HappyDays

I will admit to being a little entertained by this last month of laughable coaching, culminating in this rock bottom press conference. If the team isn't going to be good, they might as well be hilariously bumbling. Maybe it will even tip Pegula over the edge.

In many ways Allen has become a victim of his own success. I've seen multiple people on here say "if Allen doesn't play like he did in the Miami game we can't win." Just a perfect 158.3 passer rating. Nothing too crazy. Expectations have gotten way out of control. I don't mind individual criticisms of Allen's plays, that is part of analyzing the losses, but I don't get these bizarre sweeping narratives that come out of nowhere and don't remotely match up with the data. As usual it comes down to some people getting Bills tunnel vision and not evaluating Allen in the context of every other QB.

Cover1 was pretty harsh with Dorsey's play calling in their film review this week. Good watch:

Correct. And there has not nearly as much investment on the offensive side of the ball so it's not realistic to expect them to carry the team in shootouts. The offense could certainly be much better but trying to put up 30 points a game deep into January with no running game and Gabe Davis as the #2 WR, that's an impossible ask.

Coming back to this: This is the result of predictable play calling. CTB baits Allen into thinking he's biting on the pump fake to the low route and then scuttles back to pick off the pass. I mean Allen still should have seen that CTB had leverage and shouldn't have thrown the ball, but it's also a bad play call that has become very easy to defend because of how often we put it on tape.

Because his play calling and personnel usage has absolutely been an issue. He has put his defense in bad spots at the end of games against the Jaguars, Pats, and Bengals. Poor blitz timing has led to backbreaking conversions on multiple 3rd downs. I mean you really think the only reason that our defense is the worst in the league is injuries? No way we have the worst defensive roster in the league, I refuse to believe that even with the injuries. So that leaves coaching as a major issue.

Sure. Based on some of his press conference answers yesterday, he may have finally gotten to that points. He and the other offensive players, not to mention McDermott, sounded perplexed that they are not running the style of offense they would prefer to run. I imagine Dorsey's seat is feeling quite warm right now... Hopefully that forces a change.

Yeah I can't believe that last 3rd down play against Cincy. McDermott takes Rousseau off the field in favor of Leonard and Miller. Guess what Cincy does? Runs right at Miller. It's just a clueless substitution in that situation. End of the Jaguars game. He takes Elam off the field in favor of Ingram. What happens next? Etienne runs right over Ingram and scores a backbreaking 35 yard TD. End of the Pats game. McDermott blitzes on 1st down. Have we figured out the pattern yet? Shocking no one, a screen pass goes for 40 yards. So miss me with the injury excuse. Injuries aren't causing these clueless end of game play calls from our defensive head coach.

Sure it does, but WLB is the least important position on the defense. I can't attribute all of the ineptitude to injuries. I think a lot of it is just McDermott's play calling to be honest. We gave up two quick TD drives to start the game. Most drives featured a 3rd down conversion that came off of a terrible play call. And then from there we mostly let the Bengals move the ball down the field. We would stop them at the 40-50 or so, but that meant we lost the field position battle for pretty much the entire game. When you're chasing a team and losing field position for an entire game, that is not a recipe for success.

This isn't a hot take. It's supported by analytics: I understand the injuries. But we have a defensive head coach and we are literally the worst defense in the league since the Jaguars game. And I get why fans are focusing on the offense, but none of that matters to our Super Bowl aspirations if the defense doesn't get back to at least the top half of the league.

Yeah I will say it appears to be structure of our blitz plays that fails us. Other teams blitz and it seems very unpredictable with coverage sometimes being rolled to the area where the QB would normally look to "replace the blitz." With us we seemingly just send extra bodies without any thought for the offensive line's protection scheme or the coverage.

There is that stat I've seen repeated that no QB/head coach combo has gone on to win a Super Bowl together if they didn't do it within the first 5 years (or something like that). I'm not saying this regime definitely CAN'T be the first to break that trend. But I haven't seen any reason to believe they will, and I'd rather try something else instead of gambling the back half of Josh Allen's career on a trend that's never been broken. As it is we had an elite team in 2020 and 2021 that wasn't killed by injuries. And in those years they really didn't even get close to a Super Bowl win. So why would I want to wait for this regime to build another elite team just to possibly falter again?

