Last Guy on the Bench

Ha ha. Sorry. Guess those few decades haven't been such a balm to everyone.

Fun read on Jimmy Johnson in The Athletic. Like many of you, I imagine, I couldn't stand the guy back in the day. But after a few decades have eased the pain I can now look back on him fondly as a beloved old enemy. Anyway, interesting comment by DJ about how they flipped the script on the Bills in our fourth Super Bowl and came back in the second half. Painful, but good to know: Daryl Johnston Fullback, 1989-1999 The one that I always remember is halftime of Super Bowl 28 in Atlanta against Buffalo. We’re down 13-6. And they really just kind of stifled us in the run game. They were doing something; they were twisting and moving inside. They were crashing their tackles inside and looping the linebacker outside, just running some stunts in the front so our guys couldn’t really tee off on them. And they were quick. It was one of the things that we always struggled with was the quickness and the movement in our run game. And they were giving us fits. At halftime, Jimmy was outside the locker room and he said, “Listen, we know what they’re doing. You guys get off your feet, take care of your business. In about 10 minutes, let’s get back together, we’ll have everything up on the board for you. We’re going to show you what they’re doing. We’re going to show you how we’re going to counter that. And the second half, we’re going to force them out of what they’re doing right now. And then as soon as they move out of that we can get back to what we planned on doing.” So it was a play we had run about five, six weeks ago. It was just “power,” you know, just the power play. They were stunting the 3-4 outside linebacker with the defensive tackle down inside and looping the linebacker to the outside. So for power, it’s easy, everybody just adjusts and they’re basically taking themselves out of the play. If you remember the opening drive of the second half, when we had the football, it was Emmitt left, Emmitt right, Emmitt left, Emmitt right, Emmitt right, Emmitt left and it was “power” the whole way down the field. There wasn’t a whole lot of deviation on the play call. They were going to need to stop stunting and go back and play more traditional defense and at least mix it up a little bit. And they never really did. They kind of just stuck with what they were doing. And that’s why we had so much success in the second half. I’ve always felt the way that Jimmy handled that whole thing because we were really frustrated coming in at halftime. And remember, Troy had the concussion against San Francisco in the championship game and it was just one week before the Super Bowl. So we were gonna lean on the run game a little bit more but they stuffed it in the first half and it was a little bit of “what’s going on here?” Then for him to be out at the locker-room door and to be saying, “Hey, we know what they’re doing. Don’t anybody panic, go in and take care of your business? We got the long Super Bowl halftime, we have plenty of time. Let’s make sure everybody’s (knows) what we’re doing. And we’ll go out here in the second half and we’ll force these guys out of what they’re doing and we’ll take advantage of the game plan that we have in place.” It’s Hudson Houck and it’s Norv Turner and everybody’s in on the X’s and O’s and all that stuff, but Jimmy to be there being real positive and knowing what we were going to be able to do in the second half. I thought it was, if not his best coaching moment while we were there, it was definitely near the top. Full Article (subscription required): That Was Just Jimmy

Exactly. Very impressive actually. Not to mention playoffs 3 out of 4 years with a team that hadn't sniffed the playoffs since the Victorian era. And the one year he missed out, he was starting a rookie QB. I was not a fan of the McD hire at all. Ecstatic to be so wrong. And though he still has his weaknesses, like any coach, I don't see how anyone can look at either his quantitative record or the qualitative vibe of this team and be anything other than deeply impressed.

Exactly. Love to see the NFL continue to grow internationally. Been following soccer (football) more and more closely over the years and the international diversity is a breath of fresh air compared to the insularity of U.S. sports. I really enjoy it for that reason (as well as many others).

Epic. That should actually be the new Shout song. The stadium would be blistering.

I was thinking about that too. 17-3 sounds pretty good to me. And that 17 would then include wins over Mahomes (maybe) and Rodgers or Brady. I suppose I am getting ahead of myself, but what else am I meant to do this week?

