HappyDays

I've watched almost as much Chiefs football as I've watched Bills football the past couple years. On the whole their pass catchers and OTs definitely limit their offense, but every time they need a drive or a play they are able to manufacture one. Watching their scheme compared to ours is like watching a different sport. They also have the luxury of playing a very specific brand of football because their defense is always clutch when they need to be. I mean always. But of course I wish we had more talent. Talent wins out over scheme every time. Still I think in spite of that there are positive plays being left on the field because our coaching is below the top tier.

I remained skeptical after the Dolphins game when the common belief was that he had put on a clinic. I let myself be convinced after the Jags game but now we see that team for what it is and everything since then has confirmed my worst fears about him. It's not that he's awful but he's really lacking compared to the true championship contenders. I really don't understand the strategy the past few years. Underinvest in the offensive personnel and also hire green offensive coaches that have zero proof of concept at the NFL level.

The more analysis I've seen of the last game the more I come away thinking Brady is a larger problem than previously thought. Nothing about our offense is crisp and nothing is innovative. The WRs aren't being coached to execute on scramble drills. The run scheme is basic. The OL still regularly gets confused on exotic pressure looks. The play calling is predictable. We have no counterpunch when defenses figure out what we want to do. There is a lot of high level offensive coaching throughout the league right now and we just don't have that unfortunately. Not that I really blame Joe Brady. We intentionally did not invest much in the offense so the OC was always going to have his work cut out for him. And then we handed Brady the job without actively searching for better. The offense was set up to fail and now we see the entirely predictable result.

Washington/Baltimore has surprisingly become a defensive struggle.

Something I've noticed watching Washington/Baltimore - Washington is making it a point to shut down Derrick Henry first. They are telling Baltimore if they want to sustain drives it will have to come through the air. So far that strategy has forced 1 INT and one drive ending in a FG. It is counterintuitive to how most defenses are coached right now but you have to play them like the unique offense that they are.

They were both bad contracts. I'm annoyed that Beane didn't properly address the WR room. That doesn't mean overpaying for Davis would have been a good decision.

Great he caught 2 of the 4 TDs that hit him in the hands. Another classic 50% performance, in a blowout loss. In your opinion is he worth the contract that the Jags paid him?

Jags fans have been hating on Gabe Davis all season long on social media. They (correctly) believe that the team overpaid him and they're sick of his inconsistency. And what fanbase doesn't have some fun talking trash about players that leave the team? That's part of the fun of being a sports fan. It isn't that serious. Gabe Davis is still a millionaire. He doesn't need your support, he already won.

But why did the read need to be more difficult? That's the part I'm stuck on more. I mean I know it's fun breaking these plays down from overhead freeze frames, but realistically Josh actually has to make these reads in real time within 2 seconds. This year he isn't throwing to muddy reads, he's moving on. The coach's job is to make his job as easy as possible and eliminate the muddy reads. The minute details in the planning and the execution of the route spacing is below the level of other offenses. This should have been an easy read and an easy throw for a QB of Josh's caliber.

And again here's the play for anybody that wants to watch it for themselves: This is when Allen wants to be throwing to the wheel: Don't need to be Usain Bolt's twin to get off of Coleman as soon as Allen's arm moves forward and get in the path of the layered throw. I'm guessing Coleman is supposed to be running a pick but his defender has leverage behind him so that isn't getting it done. At this point Allen wants to wait for Cook to get level with Coleman before throwing over him but Edwards gets walked back in the pocket and at that point he goes into escape mode. I'm not trying to absolve Allen of his mistakes at all, it's just a lot more complicated than people want to admit. The spacing of the pick makes no sense and makes the play way harder than it needs to be. When you watch Travis Kelce end up so wide open no one else is even on the screen with him, it's because the Chiefs plan and execute their route spacing and timing to perfection. Little things like this that you don't notice live are what separate decent coaching from elite coaching. The one play Chris Simms breaks down that I do think Allen missed on was this one on 3rd and 13: Allen playing like his usual self would absolutely rip that out to Coleman and get us to 4th and short at worst. This is a good example of what I said earlier in the thread, that Allen's internal clock appeared to be moving a tick too fast in the 1st half. Probably over analyzing the game at this point, I just can't help myself when I see people on here actually say things like "Allen was the main reason we lost this game" or "Allen was the worst player on the field." He clearly was not the best version of himself, but he also got exactly zero help from his play caller and exactly one play where a pass catcher went above and beyond for him. All of our problems got exposed by well coached defenses two weeks in a row.

