Shaw66

I think you're correct about the defense being a problem, but I think you're not completely correct about the cause. It's true, everyone knew they were going to run, but knowing they are going to run and stopping their running are two different things. Two points the announcers raised last night: 1. The Ravens come at you with two all-time great ball carriers. Derrick Henry is a total stud. His rushing totals in the last six seasons and so far this season are this: 1059, 1540, 2027, 937 (in 8 games), 1538, 1167, 480 (in four games this season). Total stud. Only Michael Vick may have been better as a running quarterback. No teams put two stud runners in the backfield at the same time, and the only reason the Ravens can do it is that one of them is also a pretty good quarterback. That kind of talent in the same backfield at the same time is a defensive nightmare in ANY offense. 2. But in the offense they run, it's really, really tough to defend. They motion people all over the place, fast guys you have to respect. So, go ahead, respect the fast guy in motion, Henry pounding you up the middle, and Lamar running options. It's brutal. They showed one replay, and Collinsworth was just laughing - some linemen and tight ends pulled right, some pulled left, some went straight upfield. Understanding and responding to keys when the play can go anywhere on the field is a nightmare. So, yes, the defense has to be better, but give the Ravens a lot of credit. Later in the season, teams probably will have figured out to slow them down a bit - the game is always about forcing Jackson to throw - but right now it isn't surprising that they can explode on you like that. What the Bills needed was for the offense to be better. It was 21-3 at the half, and the defense was beginning to get its legs under them. The Bills needed some first-half points. Even one touchdown to get to 21-10, maybe a touchdown and field goal to get to 21-13. It was Brady's first big challenge, and he failed, more or less. Allen had pretty decent protection, but he had nowhere to throw the ball. That's on Brady - the whole point of the offense and the kind of guys they're putting on the field is that they're supposed to always have an open guy. There were a lot of plays where Allen just kept looking and looking. We didn't see that in previous weeks. Now, it's possible that's on Allen, that he had guys but wasn't reading the defense quickly enough to find them. I don't think so. I think the options that were supposed to be there weren't.