Re-watching parts of the game - it wasn't as bad as I remembered. Yes, there were some big blown plays by the defense. But Rivers converted a bunch of close ones too where he was just about to get hammered and the receiver was pretty well covered. Hats off to him. He's a HOF QB in my eyes. On the other side, we had no cheap points whatsoever. No turnovers. Brutal field position. Colts forced us to punt 4 times. Good defense. But we also had great drives: TD drives were 85, 96 (1!), and 77. Massive. And the FG drives weren't short: 44 and 39. I think it felt worse than it was, because three of the punts were on three and out possessions. We are not used to those. But they happen. All it takes is a small mistake. We've been spoiled. Didn't the Bills set the team record for first downs this year? And they were near the top of the league for fewest punts and fewest three and outs, I think I remember hearing.

For sure, there are a number of guys that can make that throw. But do you think they can make it look that easy and casual? Not that that matters in terms of impact. But it is pretty fun to watch.

Thanks for highlighting that, so I could go watch it another 10 times. You are right, it is absolutely insane. He looks like he is using the same amount of effort that I would use to throw the ball to my little nephew 3 yards away. I don't actually understand the physics of Josh Allen. He is a quantum MFer.

Right. It is the exact opposite of how I've felt on 3rd and long for the past 25 years. Shifted from: "Oh well, next drive" to:"We'll probably get this," in 2017 and has never wavered. Josh on 3rd down, Josh in the 4th Quarter, Josh in the Red Zone, Josh down one score . . . all money. He can't win 'em all. But it sure feels like he can sometimes.

Well. That had me bawling my eyes out. On a Saturday morning in January. In South Africa. I haven't lived in Western New York for 30 years. But this team, even during the seemingly endless dark days, has just been one of the loves of my life. I think we will win today. But even if our boy Frank figures out some way to shellac us, I will wake up tomorrow heartbroken (again), but just as in love as always. It's really impossible to explain how deep it runs. I know every team has their fans, but I do think the relationship between the Bills and their fans is extraordinary.

GMFB is the best football show going right now. It’s a pleasure to watch this crew. And yes this week's angry runs was phenomenal. Absolutely hilarious. I vote AJ Dillon all the way. What a smack.

Excerpt from Mike Sando in The Athletic: The Bills have a really good record against highly ranked defenses. With the Bills facing the Steelers, I went through their games during Allen’s nearly three seasons as the starter to see how they’ve fared against top defenses in general. Each defense from 2018, 2019 and 2020 was ranked No. 1 through No. 32 in EPA per game, with games against Buffalo excluded from the calculations to avoid biasing the rankings. The Allen-led Bills are 7-3 against top-five defenses over the past three seasons, including 4-0 this season after beating the Los Angeles Rams (No. 1), Steelers (No. 2), Miami Dolphins (No. 4) and San Francisco 49ers (No. 5). Allen had 14 touchdown passes with two interceptions and four total turnovers in those games. He averaged 8.9 yards per pass attempt, 0.39 EPA per attempt and 335 yards per game against those teams, with a 121.8 passer rating. After neither offense accomplished much in the first half Sunday, Allen completed 14 of 20 passes for 162 yards and two touchdowns to close out the Steelers, twice converting on longer than third-and-10. [Full article (paywall): https://theathletic.com/2255570/2020/12/14/josh-allen-bills-afc-east/ ]

Only if we can swap the Pats and Jets.

Sure, but my point is that that shouldn't even matter. It's stone cold obvious to anyone with a cerebral cortex that if you can't practice in your controlled facility, it's not OK to practice somewhere else. The players should have known that with or without any memos or any notification by the team. How could it possibly make sense to say, "Well we can't practice in our sanitized facility due to the risk of spreading COVID, but it's OK to practice offsite with no sanitation, monitoring, etc." Idiotic.

The excuses from the players who practiced offsite about whether or not they knew it wasn't permitted are absurd. You don't need a notice from the league or your coach to tell you that if, due to positive COVID tests on the team you can't practice in your highly controlled and sanitized team facility, it's beyond stupid to practice offsite, in a non-controlled space - for your own safety and for the safety of the other people who use that space. It's like they are in high school trying to get away with breaking arbitrary rules by the adults rather than equal participants in a community trying to figure out how best to navigate a very difficult situation together. I'm not in favor of a forfeit for all sorts or reasons. But those players should all be suspended for several games.