I have no idea what Coleman is doing on that route. It almost looks like he's trying to block the guy with his butt to free up the wheel. There's a ton of open space over the middle and if he just ran to that space he would have brought his man with him and the wheel would be wide open. Maybe Coleman didn't have the play call right? I mean later in the game a ball bounced off the back of his helmet so that's entirely possible. Otherwise the route spacing there makes no sense.

Bills 13 Jets 10 I would have had the score flipped until Saleh got fired. I don't see this as a "rally around the interim coach" kind of move. I see this as a "WTF is going on with my team and why should I keep trying" kind of move. Like most people I'm predicting an ugly ugly football game and I kind of just trust the mentality of our team more than theirs right now so I gave us the edge. I like our defense matched up against their offense. Our strength is outside CBs so I don't see Garrett Wilson having a big day. Breece Hall isn't the kind of RB we have trouble stopping. We don't have to worry about Rodgers moving around and should have no fear blitzing him. On offense, I don't like our matchup against anyone right now, let alone with Shakir and Cook possibly out, let alone against possibly the best defense in the league. But we're not going to be shut out. I'll trust Allen to make one or two more plays than Rodgers which will be just enough to get the win.

I really didn't have a problem with the back shoulder to Coleman on 1st down. Against the Ravens that play had become automatic. The problem is Coleman looked back towards Allen way too early in the route which gave the CB an easy read. When Coleman turns his head, the CB turns his head. The rep is lost at that point. He needs to sell the route vertically for a tick longer, but that's the kind of thing that happens when you're relying on an inexperienced rookie in a critical moment of a game. Allen is already gearing up to make an anticipatory throw before the rep is lost and it's not like he's going to go through his progressions in this situation. It's one read and throw the ball because that's what the coaches called.

I appreciate that after exactly two weeks the entire board and the rest of the Bills social media sphere has flipped around to wanting us to trade for a WR. Our fanbase quietly got smarter.

I can appreciate this analysis. Here's the play for anyone that wants to watch it: Last year some of Allen's INTs came when defenders that weren't covering the intended target were able to read the play and uncover from their man to get into the passing window. Good example would actually be Bernard's INT against Stroud in this game. Stroud makes technically the right read but Bernard is right there and recognizes it fast enough to make the play. Something I have noticed this year is that Allen is intentionally trying to avoid that scenario. So yeah I think it's very possible on this play he sees Coleman's defender with eyes on Allen and doesn't trust that the window will be there if he throws it before Cook gets behind Coleman. Like you said I don't know if that's a good or a bad decision, but it's better analysis than "Allen doesn't know what he's seeing" so I appreciate the attempt to figure out why he didn't make a throw that he has never hesitated to throw before. Allen obviously had an off game in the 1st half, I'm not going to dispute that. His internal clock seemed to be moving a tick too fast which led to the somewhat jumpy appearance of his play, before he settled down in the 2nd half. I have no doubt that trust issues with his OL and pass catchers influenced his internal clock, but he owns some of that himself either way. But my biggest concern coming out of the game is that when Allen has an off half of football (which is guaranteed to happen several times over the course of a season) the offense looks completely non-functional. I mean there is just nothing in the play design or the skill sets of his pass catchers that gives us any kind of margin for error, especially without Shakir. Like okay let's say the throw to Hollins was a tad overthrown. If Hollins has even average NFL speed or body control that is still a catch. Deep completions are not typically pinpoint accurate and they're as much about timing as accuracy. I couldn't tell you what our bread and butter plays are. Or even what our offensive identity is in general. We came into this game not having the necessary personnel to execute the proper game plan for Houston's defense, and not having the crispness of play designs and execution that the elite offensive coaches bring to the table. Allen will be fine. The other problems won't be. That's the takeaway that actually matters here IMO.