I had a bad feeling all week about the Ravens game. I was prepared for what happened. I wasn’t predicting a bad loss, but I could see how it could happen. Although much was made about the Ravens’ 0-2 start, the reality was that they were a toenail away from tying the Chiefs. And they were scary good in their win against the Cowboys. They had a running game that looked formidable, and their defense was solid. They were a bad matchup for the Bills. So, when Derrick Henry ripped off his 83-yard run to open the game, I wasn’t surprised. I just sat and admired his truly awesome talent. A guy with his size and power simply should not be permitted to run that fast, but that is who he is. They said during the broadcast that he runs more like Eric Dickerson than anyone in the history of the game. For years I’ve said he runs like Jim Brown - great speed and power, and enough shiftiness to make people miss. Comparisons to Dickerson and Brown are laughable for any other running back, but not Henry. He’s always worth watching. Lamar Jackson ran effectively, but not so much as to be the story. His passing was the story. Just flat out excellent. I’m not too upset with how the Bills played. It clearly wasn’t good enough; the offense was unproductive, and the defense struggled. The defense likely would have played somewhat better if the offense had held up better. But it’s early in the season, and teams are going to have some bad matchups and some bad games. That’s how they learn. In particular, I think now is the time to find out if Brady can do the job. Now, he has film to watch to understand how teams can shut down his passing attack. Now, he has the opportunity to find the weaknesses in the defenses the Ravens were running and to develop responses so that Josh isn’t just standing back there wondering where to go with the ball. In particular, the Ravens took away all the short, easy throws around the line of scrimmage. If they’re playing that tight, there have to be opportunities down field. Brady has to find those opportunities and get his team into the right plays to take advantage. I was unhappy about one play, the gadget play. McDermott’s teams don’t run gadget plays well. Josh had a TD reception against the Texans in the playoffs, and there may have been one or two others, but most of the time McDermott’s gadgets fail in the execution. The fake punt last season, for example, was ugly. And last night’s Samuel-in-the-wildcat-toss-to-Josh was ugly, too. For one thing, the Ravens were attacking the line of scrimmage all night long, so any play that develops slowly behind the line is probably a mistake. Brady should have realized that he needed to keep that play in his back pocket. But there’s something more – the Bills just don’t run gadget plays crisply, with precise execution. I don’t know why, but they don’t. More importantly, the Bills might actually have won the game if they hadn’t turned it over on that play. They had shown real life on the previous possession and tightened up the score, 21-10. The defense had forced two three-and-outs to begin the half and had taken the ball away on the last real possession of the second quarter. The Bills offense is not a big-play, quick-strike offense, although it can make big plays. What the Bills needed was another efficient, sustained drive for another score, a drive to keep their defense off the field and to establish some sore of control over the game. They didn’t need a splash play – even an explosive touchdown would have given the ball back to the Ravens, and that wasn’t what the Bills needed. The play was a bad idea, poorly executed, at the wrong time of the game. The object is to finish each quarter of the season 3-1 or better, and the Bills have done that. If they’re good, they’ll learn some lessons from that game, and the next time they play the Ravens, it will be different. A few players stood out to me. One was Dorian Williams. The guy is a tackling machine. Always attacking, always on target with his hits, and always wraps his guy up. He’s a guy who has to be on the field somewhere. Yes, he misplayed the touchdown to Hill, badly, but that’s a correctable error. I like that guy. Bass let the Bills down. That miss was a bad miss at a bad time. In a come-from-behind situation like that, it’s the kicker’s job to bail out the offense when the offense stalls short of the end zone. Those points were critical at the time. Looked to me that after Coleman had a nice reception over the middle, he got up, saw that he was coming off the field, and made some kind of gesture that asked, “Why are you taking me out?” He’s gotta learn, fast, that there are no prima donnas on this team. The last guy with that attitude is now playing in Houston, and the Bills aren’t going to live with another one. His two back-shoulder catches were excellent; his drop was a tough catch but he has to make it. Lick your wounds, learn some lessons, and move on. GO BILLS!!! The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were every-day people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

I haven't had a chance to post about this until now. I think it's right on the money. I caught some heat about my post a week or two ago about how the Bills are better prepared than most teams at the start of the season. I think this DVOA data is some of the evidence. It's not that the Bills win every game at the beginning of the season; it's just that they're ahead of most teams in terms of their preparation for the season. It's especially true because McDermott spends all year trying to build a team that can play multiple ways - run, pass, blitz, stuff the run - he wants his teams to be good at everything. The result is that when the season begins and he starts game planning, he has more tools available. Good passing teams haven't perfected their passing yet, good running teams haven't perfected their running. But the Bills already know how to stop anything - that's what they prepare for. Later in the season, the Bills are still multiple in that ways, but then they're running into teams that actually have perfected some aspect of their game, running or passing or whatever. At that point, being versatile is quite as useful. The test for McDermott has been - and it's a test he hasn't yet perfected consistently - is to continue to be able to use the Bills' versatility in game plans that shut down things that teams have gotten really good at, because that's what they find in the playoffs. However, I'm encouraged about later in the season, because at least so far it looks like Brady has created the passing attack that McDermott wants - a passing attack that is good at taking whatever the defense gives them. I thought the first few plays against the Jags were telling. Either the first four pass plays, or four the first five, all attacked the flat. Josh took the snap and barely thought about going downfield because he knew from what he had seen that the Jags were leaving the flat unprotected. So, over and over, Josh just threw it out there and let the receiver take ten easy yards. Eventually, the Jags tightened up that weakness, but it just created weaknesses elsewhere, and Josh was ready when that happened. What we saw was really efficient offense, whatever it was that the defense tried to do.

