HappyDays

Joe spends the first 15 minutes or so of his all-22 review breaking down the offense. It's a good listen. He came away more encouraged than he felt after the live viewing. Specifically he felt a lot more encouraged about Allen's performance. He charted 16 failed drop backs out of 34 total. He assigned blame to Allen for 4 of them (3 misfires, 1 poor decision), the OL for 5 of them, and the pass catchers for 7 of them. Like me he felt that Allen's interception was more on Sherfield and that Allen read the play correctly. It's probably too late to fix the offense unfortunately. Our WRs are not suddenly going to improve. Maybe Torrence can play better but I think it's past the point in his rookie season where he's suddenly going to learn how to win against an inside move. One encouraging thing is almost of all the negative drop backs came in the 1st half, really just the 1st quarter. So it was more a slow start than an all around awful performance. Joe thought that Brady did a great job coordinating the offense and giving plenty of opportunities for plays to be made, the players just didn't execute frequently enough.

@Maine-iac finally found someone that posted the video: It is just bad timing that Austin spins away from the post at the exact moment Allen is throwing the pass. Watch Sherfield's route. He lazily rounds it out and slows down right after his break. Terrible.

This made me realize something that I had felt but wasn't consciously thinking about. Every week over the past month or so the defense is playing with its hair on fire. They might not always perform great but they are rallying to the ball, celebrating after big plays, and just generally look they are playing like their lives are on the line week after week. When they let the opposing offense make a play they don't let it shake them, they're just on to the next play. Everybody looks like they know what their teammates around them are doing and have enough trust in their teammates to simply execute their role on the play. The offense in contrast always looks a bit lethargic to me. It looks like a group of co-workers that have a pleasant enough relationship but aren't going to war for each other. When they have a bad play it often snowballs into a string of bad plays. The players openly show frustration on the field. There is often times a complete lack of cohesion. Allen and his pass catchers aren't always on the same page. The OL miscommunicates and allows free rushers. I think there is really something to this.

Flat out incorrect. I've watched the all-22 and there was only one play where Allen failed to make the right read to an open receiver. Not one play failed because he didn't throw the ball to a check down. Several plays featured immediate losses off the line from McGovern or Torrence and there was nothing he could do.

You'll have to take my word for it, CJ doesn't make stuff up. He is reporting something he was told by an inside source. FWIW Kyle Trimble of Banged Up Bills retweeted it so he also believes the report is reputable.

It has been theorized by many that Allen has been struggling with some kind of shoulder injury this season. Apparent confirmation here: FWIW CJ Caggiano is a reputable insider, I've followed him for a while. Every year he has schedule leaks that turn out to be correct, and he has given a couple injury updates that turned out to be correct as well. Take the info how you will, but if true it could possibly explain some of the recent mechanical issues Allen has had on some of his throws.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/von-miller-7717/ Spotrac shows a post June 1 designation release saves us $6.8m against the cap next year, the cap hit going from $23.8m to $17m. Then in 2025 a dead cap hit of $15.4m. I'd like to think after a full offseason Von will be recovered from his ACL, but he'll be 35 in March so we have to accept that it's possible he will never be the same player again. Tough decision. I think the ideal scenario is get him to agree to a pay cut under threat of release and give him a shot to prove himself next year.

I wonder if they would consider approaching Von about a pay cut? Given his play this year, his age, and his recent legal troubles, he does not have a lot of leverage in that scenario. If he doesn't want to take the pay cut let him go.

Yes you still need talent on defense of course. But that team's Super Bowl aspirations are built on their four headed monster at the skill positions.

Yes having access to Allen's mobility is an advantage Brady has over Dorsey. But it is not close to the advantage that having a true #1 WR gives you. QB power and the tush push are good plays to convert 3rd and 5 or less. They are not easy button plays that consistently put points on the board. This goes without saying but until the midpoint of this season, Diggs has been our easy button answer since we acquired him. In many games over that time frame our offense would fall into a slump, and simply forcing the ball to Diggs was the quick way out of it. We've completely lost that escape hatch. This entire past offseason we discussed if an offense could function with just a #1 but no #2. As of now we have neither. So I guess I just have low expectations for the passing offense in general. Without Diggs playing at his usual standard it's arguably just as poor a group of pass catchers as Mahomes has right now, and even the great Andy Reid can't scheme their way out of that one.