The plays I'm seeing they're not doing anything. It's mind boggling. They're standing still or moving in the opposite direction. Case in point: Look at all that space available for Hollins to sit down and make himself an easy target. Instead he cluelessly continues running across the field in the opposite direction of Allen's scramble. This should be an automatic conversion with Allen's skill set.

I've brought this up in a couple threads but the WRs need to do a way better job in scramble drills. In the past Allen has had WRs like Beasley and Diggs that knew how to make themselves available. A lot of our past 3rd down conversion success was Allen just making magic happen but he needs his pass catchers to be on the same page. Shakir is the only one that has done a good job of this. Against Houston alone there are plays on tape where MVS, Hollins, and Samuel each failed to do anything to help their QB during a scramble drill on 3rd down. Needs to be a focus of the coaching moving forward.

Joe Buscaglia's take: He also breaks down the almost INT that Allen threw back across his body. It highlights the issues I've noticed with our WRs on scramble drills. On that play while Allen breaks the pocket right, MVS continues running in the opposite direction and never tries to come back to make himself an available target. Meanwhile Samuel is just standing still way downfield letting himself be covered. Compare that to Shakir against the Ravens where he leaked behind the coverage and we got a big play. Something has to change. No answers exist on the roster. Getting Shakir back will certainly help but it's not enough to take this team where it wants to go.

It is alarming that we are running so often on 1st down but still not finding good success when we occasionally pass it. Defenses should be keying in on the run giving us easier opportunities to pass it based on these splits.

It hasn't been a solution in the last two games: I'm still of the opinion that as a fanbase we are searching for solutions that don't exist with the current personnel. Defenses know that there are very few things we can do well and it isn't hard to shut those things down when we have no counterpunch.

He's always going to hover around 50ish% of his throws coming from outside the pocket, just like the other stylistically similar QBs. IMO you don't ask those QBs to change. You build the offense around their skill set and make sure every single pass catcher knows how to respond when they break the pocket. Sometimes it will be an unnecessary escape. So be it.

Allen is responsible for some of it for sure. But like Simms says when an extremely talented QB has a historically bad passing performance it speaks to more fundamental problems in the offense. Not that that's breaking news or anything.

I think Chris Simms and Mike Florio nail it here: I'll admit what Simms says about possibly adding Davante Adams does give me pause. He says even if we add him, do we have enough else on the roster to really make a championship run? I'm naturally a very impatient person so I have been all in on doing whatever it takes to add Adams (or some other legit WR) to the room. But I can see the argument that the season is a wash no matter what so save your resources and push in your chips next year.

Yeah I know what the tweet is trying to say but I don't buy it. We didn't just "re-shape" the personnel. We failed to invest enough meaningful resources into the personnel, and the resources we did invest ended up being an overpayment pretty much across the board.

I don't know. Nobody was ever saying "the Bills offense needs to be built EXCLUSIVELY to beat cover 2 shell." The thought was that we needed some kind of answers built in to win against that coverage, while still retaining the ability to beat any other coverage. There has been a pervasive thought here and elsewhere in the Bills social media sphere that teams would just always let us get away with cheap yards over and over again, and as long as Allen remains patient we'll be unstoppable. It turns out well-coached defenses aren't going to just lay down and die for us. They're going to force the issue until we prove we can beat it. For two weeks now our personnel and our scheme haven't proven they can beat it. So the trend will continue.