Based strictly on the Jaguars game, here are the top ten things wrong with Josh Allen. 1. His mustache 2. His passer rating wasn't perfect. 3. His indecision - all night long he was telling his backs and receivers presnap to line up here, no, over there, no, this way. 4. His sliding 5. His fear of jumping over people 6. He threw a ball way out of bounds. 7. He was 0-for-4 on standup touchdown passes, a little known but important stat. All four receivers hit the ground after catching his TD pass. 8. No good screen passes 9. He upset team morale by letting one of his receivers be late 10. His hair Other than that, he was pretty good. Overrated, but pretty good.

I don't know if anyone has posted the link to Graham's article in the Athletic on Thursday. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5699837/2024/09/19/christian-benford-bills-face-tattoo/ I didn't know anything about Benford. He grew up in the neighborhood that was the locale for The Wire. His childhood was full of murder, violence, hunger, and drugs. His parents, who didn't live together, in their separate ways got him into football and kept him there. It saved his life. Turns out he and Elam connected after they were drafted, and they work together a lot. They are constantly pumping each other up. Amazing story.

That is a great, great comment. The Bills were so far ahead of their time, they were behind! It's clear that the Bills have done this purposely. McDermott, of course, has always loved playing two deep, but he was smart enough to know that he had to mix it up. The off-season changes in the receiver room made it clear that the Bills were moving to a possession receiving game, too. The innovative offensive coordinators, particularly the Shanahan tree, will drive offensive evolution for the next year or two, and the creative defensive coordinators will be the guys who give their teams a big edge up. Shanahan's style, from his father, always featured a solid running game, and we're seeing a resurgence of running around the league. I was impressed with how the Bills shut down the Miami offense's short game. Maybe McDermott and Babich will be defensive thought leaders. The most interesting comment in that article is that teams around the league stopped spending on safeties. As they move more toward two-deep defensive calls, the skills necessary to play the position narrow, and it's becoming easier to find guys who can play the position. All you need is enough speed to do your job in the deep zones, and the size and tackling ability to stop the run. The corners and edge rushers are key as this offensive trend continues. There were a play or two where Groot dropped into coverage, and he looked pretty comfortable back there. That's probably the kind of edge guy who will become more important - a guy who has the pass rush moves but can play laterally, to protect the edge and the flats, wherever it's needed. He threw that ball to MVS very well. It was a good throw - he just missed it a bit. One of the things I liked about it was that he led MVS a bit across the field, so that the defender wasn't going to have a play on it. Earlier in his career, Josh didn't do that. It's important to remember how important familiarity with receivers is. Josh has had only three months with MVS, and MVS missed some time in the summer, too. Especially with the crowded wide-receiver room they had, that means that Josh hasn't had the kind of reps with MVS that are necessary to have the kind of deep accuracy that makes a QB-receiver tandem deadly.

Great video. Horrible audio.

I never noticed anything strange about McDaniel. 🙂

Whether it is normal or not, i don't know. But i am sure he asks his OC, "Do you have a play?" In this case, the snswer wss yes. Whatever the options were on that play, Josh knew exactly what to do. Very KC-like.

I think he already is. It looked to me on a few throws that Josh was improvising, and he intentionally looked to where he expected to find Kahlil.

Yes, it was amazing. Amazing how everything shut down in the second half. McDaniel in his press conference was almost totally incoherent talking about Tua. I don't think he even knows what he's thinking. He was lost. I have trouble seeing a guy with his personality and his overly-analytical style succeeding as a leader of men in this league. He's an odd guy. Anyone else have a lot of trouble with prime. There were instantaneous freezes throughout the game - either the video or the audio or both stopped for a few seconds. I had a few total freezes where I had to log out and log back in. But, of course, all the commercials ran fine.

And that, my friend, in a nutshell is why I am not writing this week.

I had the same reaction watching last night. It was so clearly every man doing his job, and no one was relied on to be the play maker. It was all about when it's your turn, do your job. The defense, particularly, looked like 11 no-names with two guys always about to make the tackle. It was refreshing.

