HappyDays

What god did the Bills piss off in the offseason? Can't wait for the report tomorrow that a horde of locusts chewed holes through all of our practice footballs.

Most #2 WRs don't have just a couple routes that defenses can key in on. Most top tier offenses have wrinkles they put into their red zone play calls. It's hard enough to make plays happen in the compressed area of the field without defenses also knowing exactly what you want to do. Considering how poor our red zone offense has been this year (currently 21st in red zone TD% with 52.94%) I'm not going to chalk it up to just regular film study. It's too predictable and uncreative right now.

Here's Patrick Peterson breaking it down: We have a big problem if opposing defenses know exactly what route we're going to run and where Allen will throw the ball based on the coverage. He basically says that Davis only runs a couple routes and pretty much always runs inside post in the red zone. That makes it way too easy for a veteran DB to make a play on the ball. Dorsey needs to add some red zone wrinkles, fast. We've been figured out.

PFF grade or no, I have done a total 180 on Edmunds this year and now want us to re-sign him. The defense clearly looks different without him. He's stopped making some of the head scratching plays. I don't mind that he doesn't make game changing turnovers, I'll take the consistency.

The ball that hit Knox in the hands in the end zone was ridiculously over aggressive?

Sure. We have been awful in short yardage situations. We had mostly been moving the ball just fine against the Vikings. In general this year our offense is able to move the ball right until they reach the red zone and then they get stymied. I almost always believe in taking the points until it becomes obvious that you have to go for it. Keep the game in front of you.

Why does it matter how many scores we are up with 10 minutes left in the 4th? This is what I mean. We're trying to win the game 10 minutes early. There's no need for it. If we go up by 13 there we are likely one FG drive away from icing the game no matter what the Vikings do on their next possession. You trust your offense to get one more FG drive and your defense to not allow 3 scoring drives with 10 minutes left in the game. By failing to take the points we changed the math. Now the Vikings only needed to score twice even if we kicked a FG, and that is exactly what happened.

Here's Dan Orlovsky breaking down two separate drives where we had 2nd and 2 and failed to do anything with it: Defenses are not even pretending to play the run in these situations. We have to figure it out.

I explained this earlier too. Our offense is bad in the red zone and in short yardage situations. It was totally unnecessary to go for it on a short yardage red zone play. You can't predict how the game will go, you just have to take points while you can. Two FG drives is almost as good as one TD drive. Instead we bet everything on one play. It made no sense.

According to what?

What gets me about how McDermott let this game slip away is that he did it being overly aggressive. Remember when the narrative was that McDermott was too conservative? Well we lost this game because we went for it on 4th and 2 and refused to run the ball while up 2-3 scores. I don't understand where this new disposition of his came from. Did the Rams and Titans blowouts skew his understanding of how most NFL games are won? McDermott likes to say after losses that he trusts his players. But he can't let them run the show. I'm sure Allen and the offense want to go for it on every 4th down and always play aggressive. McDermott needs to put the leash back on them. It isnt just an Allen problem. The whole identity of this offense right now is "killshot." The Chiefs had a similar problem last year in their mid-season slump, to the point that many Chiefs fans welcomed the Tyreek Hill trade because it would force the offense to play with more patience. I trust that McDermott will get it fixed. We've always played our best ball in December under him.

I do. I have been banging this drum since last season. 4th down aggressiveness has become a sort of mass hysteria among coaches and fans. Ten years ago it was the opposite, you had coaches making goofy decisions where they would be down by 7 points with 3 minutes left and they would punt the ball on 4th and 1 from the 50. Slowly but surely that kind of cowardly decision making fell out of favor - this is a good thing! But now the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction. Now you'll have coaches leading by 10 points and choosing to go for it on 4th and 5 from the 50. I think the two decisions I just described are equally stupid. Brandon Staley tanked his team's playoff chances with crap like that last year and all along the way I see "analytics" people on Twitter applauding his decision making. Like I said, mass hysteria. Except that this wasn't a one off scenario. This is the issue with those supposed win percentage probability calculators that seemingly always suggest an aggressive decision. They don't take the team's history into context. We have been terrible both in the red zone and in short yardage situations this year. So here we are with a short yardage red zone play... I don't care what some unexplained algorithm says to do, I am 100% confident that this Bills team in that situation already leading by 10 points should take the FG. It doesn't matter what play we call. The decision is inherently reckless. I'm not talking from a position of hindsight here. I was upset when I saw the offense line up and hoped that we were just trying to draw them Offside. I can actually excuse player execution failures more than I can excuse coaching execution failures like that, because it was a no brainer decision that we flunked. Huh? Look at the play by play. What you're saying could have happened is impossible. After that 4th and 2 interception the Vikings drove for a TD. Even being charitable and giving them the PAT they missed it would have been 30-24 Bills at that point. We then go three and out. The next drive is the one where the Vikings drove to the 1 yard line and we all know what happened next. So now it would be 31-30 Vikings and we drive for the game winning FG. Are you saying they would have played defense differently on the last drive if they knew a FG would have won the game instead of tied it? That's quite the stretch.