Clearly the Ravens and 49ers. And that is exactly how those teams are built this year. In fact this was the first offseason the Ravens made a serious effort to improve Lamar's weapons, and look at the results. The Eagles would be 3rd for me, despite recent struggles I think they are the type of team that can turn it on in the playoffs. Their issue lately has definitely been defensive coaching. The Dolphins are also clearly built on offensive talent, but like the Eagles they have poor defensive coaching as Vic Fangio appears to be behind the times. It also remains to be seen if a team built entirely on finesse can win tough games in January. Bengals are built that way as well, obviously this is not their year though. The Chiefs defense is built more on defensive scheming than defensive talent IMO, but they forgot the part about investing heavily in offensive talent. Last year they were a good example of that model. I'm sure people are sick of me saying this but you need two very good or better pass catching options to seriously compete for a Super Bowl in the modern NFL. The team that wins the Super Bowl this year will almost certainly meet that standard. Right now the Bills don't even have one and it's their own fault due to lack of investment.

Ask me after the season. Before the season my belief was that the Bills would coast into the #2 or #3 seed with ease but likely fall short of the #1 seed. So I never planned on using the regular season as a measuring stick. I said before the season if McDermott once again has us lose a disappointing playoff game short of the AFCCG I would want to replace him. For me a competitive loss in the AFCCG is the absolute floor of what I would be comfortable with to keep McDermott another year. Of course the regular season went worse than I expected and now we are fighting for our playoff lives. If we beat Miami and get in, McDermott will genuinely have done a great job down the stretch getting the team back on track for a playoff run with a very impressive win streak over a tough stretch of games. Still my initial feelings before the season won't have changed - I need to see him prove he can have this team prepared for a Super Bowl, not a mere playoff appearance which now is just the floor. So playoff success will still be my measuring stick. If we flat out miss the playoffs I'll feel hopeless going into next season knowing that our head coach isn't the one and counting the days until he's fired, hopefully before it's too late to grace Allen's career with at least one championship.

No. Allen isn't reading quantity of defenders in the area, he's reading leverage. That is what QBs are always reading. For example I'm sure you can understand there are cases where a WR that is ostensibly double covered has better leverage than a single covered WR so in that instance the double covered WR would be the right read. If you look at that first screen shot, that is pretty much the exact leverage you want to take that throw. Austin clearly with his back to Kincaid and seemingly following the post, Kincaid's man two steps behind him playing catch up. So the argument seems to be "forget leverage, it's inherently wrong to take a deep shot there." Which if true is a criticism of the play call, not Allen's execution. Austin peeling off of the post (seemingly on the direction of the safety) was unexpected and was simply a great play by him and the safety. Allen isn't predicting the future. He's just reading the leverage at the top of his drop and making the throw accordingly. Like I said Sherfield is probably the most to blame of any player on the field. Collector routes are still routes. He dogged it which meant the spacing was tighter than it should have been. It still wasn't likely that Austin would peel off like he did, but the only reason he had that opportunity is because Sherfield made it an easy read and didn't draw him far enoigh away.

Yeah I think this year in particular has closed that case once and for all. Even on the defensive side. We suffered several major injuries on defense and our highest paid player has been a net negative, yet McDermott has brought the defense back around to a top 10-ish level just with proper scheming. I don't understand having a defensive head coach and also putting most investment into the defense year after year. Let the offense win with talent and let the defense win with scheme. That's how the best teams are doing it.

Probably helpful to note that Dorsey was coaching an offense with a true #1 WR for most of his tenure, while Brady has not had one at all in his tenure. This has created a massive disadvantage that still does not garner enough attention here or in the media. Personally I don't need a total genius at OC necessarily, I just want someone that leans into strengths and avoids weaknesses. Calling a great offense can really be that simple (see: Ben Johnson). I think Brady overall has been much better in this department than Dorsey was. For example he has totally removed Davis as a primary passing target which was a necessary change. He's made it a point to heavily involve Cook who has probably been our best skill player over the past month (which is more a testament to our other skill players than Cook himself, but still true). As others have noted the issue is that we don't really have a lot of strengths so it's going to be a challenge for any OC to lean heavily into them. Is Brady doing the best possible job? Probably not, but I do think it's an improvement on Dorsey and I don't think we'll ever get a truly substantial improvement in offensive coaching unless it comes at head coach. As long as McDermott is here we should assume that we won't have elite offensive coaching and we should compensate for that by heavily investing in the offense every single year.