The difference is that other than the Eagles under Andy Reid, all of those QBs got their Super Bowl win first. Our best window was 2020-2022 and this regime failed to get us over the hump. That was what ultimately got Andy Reid fired too.

Here's a frustrating stat - McDermott blitzed Burrow on 30.4% of pass plays. On those plays he went 10/14 for 158 yards. We're the only defense I see that regularly blitzes without getting home. It's crazy. Every offensive line picks up our blitz without issue, meanwhile our pass protection scheme constantly fails against the blitz.

His INT last night was the same concept. And his first throw against the Pats. We have put that play on tape way too many times. And Kurt Warner after the Jets game in his film review pointed out that in our offense, the "high" WR on that play is not running it to a high enough level to really put the CB in conflict. So CBs are being taught exactly how to defend both areas and muddy Allen's read or bait him into an interception. I feel the way about these plays that I feel about goalline shotgun runs - conceptually I understand that they can be sound plays, but with our personnel more often than not they are killing us. So why does Dorsey continue calling those plays every week?

The 2nd down obviously Allen threw an awful INT. The 1st down though I believe he is just making the read and executing the play as designed. I am guessing the rules of that play called for a shot to Harty if he ends up in man coverage with no safety help. It was not forced into double coverage so I am inclined to believe the read there was correct. So the problem with that play call was actually Dorsey. He has a habit of dialing up shot plays at times when we really need to keep our offense in rhythm, and I don't think we've hit a single one of them for a completion this year. I've said before that we need to do what the Chiefs did last year, stop even bothering to call and throw deep passes. Recognize that our personnel isn't built for that kind of play. But I don't think Dorsey has a good understanding of what his players do well, so he just calls random plays and that's why we always look so disjointed for long periods of time.

I try not to complain too much about draft pick usage. The draft is a crapshoot and I think Beane's record there overall has been better than average. On defense at least they have tried to fill holes. Their free agent signings have not really worked out relative to the spending and some of their worst draft picks were spent on defensive players, but at least they identified problems and attempted to solve them. With WR on the other hand they have not even tried to upgrade Davis. It's an incredibly bizarre blind spot that this regime has.

Hopkins definitely wanted to come here. It was an open secret even before he was released by the Cardinals. For some reason Beane has eagerly opened Pegula's wallet for fat lazy defensive lineman, but refuses to spend a penny more than his personal value on WRs. I really don't get it. For example, how do you give Jordan Phillips anything over the vet minimum? How does a 1st round bust in Vernon Butler scam us out of millions of dollars? And then Beane goes on the press circuit lamenting how unfair it is that the salary cap makes it impossible for him to bring a player like Hopkins onto the team. Give me a break. The 2022 offseason I at least understood their wanting to give Davis a shot after his incredible playoff performance. After last season though a much better WR2 was obviously a big need, and in Hopkins we had a very good WR who was a free agent and who wanted to play for us. How did we fumble that golden opportunity?

I know but the flow of the game changes how each team plays. When the Bengals needed to put a drive together to close out the game, they moved the ball with ease. Our final TD drive took a lot of time off the clock - this was by design, Cincy was conceding those areas of the field. At no point did I really think we had approached anything close to a 50/50 game.

I think the close game narrative is a little disingenuous given that the Bengals kneeled out their final drive.

Correct IMO. It's not about his offensive scheme and play designs as a whole, it's his inability to get the offense in rhythm. Everybody watching from the couch knows the offense works better from up tempo and with Josh running the ball. We know it works better without random shot calls downfield that never work. But Dorsey for some reason can't see these obvious truths right in front of his face. Embedding this for you: Everybody knows that up tempo is a winning formula for our offense. Everybody except the one man that can do something about it.

What makes you think he wasn't prepared? I just think Dorsey has him in his own head with this system. Everything is too disjointed. Allen doesn't start running until it's too late. There are very few schemed up one-read throws like you see in pretty much every other offense. Our protection schemes get beaten frequently. WRs end up tripping over each other because their routes are next to each other. I described the play calling in the game thread as Dorsey reaching into a bag and randomly pulling out a play call, that's what it feels like to me. That's a lot of jumbled up thoughts, that was a long game and I'm tired. But im general I'm not remotely satisfied with Dorsey's overall management of the offense. His offense feels like it's run by A.I. He understands what play calls beat what coverages and progression design, etc., but he has no innate feel for the game.

Josh knows what's up: The game plan was to go away from what worked last week. It blows my mind.