4th and 1 or less they would QB sneak it every time. I'm fine with that. This was 4th and 2 and we go into shotgun and every WR runs into the end zone. It is a completely over the top decision in a game that we had in hand. This coaching staff has decided it hates FGs and it hates punts to such a degree that we hurt ourselves trying to avoid them. You think that mindset might have creeped into the QB's head too? I'm all for going for it on 4th down when it makes sense, but we have gotten in the habit of doing it any time we're past midfield with less than 5 yards to go. What did going for it on 4th down do for us against the Chiefs? A turnover on downs inside the 10, and a turnover on downs at midfield. Ooh the big bad scary Chiefs, can't afford to play conservatively! I will say this isn't a Bills specific problem, coaches across the league are now terrified that if they don't go for it on 4th down and end up losing the game they will be harassed by the media. Whereas if a coach goes for it on 4th down and loses the game as a result, some amateur math geek on Twitter posts a chart that nobody actually understands which supposedly proves the coach improved his team's win percentage probability by 0.9% and everyone moves on. It's all total crap.

I hate this argument. The reason you take 3 points there to go up by 13 is that you are now in a better position to go up by three scores with a defensive stop and another FG drive. Or worst case scenario if the Vikings score a TD to bring it within 6, another FG puts you up by two scores again. I don't need to stretch too far to prove my point - 33 points in regulation wins this game. We were 3 short. Any points on that drive keeps the game in front of us. Instead we gave a huge momentum swing to the Vikings that we never got back. This 4th down aggressive crap is sweeping the NFL and IMO it puts teams in bad situations more than it helps. Everyone talks about Allen trying to win the game on one play - but this is exactly what McDermott did when he went for it on 4th and 2. The Vikings didn't try anything crazy like that. They let the game come to them and let us make the critical mistakes in critical moments. For cripes' sake we were already winning the game, we just needed to put a little more pressure on the Vikings. Especially for a team that has struggled in the red zone and short yardage situations, it was a joke of a coaching decision. And for the record I was saying this before we failed to convert the 4th down.

This is the best angle I've seen of it: It is actually NOT a bad decision. The window is there IF Davis flattens his route and keeps his leverage in front of Peterson. When Allen releases the ball Davis starts angling into the endzone and Peterson cuts underneath to intercept it. It's also possible that Allen misread it and should have thrown the ball further towards the back of the endzone. Nobody knows. But I actually feel better about the decision after seeing this angle.

I think it's the usual, DCs have tape on Dorsey's offense now and they're calling plays to take away what we like to do. Patrick Peterson knew exactly what we were going to do on the last play of OT. He easily undercut Davis because of the angle Davis took and that was all she wrote. And personally I don't think the solution is just Allen checking the ball down more. We can check the ball all the way down to the 10, but does that matter if we can't punch it in? Allen wanted to win the game so he went for the TD throw twice. The first one was dropped, the second one the undercut by a smart DB in part because Davis took a bad angle. I mean let's pretend Allen takes the check down and we end up in 1st and goal from the 10. Does anyone here have confidence in us getting a TD? So let's say we get the FG. Does anyone here have confidence in the defense stopping the Vikings in a 2 minute drill with timeouts from driving down the field for at the very least a FG attempt for the win? I think Allen checking the ball down on that play is a lazy solution with the same ultimate result. The difficult solution is Dorsey finding ways to create easy yards and reads, and creating some kind of identity in the RZ. I don't ever want Allen deciding not to throw an anticipatory throw downfield when his read tells him that's the right throw.

