HappyDays

Saw this stat:

I hate these newfangled "win probability" calculators. I'm not inherently anti-analytics by any means, but I feel like this tool is fundamentally flawed in a way that no one talks about. The issue is that it doesn't account for a wild swing in momentum depending on the outcome of the play. Like in that example with the Eagles, throwing it on 3rd and 9 has a lot of potentially negative outcomes that wildly swing the win probability in the Jets direction. There is one outstanding outcome that guarantees a win, but also several negative outcomes that make your chances much worse. Whereas playing it safe with a run and then punting, you know with 99% certainty you are just mildly shifting win probability towards the Jets. There isn't much variance in that decision. The win probability calculator can't truly know how likely any given outcome is if you play aggressive or play conservative, so it is just guessing on certain variables and pops out a number that a ton of analytics people treat like gospel. But it isn't, there is still a ton of context that the calculator can't possibly capture. So personally I will almost always take the lower variance option (which is usually the conservative option) unless I am facing an offense or a QB that I expect to move the ball on my defense. I don't know if I explained that too well, but it's bothered me ever since I first saw these win probability calculators pop out of the blue several years ago and everybody immediately bought into them without any hint of skepticism. Our decision at the end of the Giants game is a good example of why I feel this way. We ran the only possible series of plays (pass followed by a FG attempt) that would have given the Giants a decent chance at a win. McDermott would rightfully be getting blasted today if the coin flip ending had gone in the other direction. Honestly he SHOULD be getting blasted but the media forgets those mistakes in a win.

Why is aggressive inherently good? What ever happened to context? We're facing the worst offense in football. They've scored 1 offensive TD in the previous 11 quarters of game time. They have a backup QB, a gimpy RB, and missing several OL including their stud LT. We can pin them back inside the 20 with zero timeouts and 1 minute to drive for a TD, or we can risk giving them the ball at midfield with 1 timeout. Why in that scenario is aggressive the right mindset?

In 6 regular season games against the Pats, Diggs has averaged 95 yards and 1 TD per game. If Diggs played the Pats every game over an entire season he would have 1,600 yards and 17 TDs. I hope we don't adjust. Funnel the ball to the #1 man.

Do you realize how crazy this sounds? You're basically saying Josh should throw the ball to other receivers just for the sake of doing it. The design of every play is meant to maximize the likelihood of a successful outcome. More often than not, throwing the ball in Diggs' general direction - especially in man coverage - is going to give us the highest likelihood of a positive play. Why would we want to divert any of his targets to a vet minimum cast off like Sherfield? Or a roster bubble player like Shakir? Just to feel better about the target share at the end of the game? I get why people are frustrated. It's become clear that the players around Diggs are not close to good enough. But the solution is not "throw the ball to those inferior players more." The solution is "get better players." Until that solution becomes reality, you have to funnel the ball to the best pass catcher on the team.

I don't really understand the great mystery here. Diggs is the only consistently dependable pass catcher we have. Everybody knows that, right? He's the only one that regularly separates and catches the ball. Am I breaking news here? Historically when our offense starts to struggle, funneling the ball to Diggs has set off a spark. It's crazy how many posts I see now to the effect of "I thought Davis could be our full time #2 but it turns out he's not good enough." I mean, why?? What ever made you think that about him? We were having debates during training camp about if he is worth a big extension! It was laughable then and it's more laughable in retrospect. He has literally been the same exact player for four seasons, with one all-time great game smack dab in the middle that I guess led a lot of people astray. All offseason people tried to tell me "We don't need a #2! Davis/Shakir/Harty/Sherfield will be the #2 by committee!" It just doesn't work that way. The biggest problem with the offense by far in the past two games has been the lack of a true #2 pass catching target. The same as it was last year. And we have people complaining that Diggs gets too many targets. Wake up.

Because everyone else was getting single teamed and that's all it takes to stop them.

Allen isn't going off script. It is built into the offense that if it is man coverage throw the ball to Diggs. It's incredibly obvious in a game like yesterday where the Giants showed man coverage a ton - it wasn't a coincidence that Diggs got an absurdly high target share. There are probably times where Alle waits a tick too long to move on if Diggs isn't getting separation, but that is a function of our offense, arguably THE function of every offense - get your best pass catcher involved early and often. The proof is in the film. He looks to Diggs first almost every single time it is obvious man coverage. Why wouldn't he? He's literally just picking out the most likely person to catch the ball.

It's such a perfect example that it's the only one people are using. Most of the plays where Allen holds the ball it is because no one is separating. Here he probably should have moved on from Diggs, but it's one play. One play doesn't tell a story. Correct. And logically it's the right choice. If the defense is in man, the best matchup 100% of the time is Diggs versus whoever he's up against. It doesn't matter if that CB is a top 5 CB and Davis's CB is middle of the road, you still trust Diggs in that matchup first.

From Matt Parrino at McDermott's presser today: So we are 7 weeks into the season and the coaches don't know who our #2 pass catcher is. Crazy.

