singletary out wide.

Doyle is, from what I saw in preseason and reports from training camp, in NO WAY ready to take on the role of swing tackle at this point. Brown MIGHT be OK as RT. It should be recalled that when Williams was asked to move inside to guard for 8 games (RG and LG) by the Panthers in 2019, he kind of sucked, leading to him being available for the Bills at a bargain price for RT last season. It might be injury recovery, but all tackles do not make great guards. I think after some mucking about, the Bills might go back to the OL that finished the last games of the season last year, which was Dawkins/Boettger/Morse/Feliciano/Williams. But they’re going to give Ford more than 1 game to show whether he can get ‘er done.

In my view from the network, both Ford and Boettger were getting their butts handed to them yesterday. But after swapping, the Bills settled in on Ford. That can’t have been due to run blocking since we weren’t running.

Just a point that an extra tackle, or even extra blockers, don’t necessarily solve the problems we were having yesterday. There were either scheme issues (where the protections were no longer appropriate for late shifts in the line just before the snap), or we just had 2 guys getting beat - when they rush 3 and get home, that means 2 of 3 guys are getting doubled, and we were still losing. And there was at least one play where Singletary was in to block, and standing there going “who I’m supposed to block?” while Ingram was whizzing by on his left, having beaten Dawkins. We need to take blocking seriously and that means Moss > Singletary > Breida. I have no idea what you mean by “Ryan Bates got the job over Ike Boettger”; Bates is our backup center and IOL.

I thought the worst guy on the line yesterday was Dawkins. When you re-watch, be sure to consider whether some Feliciano problems are actually Dawkins problems or Morse problems. I’m not saying they are, but that’s a thing that often gets missed.

Real QB all hang onto the ball when they’re spin cycled by top DLmen

Certainly if Allen hits a couple deep balls it’s a different game When 3 or 4 defenders are in the backfield almost immediately, misdirection is hard. We tried a couple of those trick plays early IIRC and they were blown up in the backfield for a loss each time. Crude, but IMO it may be essentially correct. What improvement do you think Beane will be able to make at this point?

Well, there's a reason why the Bills ran (1,1) the most last season. But if we're going to keep a running back and a TE in to block....it had better be one who can actually block, like Moss. I assume you were at the game and had a more consistent viewpoint, but in a couple plays that stood out to me (like 4th and 8 where Dawkins got put on skates), Singletary looked clueless. Were there plays you noted where Singletary was in to block and did so capably? Joe B already has a detailed article up on The Athletic with a lot of data I don't remember the set on that deep pass to Sanders, but BadOl has a point that to buy the QB time for a deep pass to develop, max protect may be needed. There may have been some missed opportunities on those 9 5wr or those 26 4wr plays or those 2 2 wr plays that would have swung the stats. But Joe B. is right - objectively, the results from 5wr and 4wr scheme suggest that, as Daboll has said about "balance", it wasn't working, and when it's not working they need to do more of the this and less of that. So you might want to re-think that "defend to the death" policy. Unless you're actually Brian Daboll, in which case you're just explaining why we saw what we saw. In which case, you might still want to re-think that "defend to the death" thing. (1,1) was our bread-and-butter last year and it may be this year as well.

I was thinking about that. Kind of strange comment from Beasley. According to something posted elsewhere from Joe B, we ran 33% 4 WR sets. Theoretically, if they were rushing 3, I suppose they could double everyone. I thought Allen felt the rush and moved around pretty neatly. But he was really being chased around. Normally when he moves to evade, his OL follow the play and at least get in the way. I didn't see a lot of that. Beasley said: Maybe they need to lose some confidence. If they haven't put in the work, it's misplaced. Maybe they need to stop with the 40 point expectation and just try their best to score, one drive at a time.

How do you measure "most explosive" and where do you find the numbers? I mostly remember us running (1,2) near the goal line with a lot of block/leak out plays, but looking it up on Sharp, we ran 8% (91) plays out of that formation last season, which must be more than the goal line.

In his postgame presser, McDermott mentioned that Breida was "very important to us on Special Teams" I had no idea Breida played a snap on special teams. Will be interested to see the snap counts come out. I do think he's the backup KR/PR and they had doubts McKenzie would make it through the game (legit doubts, as it seems) I suspect we will see Breida active the next couple of weeks, for this reason. OTOH I think it should be lobbied to have someone else inactive and use Moss, because Singletary was t its on a chicken in pass protection at times. And thank you for mentioning Singletary's 2 fumbles. They seem significant to me. We're down on Allen for 2, and one of them was a hit from behind while he was scrambling and trying to pass.

Fair. And yes, that was 4th and 8 where Allen pretty clearly thought he had a free play

Great job Virgil. I usually have a few places where I disagree when you’re watching the same network broadcast I am, but can’t disagree with a thing here.