Yeah because then he tried to throw it to where Davis stopped, and at the same time Davis started hopping to the right. You can see it perfectly here at 1:00: We're running an offense that requires the QB and the WRs to be on the same page at all times, the same one the Patriots ran under Brady. Throughout their dynasty it was well known that only a few WRs were capable of fitting into the system. Edelman was great in that system not because of elite abilities but because he was always on the same page with Brady. We are NOT seeing that from this offense. Davis doesn't strike me as a cerebral WR, and I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. Ideally we would be sending him on simple vertical routes where he can show off his ability to climb the ladder like he did at UCF. We're instead asking him to read coverages and adjust route angles on the fly. Everyone is thinking too much from the QB all the way down and it's putting us in bad situations.

I don't know who read the play correctly. But there is space in front of Davis to keep running and instead he sits. This caused Allen to double clutch and the play died. There was a similar issue on the game ending interception. Allen has not been on the same page with his WRs too many times this year. It's my main issue with our offensive system going back to Daboll - it relies too much on Allen and the WR seeing the coverage the same way, and if they don't it is far too likely to lead to a goofy looking interception. When you watch Miami's or San Fran's offense there isn't anything like that. Everyone is on the same page from pre- to post-snap. The QB just has to follow his progressions and hit his WR at the right spot on their route. It's almost certainly too late to completely change our offensive system but Dorsey has to work with Allen and the WRs to minimize these critical mistakes. Allen and Davis have been together for too long for these kinds of issues to still be popping up.

Screenshot scouting doesn't work. He expected Davis to keep running.

That's fair, but McCaffrey and Toney are producing for their new teams. The difference is those teams have specifically game planned to get their new weapons involved. For some reason we refuse to do it.

I don't feel this way. It is a regular season game against an NFC opponent. I feel worse about the Jets and Dolphins losses. This is like the Hail Murray game where a non-conference opponent that we clearly outplayed beat us on flukey plays. I think the loss just feels worse because we continued some worrying trends and had about a dozen different chances to win it. If we fix some of those negative trends we'll be fine.

Jeff Wilson had over 100 yards rushing for the Dolphins yesterday! Is our playbook written in Latin? It's inexcusable not to use the weapon that we traded for. Zero touches on offense, less than freaking Duke Johnson, is just crazy, especially since we were up by 2 possessions for a large portion of the game. That's where you lean on the running game. No way Beane traded for him just to be a punt returner.

Because this coaching staff slow plays everything, often to the detriment of the team. They slow play injuries, rookie playing time, obvious necessary roster changes, etc. It took them a whole season and a half of Zack Moss clumsily running into his lineman's butt before they recognized that he isn't a viable player. They've given Shakir very little playing time despite obviously being more dependable than McKenzie. Currently they're limiting Cook's snaps in favor of Singletary even though it has become obvious over the last two weeks that he gives our offense more juice. And yes the latest slow play is keeping Hines out of the offense, even though it is obvious that we need more speed out of our backfield. This is presumably because... they don't think he knows the playbook well enough yet? That's the only possible reason I can imagine, and personally I think it's stupid. Every other top offense has someone that can catch the ball 5 yards past the LOS and turn it into a 20+ yard gain. That element of our offense has never been a thing in the Josh Allen era, so Beane goes and gets that element and the coaches refuse to use him. Really frustrating.

I'm still not entirely sure what happened there. Was it a bad snap from Morse? It was just a bizarre flukey play, I don't think Allen made a specific mistake. If he did just fumble the snap that is very frustrating but I don't know how to factor that play into the context of his overall play. I think the only really bad play from Allen today was the last one. Unfortunately that's the play that will define the game, that's how it always works. But I come away from this game encouraged that Allen learned from his mistakes against the Jets and is working his way out of a slump.

It is weird. Singletary wasn't able to get anything going in the 2nd half so I guess we just abandoned the run altogether. But then why are Cook and Hines on the team? Every time Cook has touched the ball the past two weeks good things have happened and we just refuse to stick with him. Hines was used exclusively as a decoy today, we didn't design any real plays to take advantage of his speed. Singletary is a decent enough RB but he is NOT a playmaker. This offense needs more playmakers. Cook and Hines give us some juice and I think they both give us excellent potential in the red zone.