I think the Dolphins game was a case of an old behind the times DC calling the kind of soft zone defense that we have all come to hate. Against that kind of zone defense our offense thrives, no doubt. Our pass catchers can't separate in man coverage but they can find holes in zone and we have a lot of zone beater plays we run at a very high level. What's happened the past two weeks is the Jags and Giants coaching staffs realized if you double Diggs and dare everybody behind him to separate in man coverage, you will mostly be able to stop us. Dorsey to my eyes hasn't called a lot of great man beating concepts the past two weeks. We aren't putting defenders in conflict or muddying up their coverage rules, we're just sending guys out on basic routes and asking them to win their 1v1s. Obviously with this group of mediocre pass catchers that isn't going to get it done. We'll soon have games against top tier DCs like Lou Anarumo and Steve Spagnuolo. I know what they're going to do - double Diggs, cover everyone else in man, call exotic blitzes and simulated pressures which have been proven to confuse our OL. The exact same gameplan teams used against us last year. A full season later and we still haven't found a personnel or schematic answer.

With an elite QB, an elite WR1, and a solid run game, my reasonable expectation is that we score more than 0 points in 3 quarters against a bottom 5 defense. The play calling last night was abysmal. Against the Jags, same thing. Dorsey is not quick to adjust to what the opponent is doing or what we are doing well in the game.

Here's McDermott verbatim from his presser just now (from Matt Parrino): AKA Dorsey isn't to blame and we don't have a true #2 pass catcher. I'm shocked if McDermott really doesn't see any issues with Dorsey's play calling last night, but who knows.

I think it is partly a Dorsey problem though, just like it was a Daboll problem at times. If you look at the top offenses in football - Dolphins, 49ers, Lions - it looks like a different sport. I know the Dolphins and 49ers in particular have much better personnel than we do, but still the way those offenses run is a couple tiers higher than ours. All three have made limited QBs look like superstars. Meanwhile our offense led by an actual superstar QB puts up 0 points in 3 quarters against a bad defense. At a certain point how can you not lay some of the blame on Dorsey?

What we're seeing the past two weeks is that Josh Allen playing conservative "within the scheme" QB is not good enough to get it done. The only time we have moved the ball and scored the past two weeks is when he makes a "hero ball" throw that ends up being a huge net positive play. The Jags and Giants figured out that if you run mostly man coverage against this mediocre group of weapons, as long as you don't let Diggs singlehandedly beat you the Bills offense is easy to stop. If the solution still is "let Josh run" that represents a failure of the front office and the coaching. Allen running should be a supplemental piece of our offense, not the motor that makes it run. For three years now we have failed to give him legitimate help behind Diggs and failed to run a creative offense that schemes receivers open. Dorsey is totally lost, but this problem honestly still existed when Daboll was here too. Ultimately Beane and McDermott are the ones responsible. They own this mess. They have to fix it.

Here's another screenshot: Defenses are doubling Diggs and no one else can get open against man coverage. The Giants secondary is pretty good but not that good. We just don't have the horses.

I think the problem is we don't have the personnel to play a rhythm offense and that's what you need under center. Diggs gets open in rhythm, the other guys do not.

Throwing on the move is inherently not an easy throw. We are just spoiled by Allen's ability to make it look easy. Those sorts of throws are never going to have consistently precise ball placement. So as I said in another thread, you need dependable targets on the other end of those. Knox is not a dependable target. His awkward falling to the ground and letting the ball bounce out of his hands is a typical play for him. Why should he ever be the player we are relying on to ice the game?

Sure. A good WR3 takes advantage of attention given to better pass catchers around him and lesser coverage from depth CBs. That's Davis in a nutshell. His most efficient year was as a rookie in 2020 when he would regularly end up streaking wide open downfield because defenses had so much else to worry about. When defenses can focus on stopping him because he's a full time #2, he loses those advantages and ends up looking like a marginal player.

Part of calling an offense is knowing your players and knowing who consistently makes those mistakes. That 3rd down was basically THE play of the game for our offense, the difference between icing it or forcing Bass into a 50+ yard kick and NY getting the ball back. On a critical play like that you have to be smart enough to know that Knox is not a dependable pass catcher on a good day, and tonight he's got a wrist injury on top of his usual ineptitude. So the overall concept of targeting an undependable player like Knox on THE play of the game was fundamentally flawed. I know people like to make fun of Allen for almost always looking at Diggs first, but why wouldn't he? Dependable targets should get the ball funneled to them. Diggs, then Cook/Murray in the run game, then the scraps to everybody else.

Let's also remember that McDermott signs off on these plays. We have been running short yardage plays from shotgun for several weeks now, it was not a one time brain fart from Dorsey. It's still happening which means McDermott is allowing it. At some point the head coach needs to step up and say enough is enough.

Felt like we went more run heavy in the 2nd half, no? With a few absurd throws from Allen mixed in. Our normal rhythm passing offense did almost nothing positive tonight. Nearly every bright spot on offense came from the run game or Allen making magic happen.

1) We need more creative route combinations. The passing offense is so basic. There is rarely any motion or misdirection. Too much reliance on guys to just win their 1v1s. 2) Commit to the run more, especially when the LBs are constantly dropping back. Cook is by far our 2nd best offensive weapon. That's more a comment on the other weapons than on him, but still we might as well use our best options. 3) Most importantly IMO is we need an improvement on Davis as WR2. He had one of his patented missing in action games tonight and actually was a net negative for the team. Knox is somehow even less dependable than Davis. Kincaid is an afterthought. Harty/Shakir/Sherfield are JAGs. They have nobody to step up on a play to play basis when defenses take Diggs away. It's a massive handicap.