Bocephuz

Great point... it's not like we were blown out 51- 7.

That's the great thing about Orton. He does have a hefty set... rather than bailing he's got his eyes downfield and is willing to take a hit and deliver. I do recall him getting crushed on this play and him wincing afterwards Hairston was a reliable RT 2 years ago. He wasn't a stud but he was solid enough. Assuming he's back to full health I'd give him another look. I think Henderson has great upside but if the Dougs are looking to get to the playoffs this year they shouldn't be playing rookies unless they have to.

Here's what I'd like to see. LT- Glenn LG -Richardson C - Wood RG - Urbik RT - Hairston . Henderson and Pears ( and another Guard whoever that is since Williams in on IR) on the bench. Henderson has potential but he is really struggling with his assignments. Pears is god awful at guard... it is impossible for Urbik to be worse. At least Urbik has years of experience at Guard and knows how to pick up simple stunts. John Ramsey at buffalorumblings.com has written a really good article illustrating the confusion on our line http://www.buffaloru...ion-shot-plays. This screen shot from his article sums up how befuddled our line is..we are in max protect here... New England is only rushing four and we still mess it up. The two rookies are just standing there clueless.

watching the broadcast i thought he took a bad sack there.. However the all 22 shows blanket coverage with Woods just starting to break free on a crossing route.right before Ortin gets hit... If Orton has another split second he would have hit Woods but Pears couldn"t hold his block.

Unforced errors.. bad throws/ How did the O Line do?/ What mistakes are on the O-Line.. what ones are not? I watched the NFL rewind all 22 and here is my unofficial count of how the O-Line did / How Kyle did on every pass play ( I may have missed a snap or two here.. but this should be 95% accurate) DISCLAIMER ( I am not a coach, I don't know the hot reads or route combinations called.. this is just my educated perception of what happened on each pass play) _______ ______________________ TOTAL PASS PLAY - 41 snaps ( last week was 44 .. The Bills having 40+ pass attempts is not a winning formula ) LINE BREAKDOWN - 11 snaps or 26% of pass plays ( defined as - O-Line clearly messed up and Kyle did not have much of a chance.. last week was 31% so pass protect was slightly better this week) SUFFICIENT PROTECTION - 30 snaps or 74% of pass plays ( defined as O-Line did sufficient job and Kyle had time to throw). UNFORCED KYLE ERRORS: - 6 snaps or 15 % of pass plays where he had time ( unforced error defined as Kyle having time and having unforced accuracy issues/ or taking bad sacks... last week it was 6 snaps or 20%) Bottom Line - Almost carbon copy of last week.The O Line was slightly better than last week in pass protect.. however.. New England only rushed 3 or 4 on a good number of plays. Orton generally handled the pressure well. The INT was totally on him.Of the 6 unforced errors 3 were egregiously off target. Orton took a few sacks however.. in seeing the All 22 you can't really put the sacks totally on him as coverage was excellent on those plays. There were several egregious drops in the 4q. PLAYS OF NOTE - Deep ball to Goodwin in Q1 appears to either be miscommunication or bad route by Goodwin ( most likely the latter) -He had plenty of time on the INT.. just made a bad decision - Strip sack is on Cordy Glenn who got beat badly ( he had a rough day) - Overthrow at end of Q2 to Goodwin was a poor choice ( Goodwin is not a good jump ball guy like Mike Williams is) -Sack at the end of the half in FG range not on Orton ( all 22 shows that receivers were all blanketed and also Pears was beaten badly ( Pears also had a rough day) -;Pass to Watkins in 3Q near goal line was great play by Orton ( Pears and Henderson were both soundly beat)

Run blocking and our safety play are the two chief reasons we lost today.

24 - 21 Bills

Had to look this up but the linebacker coach is apparently Fred Pagac... At any rate Schwartz and Pagac can probably expect a lot of play action to take advantage of our young lbs. Brian Galliford over at Buffalo Rumblings has an excellent piece on how NE took advantage of Cincy's back up LBs with play action http://www.buffaloru...lay-action-pass If I'm Schwartz I'm telling my LBs to defend the pass first and let our D Line handle the run. If the Pats beat us running the ball so be it.. can't give up the seams.. middle of the field to Gronk and company

(As a caveat .. I am not a coach, I don't know the play call... I don't know what the hot reads were etc... this analysis is solely focused on plays where he takes hits and my observations... not meant to be an overall analysis of his game) This is based off of NFL Rewind week 5 Detroit Game _________ __________ Breakdown of Orton taking hits and how he performed on those plays where he took a hit HITS - 11 times ( defined as Orton drops back to pass and is hit) BAD HITS - 5 hits .. or 45% of hits ( defined as substantial hits where Orton is vulnerable and gets knocked off his feet) POSITIVE OUTCOME - 10 or 91% ( defined as no turnover, throw was not egregiously off, or.. a completion was made). Example... Orton takes sack on his own 1 yd line but does not fumble.. NEGATIVE OUTCOME - 1 or 9% ( defined as Orton taking too long in pocket and taking sack, turning ball over, or egregiously bad throw). Example... Orton has clean pocket.. holds ball to long and takes sack rather than throwing it away. In summary... Orton took 5 "big" hits that could have potentially resulted in injury. As I have not done this type of analysis before .. I don't know if 5 "big hits" is normal/ above average or below average for a starting NFL QB in any given game. What I can glean from another re watch here is that he is extremely adverse to escaping pressure by scrambling. On the positive side ... he is consistently able to stand in there.. take the tough hit and typically will produce a positive result in those situations. On the negative side.. he is going to take a lot of hits and I doubt he'll be able to improvise much ( this is where EJ has an edge as a better athlete). Hopefully he's in good enough shape to withstand the hits he'll take the rest of the year... and hopefully him skipping preseason will not have affected his conditioning/ flexibility.