Here's the Levi segment. Cool guy. This team seems to be full of 'em. Levi Wallace on GMFB

My worry is that they "fixed it" by playing crappy QBs - at least in part. Hope you are right.

Good post. I agree. I don't think that any of this means we have a terrible defense. Just maybe that we have a solid but not-that-great defense, so we are going to have to win games this year by scoring a lot of points (unlike last year when we could get away without doing so). If last year's offense faced this year's schedule of QBs, we might not win 7 games.

Like everyone, I'm feeling ill at ease about the defensive performance so far. (Luckily we have the Stallion-Legend-Cantaloupe-Farmer in our corner.) Looking back at last year, we faced some seriously weak QBs. I'm wondering how good our defense actually ever was? Our 10 wins were against: Fitz (2 wins) - whose beard still averaged 300 yards a game against us Mono-Darnold (who might not be that good even without Mono) The about to be benched corpse of Eli The about to be benched Marcus Mariotta Aging journeyman Andy Dalton - who threw for 250 but did get picked twice, including the game-sealer by Tre Rookie Dwayne Haskins The about to be benched Brandon Allen (currently residing on the Bengals practice squad) Rookie UFA Duck Hodges Dak Prescott - the only genuinely upper echelon QB we beat - and he threw for 355 with 2 TDs and a pick Not exactly a murderer's row. Three of those QBs were benched the week after they played us. The six losses don't show much air defense either: Lost twice to the Ghost of Tom Brady. Lost to Mayfield, who isn't that good and still had a decent day with 238 yards 2 TDs and 0 picks. Perhaps their best showing against a good QB was in the loss to the Ravens - that one gives me the most hope. Lost to Wentz - who didn't have to do anything because they ran down our throats. The second string lost to Darnold (barely) This year we have have Goff, Cam 2.0, Wilson, Mahomes, Roethlisberger, Murray, Garoppolo, Carr, Tannehill 2.0 Quite a difference. We survived Goff thanks to our now truly delightful offense. Hopefully the Defense will improve, but I'm feeling very skeptical, since they seem to struggle against good QBs, especially in the 2nd halves once those QBs are able to make adjustments to our carefully schemed out 1st halves.

Original video seems to be gone. Here's one that's working at the moment: The Cantaloupe Farmer's Angry Run (starts 1:00 in)

Great article. I hope the Bills crush the Fins, of course. But Fitz is the only QB where, if he throws a TD against the Bills, I kind of take pleasure in it, even though I am also upset (as with any TD against the Bills). I just get joy out of seeing him make plays. He is one of a kind. The article didn't even talk about how he used to throw a barbecue after every home game, not for his teammates but for his neighbors.

Agreed. To me it's totally worth it just for the Bills - best most consistent, most detailed coverage out there. One of the only places you can reliably get more than just the regurgitated press conferences. There's good general NFL stuff too. I happily re-upped after my initial cheap year. Well worth it. I've started following Chelsea in the Premier League too, so all of that stuff (which there is a ton of) is a great bonus for me. I don't keep a close eye on any other sports or teams, but if you do it will be even more worth it to you.

I guess I'm in the minority, but I still really like Murph and over the last few years I've gotten many hours of enjoyment listening to the show while taking my walks. I'm even pretty fond of Tasker, though I admit his sentences often change direction in pretty perplexing ways. Brown often has good insight, so I enjoy him in short bursts. I'm a little skeptical about listening to him for three hours at a time, though. Guess we'll see.

Yeah, this felt like a very Ravens-type pick to me - in a good way, obviously, since the Ravens have drafted so well. They always seem to pick up the sliding guy - the one who can just play football. They are super confident in what they see on film and don't out-think themselves with caveats and projections and imaginary what-ifs, which a lot of teams seem to do. Glad the Bills under Beane seem similar.