Most completed deep passes that I see across the NFL are underthrown. It's not the norm that you see one like that perfectly dropped in the bucket and allowing the pass catcher to coast into the endzone. It happens but it's low percentage unless it's someone like Tyreek Hill where it's practically impossible to overthrow them so you can be more loose with the depth of the throw. Typically completed deep passes involve the intended receiver slowing down or completely stopping and making a play at the catch point because they've given themselves enough space to gain leverage. I really do think that if Austin hadn't broken back towards Kincaid it would have been either a completed pass or a DPI. It's almost impossible for a DB two steps behind his man and with his back to the QB to disrupt that pass without committing DPI.

That isn't how Allen can think about the play though. His job is to throw that pass if Kincaid has a step on his man and Austin follows the post. Like I said I am not a fan of this play call in this moment. Still Allen is just executing the play call. It sounds like you just prefer check downs over vertical shots in general because it really doesn't get more open than that. Allen did underthrow the ball, I won't argue that. I think in situations like that where the intended receiver has room to spare QBs tend to cheat towards underthrowing it a bit instead of risking an overthrow. Give Kincaid a chance to make a play or make it almost impossible for the DB to break it up without committing DPI. Allen didn't miss anything. Johnson is there as a check down if both downfield routes are covered up. From Allen's perspective that was not the case so he took the shot. It seems like you just want the RBs to be more involved as pass catchers and that's fine, but don't let that impact the analysis of Allen's process on this play in particular. To me it's a greedy play call that features poor route spacing, poor salesmanship from Sherfield, and an underthrow from Allen. I have no issues with Allen's decision making here.

@Maine-iac I don't know how to take videos from my phone but I took a screenshot. This is what Allen sees when he starts gearing up to launch the ball: #26 is Alex Austin. His back is turned to Kincaid and he is following Sherfield's post route. I assume Austin is Allen's read here. Here's what it looks like the moment the ball is leaving Allen's hands like half a second later: Now Austin has totally spun away from Sherfield's route and quickly develops leverage on Kincaid. In fact looking at the play again now I see the middle field safety pointing in Kincaid's direction: (sorry for the poor quality, I zoomed in but you can kind of make out the safety pointing past Sherfield towards Kincaid) So now I am positive the safety told Austin where the ball was going and directed him back to Kincaid at the exact right moment. In real time you can see Sherfield not putting full effort into his route. If he was really selling it he would be a few yards further to the right and would have likely drawn Austin with him. Instead the spacing on the routes is a tad too close and the DBs back there are able to read the play in time to impact it.

Trust me, Kincaid is extremely open. He has like two steps on his guy. If anything you could say Allen underthrew it a bit but either way Kincaid is in single coverage and has a strong chance of completing the catch or drawing a DPI. That all assumes that Austin stays with Sherfield which of course does not happen. If after watching the all-22 you think Allen should have checked it down to the RB for a couple yards, then you'll never want him attempting any vertical shot in any situation unless it's a totally blown coverage. And if you believe that, that's fine. I myself have said I would like us to remove these designed shot plays from our playbook. But as far as executing the play Allen made the right read and threw the ball where he was supposed to. The play call was aggressive, not the throw.

Sorry I forgot to mention I skipped the entire drive leading up to the INT just for time's sake. As far I know the rest of that drive was fine, I just wanted to break down the INT. But I included every other pass before that drive that didn't end with a scramble. If you want to complain about the play call I can respect that. Our shot plays have been terrible all year, more likely to end in an INT than a positive play. I didn't feel a need to be aggressive there considering the kind of game this was becoming. Only two guys running routes and both deep, I don't get it. But for the play itself I genuinely believe Allen executed it like he was supposed to. As soon as Austin appears to follow Sherfield on the post route, he has Kincaid in single coverage on the shot play. That's exactly the look they wanted. If you have a chance to watch the all 22 of that play you'll see what I mean. Austin spins away from Sherfield as soon as Allen is releasing the ball, it's uncanny. Like at the exact right moment he diagnosed where the ball would be and got himself in position to pick it off.

