Franco_92

There is a lot of "well I never said anything about the shotgun run in general, just that we shouldn't do it at the 1" Those posters may well be telling the truth, but it cannot be denied that there was moaning all over this board about shotgun "draws" and runs in general, not just at the one, and that nobody has fessed up to that in the face of this data haha (similar phenomenon to everyone being at the comeback game and definitely not leaving at halftime), just everyone saving face I'm glad @HoofHearted put in this work. Before the numbers came in I would have bet money on that "dart" play being among our two or three best ones.

I know that, I need to step back and restate my stances, things are blending together and I have had something come up in the last hour that is distracting me 1.) At the 1 yard line I support the QB sneak as the play we prioritize. I do not hate doing the QB run from shotgun, and think we should pass from under center more frequently and pass from shotgun less frequently. I won't get upset at shotgun or under center RB runs, provided the above is all happening at reasonable ratios. The Tampa goal line failure was bad to me not because the run play happened, but because we did not even attempt a sneak and finished off the turnover on downs with our worst play of Allen's tenure, a shotgun pass. 2.) I do not hate shotgun runs away from the goal line the way other fans do, in particular the concept they are very good at, dart. I believe run stuffs are uglier from shotgun because they are unnatural looking, but I'm not convinced they're more frequent. Especially given our dart frequency and aptitude. But i don't have the data to be sure. 3.) Fans get this play wrong enough that I don't trust their judgment on its frequency or pretty much anything else, unless they demonstrate top percentile knowledge on football subjects 4.) I implicitly trust HoofHearted's diagnosis over anyone else's on this forum given his pedigree and inclination to study All-22, and because I've never seen anyone come out of a discussion with him with the upper hand. And he doesn't have the same shotgun/under center hangups that most fans do in most (not all) scenarios

I understand and have emphasized that these decisions need to consider what your team is good at. The Bills are an elite red zone team. My last few posts have been discussing philosophy of shotgun runs from the one and elsewhere in general, not what the Bills should do - I agree that the Bills should sneak from the one, and I think they should also pass more from under center when they do decide to pass there as well. This comes from Bills data. Lol what is my point? My point is that fans making blanket statements and present them as the only correct option and declare our OC ret@rded probably aren't as nuanced as they think they are.

Again, we have run that play INCREDIBLY well. I can probably pull 20 examples of getting 5+ yards on it in the last few weeks. And then faking it on RPOs were everyone's favorite Davis plays against Tampa, faking it to run Josh scored us a TD against Miami etc. It is foolish to hate this play lol they DOMINATE with it. Our tackles love to pull in the run game. The play is in shotgun so they have room to do it. So answer the question, then - if logic dictates it's better to get a head start, why does the data show it's worse at scoring touchdowns from the 1 yard line? what's the disconnect? There are clearly details that your analysis doesn't consider.

Sneaks have hurt Mahomes, Lance and Purdy I believe in recent years, off the top of my head. It's not a risk free play. There are many factors the coaches consider that fans can't acknowledge because we don't know what they are, in addition to injury concerns. The coaches don't just forget that this play is in the playbook, and they are not dumb, and they especially aren't dumber than Bills internet rabble, and yet they sometimes don't run this play. I bet part of it is Allen's general discomfort under center, and a recent history of shaky snap transactions under center. Allen fumbled at least 3 of these in fairly big moments last year.

I guess this is where we differ - both Bills data and NFL data suggest that it's not a poor play call and that there is actually a better chance of scoring with the play you don't like (league data). If the logic works out the way you describe, what makes it work better? Bold: Yes, he does this a lot so it probably does count for some of them. But then, Cook scored on a shotgun handoff against Miami. One of the RBs did against the Raiders. And the aggregate data doesn't hate that play as much as you guys do. Also, I think @HoofHeartedhas posted it enough that we should stop calling the play "draw." They have not run a draw at the goal line this year, and the play everyone calls "shotgun draw" is dart, which we run very successfully and which sets up everyone's favorite RPOs that we gash teams with.

He is dreadful, he was last season too. ZeroVoltz (KC), PatsFaninNH etc. very rarely have any problems because they aren't obnoxious

Fair. I'm on board with requiring him to call that play every sequence we start at the 1. I do wonder if they combine a few factors including his shoulder to try other things first unless the game is on the line (ie, they didn't call it against Tampa on their first drive, but they called it multiple times until they scored with under 2 left vs NE down by a score) Not justifying that thought process but I bet it's there. In general they aren't faced with many plays at the 1. 40 of them over 57 games is less than one attempt at the one per game We almost seem more likely to sneak on 1 to go away from the end zone than from the goal line which is interesting, I wonder if that holds up in data

Didn't it take 3 tries to get in against New England? Or was it just 2? It's not automatic, nothing is. I have no problem with the general take that they need to make sure they at least try the sneak every time. I don't think Dorsey has been close to "fireable" at the 1 yard line, we have the second best red zone offense

I don't think the data is saying "No shotgun at the 1". It is saying "Do not pass out of the shotgun as frequently as you do." Again, the shotgun run touchdown rate is the same for the bills and the league as the under-center run. Unfortunately this data includes QB runs in both, so it's hard to tell success rate of that by itself or of non-QB runs. I'm not sure if the Bills are bad at the handoffs and great at the QB runs, but league-wide, both are very successful plays. The Bills need to pass from under center more frequently when they get to the 1. This will also help their run success eventually, because right now any team that has a stats department knows we aren't passing if we line up under center. I absolutely think so. I think as long as his shoulder is sore, they will limit the tush push type sneak at the goal line unless it's a very late down. My speculation of course. Thanks! Luckily that site did the hard work, I just downloaded the csvs and played with Pandas DataFrames for about 20 minutes.