Oh *****, that was a freakin’ Hospital Throw to Davis. Yikes. But that’s also a total Block Fail by Dawkins. In addition, Singletary (I think) is totally clueless about who to block, as most of the line is pushed back behind him. I don’t think it’s disputable that it didn’t work today And it appears my eyes weren’t misleading me in thinking it was employed excessively That said The Bills used it the second-most in the league last year (15% 4 WR sets) and had an excellent offense most of the year One wonders why they would do so, if it’s intrinsically ineffective It’s certainly gonna be ineffective when your OL can’t block at all against 3 and 4 DL rush

I think you’re correct on both counts (about the information by spreading the D, and about the lack of time for progressions) That said If there isn’t enough time to go through progressions, adjustments have to be made and take the quick check down. Or run.

I guess my point is that, if the punter has to be 100% locked in on the ball and the motion of catching dropping and kicking, how is he suppose to perceive that “things are collapsing”? Whether overall he’s slow, is kind of another issue - he has 305 punts and this is like his 3rd blocked punt (2nd on the books, maybe he has a couple more) so it hasn’t appeared to be an issue

No, I heard it the same way. Near the end, Heather Prusik asked whether “you need to get the running backs more involved as a whole then they were today, I mean Josh ended up with 51 passing attempts” and McDermott had an uncharacteristic lapse saying “Yeah I don’t want to give things away in terms of (heh)..pause…I can be better there” (at 9 minutes). Earlier he said (after some criticisms about they moved the ball at times and if you’ve got time to stand back there and throw it on 3rd downs it’s not good enough). “Overall, I thought our defense gave us a chance, in some tough situations ” (about 7:05). He also pointedly said that the Steelers rushed 4 and sometimes only 3, and that “adjustments need to be made” on OL. So yeah, I had the same takeaway. I thought it was interesting that no one asked him a question about the blocked punt, which overall was the biggest thing that cost us the game.

I’ve never punted - have you? but it seems possible to me that the punter must focus 100% on catching the snap and drop-kicking, and can’t afford to be distracted by what’s going on around him. I thought that’s why roughing the kicker and running into the kicker are big penalties, and why the ‘personal protector’ is a specific role on special teams Especially if the snap was low (which some people have said) it seems to me Haack has to be oblivious to what’s around him. That said, if he’s slow as people say, that’s not a good sign for a team that plays NEx2 and MIAx2.

Isn’t that pretty much what the Chiefs did that gave us fits? I think Tampa’s pretty good

LIked: 1. Knox deserves a little shout-out. It’s not all-pro level, but 4 receptions on 4 targets for 41 yards is his best combination of catch % and yardage as a pro If he can perform like this every week we could have something. 2. Taron Johnson. I thought he had a hell of a game. Led the team with 7 tackles and seemed as though he was always around the ball 3. Lil’ Dirty. That little bugger is tough, man - “questionable to return” next thing I know he’s out there 4. Levi Wallace. Yeah, that OPI (in his post-game, could tell McD was pissed about that) but I thought he made some good plays. And if you can like Devin Singletary despite his miscues, I can call out that Wallace did some good things DIslike 1. Devin Singletary. Yes, he ran well, and he caught 3 passes one of which was a tough catch ink traffic, but he also had 2 fumbles. No Bueno. Unacceptable 2. That blocked punt. We can not have that. It looks to me as though someone missed a guy who got through. But whatever the root cause, that simply can’t happen. We keep a lot of players on the roster for their special teams contributions. When much is given, much is expected. 3. The OL. McD in his presser said “adjustments have to be made”. We’ll see what that means. 4. Brian Daboll. McD was asked in his presser about the playcall on 4th and 1 and about the need to get the running backs more involved in the game, and said “I have to do better”. Well, someone has to do better The fumble when Josh ran was poor ball handling combined with lack of awareness of the tackler catching him. He had similar runs where he didn’t fumble but was waving the ball around like a loaf of bread. Those are bad and need to be addressed - NOW. The fumble where he was hit from behind by Watt, most QB lose that. The difference is I think the best veterans throw the ball away there, as Josh did later in the game. I think there could be some truth to this

I couldn’t pick it out, was Feliciano the source of most of the jailbreaks?

Playing special teams like you expect the #6 WR on the roster to do, was this a trick question?

That’s a ton of 4 WR sets and possibly underestimates the amount of empty backfields since it seems to me I saw Singletary and Knox split wide quite a bit - especially Singletary. Just curious how every defensive coordinator in the NFL knows that’s what we want our offense to be? Last season we ran (1,1) with 3 WR 70% of the time, (1,0) with 4 WR 15% of the time, and 5 WR 1% of the time, so that much 4 and 5 WR sets is a change from last season.