Well said... I think I'll take an isolated look at plays where Orton took a hit and what the results were

I think that is a good way to look at it.. 31% is the minimum.

The line play very well may have been worse than the 31% figure I listed here... there were several throws to the running back/TE in the flat where I couldn't really tell if they were called plays or dump downs due to an O Line breakdown.

. Well said.. Disclaimers set good expectations

It's brutal when you face both elite talent and good scheming... as we have had to face the last two games. Amazing thing is we had a chance to win the Houston game and ended up winning the Detroit game. Very encouraging to me as the talent gap can't be that big anymore

Fair enough.. not being on the coaching staff... I (and most likely all other posters/ pundits are in the same boat) am forced to rely on assumptions to produce analysis. Hopefully readers find some value in what I post and take it with a grain of salt. By your logic... any post containing analysis on this website is invalid unless it comes from a member of the coaching staff.

Indeed... being a 10 year vet it is quite obvious that he would look much more comfortable than EJ.. however... the really impressive thing is that he performed so well only having 4 weeks to prepare.. and only one week of getting reps as #1 QB. I was sort of worried that he was there to just collect a paycheck after he took the preseason off.. however it's clear that he's worked hard since coming here and that he cares

Good point. That is a challenge when doing the analysis... sometimes it's obvious the receiver ran a route at the wrong depth.. sometimes it's not obvious. I don't claim for this to be a thorough analysis.. rather it's a thoughtful look at how many of the poor throws are on the O LIne and how many are not directly attributed to O Line play

My basic assumption is that if Orton is able to hit the last step of his drop ( whether it's 3,5 or 7 step) and has a moment to throw ( Ie.. he's not immediately moved off his spot when he finishes his drop) .. then the line has done it's job.

Unforced errors.. bad throws/ How did the O Line do?/ What mistakes are on Orton? I watched the NFL rewind all 22 and here is my unofficial count of how the O-Line did / How Kyle did on every pass play ( I may have missed a snap or two here.. but this should be 95% accurate) TOTAL PASS PLAYS - 44 snaps ( last week was 45 .. so much for being a run first team) LINE BREAKDOWN - 14 snaps or 31% of pass plays ( defined as - O-Line clearly messed up and Kyle did not have much of a chance.. last week was 29% so pass protect was actually slightly worse this week) SUFFICIENT PROTECTION - 30 snaps or 69% of pass plays ( defined as O-Line did sufficient job and Kyle had time to throw). One caveat here... in some cases it was difficult to determine if it was a called short throw or a dump down due to pressure. UNFORCED KYLE ERRORS - 6 snaps or 20% of pass plays where he had time ( unforced error defined as Kyle having time and having unforced accuracy issues... last week with EJ it was 11 or 34%) Bottom Line - The O Line was just as bad this week as last week in pass protect.. however.. Orton handled it very well for the most part. He made several plays where pass protect broke down and he took a hit but delivered accurately. One of the unforced errors was his INT.. another was the throw to Watkins in the 4th qtr that was far behind him but he tipped it to himself and caught it anyway. Of the 6 unforced errors only 2 were egregiously off target. Orton typically stepped forward in the pocket to avoid edge rushers and rarely scrambled horizontally. I also saw zero drops... To sum it up..I would attribute poor Offensive Play fault the following way - 60% O Line/ 25% Hackett/ 15% Orton

In starting this thread all I am saying is that Orton consistently makes this kind of throw at this stage in his career and that EJ does not.

So many reasons Pears shouldn't be at Guard... but not having the experience to pick up stunts is definitely a big one

This single screen shot illustrates why Orton is a better option than EJ right now. It displays two things..#1 quick decision making... #2 making an accurate throw while taking a hit to the face. EJ would probably pull it in and do the reverse spin move here.

Hell of lot better than Steve Tasker or Rich Gannon

Hmm... that makes his annual return on investment look a lot better. Before the estimate was for him to make about $50 mil/ year ... ( which equates to 3.5% return on a 1.4 bill investment) .. if he is making $75 mil/ year ROI is 5.35% ... not bad

He was pretty rough in pass protect so I could see a negative grade there... however.. from what I saw he did OK in Run blocking... not sure how much PFF weights Run block vs. Pass Protect. His penalties definitely hurt him .. and all of the penalties looked to be legit.