Coming back to this, I watched the next several the plays through Allen's INT. Here's what I saw: 5th passing play - 1st and 10 from the Bills 38. This is the first play I've seen where I have no clue what Allen is looking at. I think ultimately he gets caught staring at the rush. Kincaid runs a quick hitch to the short right. I don't mind Allen passing him up, he would have been tackled immediately for a 3 gain. But then Knox comes open in a clear passing window right behind Kincaid. From the view behind Allen it is a wide open passing lane in his vision IF he stands in the pocket and lets it develop a second longer. Instead Allen looks down at the rush and then bails a clean pocket left. He ends up throwing it away. I think he let earlier interior pressure get into his head and affect his process here. 6th passing play - Protection breakdown on a 4 man rush. The MLB comes right up the middle unblocked. Either Morse or Torrence screwed up here. Morse helps double McGovern's man, Torrence helps double Brown's man. Nobody picks up the MLB so the play is DOA. Also frustrating on this play is that Diggs could have drawn a DPI if he had made an effort. While running right away from the free rusher Allen launches a prayer deep to Diggs. If Diggs stops and comes back for the ball it's almost certainly DPI as we see with underthrown deep passes all the time. Instead he lets it bounce harmlessly off the DB's back. 7th passing play - Torrence is dusted by Barmore off the snap. This is as bad any rep we got from Saffold last year. Because of immediate pressure Allen takes a quick pass to Sherfield who drops it, but he would have been tackled short of the sticks here on 3rd down anyways. No time for routes to develop past the sticks so once again the play is DOA. 8th passing play - 3rd and goal from the 6. Super tight window throw to Kincaid that is off by about half a foot. It's a keyhole throw that they just barely don't connect on. I don't really blame anyone here, it is tight coverage at the most difficult area of the field. I have seen people point out Shakir gets open on the opposite end of the field but Allen was never looking that way. He has Diggs and Kincaid to the short side of the field against man coverage. A pass to Shakir would have required to start with his eyes on that side because of how far away from the ball Shakir ends up. Davis manages to take out 3 defenders on a rub route but Allen couldn't have predicted that. 9th passing play - 1st and 10 from the Pats 46. Allen misses by a couple inches on a rail route to Cook. I don't see any major mechanical issues here, he just overthrew it. 10th passing play - Now 2nd and 10. It's a mesh route where Allen ends up throwing the ball at Davis's feet when a free rusher gets in his face. I don't think any single player is at fault here, the Pats defensive scheme just won the play. Davis kind of screws up on his mesh getting around the MLB and trips up Morris who's running the opposite mesh but eh it's hard to blame him. Pats blitz gets a free rusher home before anyone has a chance to get open so Allen wisely dirts it. 11th passing play - Now 3rd and 10. Either Allen and Sherfield aren't on the same page or Allen totally misses the pass high and wide. Sherfield runs a deep hitch and finishes the route with inside leverage. Allen throws the pass out to the sideline. I don't know what happened here. It was either a minor miscommunication or Allen sailed it. 12th passing play - The INT. I don't know if this is my bias showing but I really don't blame Allen here. First of all there is no short play here other than a late developing check down to Murrary. It's a two man shot play all the way and based on Sherfield's route (more on that on a bit) I think the play was always designed to go to Kincaid. Allen is reading Alex Austin who clearly shows leverage towards Sherfield running the podt route. However, Sherfield totally dogs his route. It's embarrassing. He does not convince anyone that the ball is coming in his direction. As a result I believe Austin notices this and quickly spins away from Sherfield just as Allen is releasing the ball. Really smart play from Austin here recognizing that Sherfield was running a clear out route (with assistance from Sherfield's poor acting job) and unfortunately he drops off Sherfield right when Allen is releasing the ball so he ends up in perfect position to undercut the pass and intercept it. If you want evidence that Belichick still has his coaching chops, this play was clearly the result of brilliant coaching on a bottom of the roster caliber player. So all in all I saw one truly awful play from Allen where he unnecessarily ran out of a clean pocket and missed an open passing window. He missed a pass to Cook by a couple inches and a pass to Kincaid by less than that. I saw a ton of protection breakdowns from Torrence in particular, he had a brutal first half. Sherfield was a net negative. A drop, an incomplete pass in his direction, and poor effort on a clear out route leading to an INT. Diggs is unable to separate 1v1. Davis might as well not be a WR, he is either blocking or running rub and clearing routes. Just a very messy set of passing plays for a multitude of reasons. Personally I think the central reason still is that we don't have pass catchers that separate quickly. Everything tends to be too long developing so when our IOL doesn't hold up the play is DOA.