I found this cool site that turns NFL play by play data into csvs for easy manipulation: https://nflsavant.com/about.php I downloaded the data for the 4 seasons Allen has been elite to see the answer to the question - do we really need to stop running shotgun plays at the 1 yard line? I posted this image in the Steelers/Titans GDT last night, which only covers run plays. But it suggests that whatever run play you wish to do, there's nothing particularly wrong with lining up in shotgun instead of under center. And I postulated that the Bills probably prefer shotgun because it spreads the defense out which helps out our OL among other things, as our OL is definitely built with a slant towards athleticism rather than brute power. But that's speculation, and the stats don't include pass plays. So what has happened since Allen has been elite and we've ran plays from the 1 yard line? If I am parsing the data correctly, the Bills have run 40 plays from the 1 yard line since 2020. Note that in 2020, there is ambiguity on 3 plays, where they are classified as simply "NO HUDDLE" versus "SHOTGUN", "UNDER CENTER", or "NO HUDDLE SHOTGUN". I am going to take those 3 no-huddle plays as being under center, since shotgun was explicitly mentioned as a category in no huddle plays. Unfortunately, the data does not easily parse between QB sneaks and regular handoffs. BUFFALO BILLS 15 of these plays have been in shotgun, and so 25 plays were run under center. 37.5% of the time when the Bills have been on the 1 yard line in the last 3.5 years, they've opted for shotgun. 6 of the 15 shotgun plays scored touchdowns: 40% 15 of the 25 under center plays scored touchdowns: 60% Broken down further, Pass Plays, shotgun: 2 touchdowns on 7 attempts, or 29% touchdown rate Run Plays, shotgun: 4 touchdowns on 8 attempts, or 50% touchdown rate Pass Plays, under center: 8 touchdowns on 11 attempts, or 73% touchdown rate (no attempts this year) Run Plays, under center: 7 touchdowns on 14 attempts, or 50% touchdown rate It appears that fans are right that we should not be passing out of shotgun, at least. Running plays have the same success rate during Allen's successful seasons whether they're run from shotgun or from under center, but it looks like we need to start passing from under center significantly more when we are at the 1 yard line - despite Allen's success there, Dorsey has only called 1 pass play in that situation in 2 years. Again, this is a ONE-YARD-LINE discussion, not red zone or even goal-to-go. There is probably significantly less fan angst in lining up in shotgun at first and goal from the 7. REST OF LEAGUE At the one yard line since 2020, these same numbers for all non-Buffalo teams: 388 of these plays have been in shotgun, and 767 plays were run under center. 33.6% of the time when non-Bills NFL teams have been on the 1 yard line in the last 3.5 years, they've opted for shotgun, so the Bills use shotgun slightly more frequently than the rest of the teams, though not appreciably. 213 of the 388 shotgun plays scored touchdowns: 56% 455 of the 766 under center plays scored touchdowns: 59% Broken down further, Pass Plays, shotgun: 83 touchdowns on 173 attempts, or 48% touchdown rate Run Plays, shotgun: 130 touchdowns on 215 attempts, or 60% touchdown rate Pass Plays, under center: 100 touchdowns on 181 attempts, or 55% touchdown rate (no attempts this year) Run Plays, under center: 355 touchdowns on 585 attempts, or 61% touchdown rate CONCLUSION Non-Bills teams are best running from the 1 yard line, with essentially equal success rates running from shotgun or under center, since 2020. They experience a very slight decline in success rate passing from under center, and a slightly bigger decline passing from shotgun. The numbers are close enough that the wide variance in team skills and strengths would suggest that many teams could find their home from preferring any of these plays, that none should be inherently off the table, especially since the NFL is about avoiding tendencies. The Bills are worse than the league baseline at the 1 yard line at any sort of run play, and at passing from shotgun, which they are VERY bad at. They are significantly better than the rest of the league at passing under center from the 1. The Bills have equal success running out of shotgun vs. running under center just like the league does, though if they truly stop passing out of shotgun, perhaps the run success rate would decline because teams would know what they are doing. Which is probably why they keep passing out of shotgun every now and again. Dorsey clearly prefers shotgun at the 1 for some reason, relative to Daboll. It'd be cool to ask him about it.

Hasn't Dart been our most consistent and successful run concept? That necessarily is run out of shotgun, and is also critical to setting up the RPO game that was humming against Tampa. Do you want to stop running that play? I swear we average about 7ypc on it. It just looks worse when that run is stuffed versus when Josh turns around and it goes for no gain.

Yeah its annoying, they scraped milano's instagram so every post he has on there is on that Facebook page. But the key piece of evidence is that most of them were put there in July when it was made, and they've been matching them for the few he's posted since. And then this latest one did not appear on his Instagram, which we know he uses

You guys need to read these threads before posting this stuff lol This account is not Matt Milano's, it belongs to some random fan. It's been debunked 10 times in the last 2 days.

I'm fully convinced our first super bowl win is going to be as a 6 seed during a season everyone here hates, getting 2 playoff games in Florida to tune up and get hot for @ KC Actually, it's sorta lining up that way right now hehe