I just watched all-22 of the first two drives of this game and my first takeaway is that we need to start designing the reads to account for the fact that Diggs is no longer a reliable 1v1 option. So first passing play of the game is blown up by McGovern and Torrence. Allen comes out of play action, literally everybody is going to be open but he already has pressure in his face by two interior rushers and the play is DOA. 2nd passing play - Allen immediately looks at Diggs running a whip route 1v1 to the short right side of the field. Diggs never comes close to separating. In the past this has been an automatic completion. By the time Allen moves to his next read the OL has been beat and he launches a very low percentage pass to Kincaid downfield just to get rid of the ball. On the left side of the field Shakir actually beats his man on a deep out route. It's a beautiful route. But Allen started with Diggs on the other side (presumably because this is the built in #1 matchup against man coverage) and that was that. 3rd play - This is right after our INT so we have the ball inside the 20. Diggs runs a post corner to the left. Allen starts by checking middle field safety who runs right to cover Kincaid. After confirming Diggs is now in single coverage he stares him down but once again Diggs never comes close to separating so Allen ends up throwing the ball away as pressure gets there (not the OL's fault - it's a 6 man blitz). If Allen had looked to replace the blitz with the throw he would have hit Shakir running a quick slant off the line for probably a 6 or 7 yard gain. But apparently his read is automatically look at Diggs if Diggs is in 1v1 coverage. The 4th passing play is Cook dropping the screen on 3rd down. I don't have time for more right now, but my big takeaway is they need to remove Diggs 1v1 in man coverage as an automatic read. Diggs just isn't that guy right now.

Well yeah. Our personnel does not separate quickly... Davis is playing almost 100% of snaps and he is a terrible fit for a rhythm and timing offense. Diggs can't separate quickly right now like we're used to. Defenses are putting guys over Cook to take away those quick passes. Kincaid and Shakir to my eyes appear to be doing a good job of finding holes in zone coverage and making themselves available to Allen, but they are not typically separating quickly in man coverage. Meanwhile every time a defense blitzes us it feels like there are 3 free rushers instead of just 1. Good luck running a timing offense against that... The best possible play in that scenario is chucking the ball deep to a 1v1 WR that you trust to locate the ball and come down with it or draw DPI but we don't have anybody that comes close to fitting that description. All of the passing game woes come down to the weapons... It really is that simple. With an honorable mention to the OL who for several years now have struggled with protection schemes against blitzes and stunts. No part of this passing offense is playing in rhythm right now.

I don't think this is right at all. Allen hasn't had an issue choosing to throw the ball short this year. I think it's actually been his best year in that regard. As for Cook's short passes, we're seeing how easy it is for defenses to take those away when they make it a point to do so. Early in the season Cook was getting ignored because defenses didn't think Allen would take those throws. Now that those throws are on film, defenses are assigning guys to specifically cover him so Allen has to go elsewhere. The one swing pass he threw to Cook yesterday was dropped for a 4 yard loss, and he threw it to him as a check down because Diggs was smothered by his 1v1 man coverage. It isn't as simple as just throwing Cook the ball and expecting magic to happen. Honestly all of the recent issues on offense come back to Diggs. Defenses don't have to pick their poison by taking one coverage man and bracketing him on Diggs. They can leave Diggs in single coverage and still have enough players in coverage to take away everyone else including would-be check downs. Running a passing offense without a single reliable go-to guy is really tough sledding, made worse by the fact that we get zero explosion from our WR depth chart.

Him and Kincaid are probably our best answers right now, which is disappointing to say the least. But I will say Shakir's size, especially his arm length, also creates low margin for error. I think constantly funneling the ball to him over the middle would create more possible negative plays than fans would like to believe. Still he has been the most consistent receiver we've had by far on a per target basis in recent weeks. Ideally Shakir would just be a role player but we may be forced to prioritize his target share a little more.