That's nice to say, but the whole point is that that is NOT the Bills' philosophy, and if you're going to sit around waiting for the Bills to dictate, you're going to be sitting and waiting a long time. McDermott is very much a take-what-the-defense gives you guy. He wants players who are good at attacking wherever the defense is weak, because those are the easiest yards to get. The obvious example is the endless discussions over the summer about the wide receiver room. All summer, people kept complaining that the Bills didn't get a wide receiver who is a difference maker, the kind of guy you're talking about in Kelce. McDermott doesn't want to be structured that way, because when you run into a team that stops your difference maker, where do you go next? People this week were saying they were disappointed Kincaid didn't get more targets, and we didn't see much of Samuel. That's exactly the point - the ball is going to go where it's easy, and that's why Allen completed over 75% of his passes. All easy throws. Lamar Jackson is the ultimate difference maker, but when you stop Lamar, what do the Ravens have left? For McDermott, it's very much a true team game. His view is that 11 guys executing together are better than 10 guys and a difference maker. And that seems to be exactly why Diggs is playing for Houston.

I have to respond to several people who are, I think, undervaluing Von's contribution in the game and on this game. This discussion has reminded me that McDermott said several years ago that pressures are more important than sacks. Von had multiple pressures in the game, and I recall two or three that resulted from his classic bull-rush: catch the tackle off-balance or not quite set, knock him off balance, and drive him back. For his size, it's remarkable that Miller can be effective in this way. It's a combination of quickness, athletic ability, and strength. It is, more or less, what we saw Chris Jones do to Dawkins on the critical play in the playoffs last season. Most d linemen don't have a good bull-rush, and few have one as deadly as Miller's. To say that he doesn't look like his old self, at least with respect to this move, is unfair to Miller. He looks exactly like his old self with this move. The reason pressures are more important than sacks is pressures mean the player is creating an opportunity for the entire team. Pressures create sack opportunities, for the guy getting the pressure and for other rushers. Pressures tend to make the QB less effective on the rep, increasing the chances of an INT or an interception. Miller upset Murray multiple times on Sunday, and that, too, is just like the old Miller. One sack and multiple pressures is a good game for a defensive end, and doing it on only half the snaps is very good, indeed. Is there anyone at all who wouldn't be satisfied with 17 sacks and 35 pressures by Miller on the season? The principal think we didn't see from Miller was the extraordinary bend and wrap around the tackle to get a free run at the QB. However, when he circled around the tackle on Sunday, he executed better than he was doing last season, which he was still recovering. There isn't any reason to believe today that that move is gone. ACL recoveries are slow, but they are more or less complete, because the ACL doesn't really have anything to do with the flexibility of the knee. The ACL provides stability, not flexibility, so there is no reason (other than perhaps age) that Miller's full mobility will not return. And it usually until the second season that we see full recovery from ACL repairs. There's no reason to be writing him off, and there's no reason to be disappointed in his play on Sunday.

Thanks for this.

Bass didn't have the leg to get it there. The wind was fierce and unpredictable. No wind, I agree with you. It's tough to pin the return man inside the 20 - he's going to get to the 25, and once in a while he'll break one. Makes much more sense to kick it deep, and I think that's what we're going to see. On touchbacks, they'll have to bring it out to the 35 to balance the risk-reward. Or even the 40. At that point, it's a big penalty, just like kicking out of bounds. Make it a big penalty anyplace but in the landing area, and then teams will be forced to put the ball in play.

68 TDs. The only thing he didn't do was hit Valdez-Scantling on the deep ball.

It isn't a utilization question. The Bills call the play, the the defense deploys, and the Bills run the play the way the defense dictates. The system is designed so that all the receivers run their routes and Allen knows which guy is open. I think the completion to Knox was one of those. Allen just knew that Knox was going to be the open man. If the open man is Kincaid, great. If not, he isn't targeted. The way we can tell it works that way is that other than maybe the long pass to Coleman late in the game, Allen wasn't throwing contested balls. They were because a passing offense like this generates predictable open receivers, so Allen knows where to go on each play. It was quite impressive yesterday. As great a day as Allen had, imagine if he'd also connected with Valdez-Scantling! Allen knew he had THAT open receiver, too. Tough throw in that wind, but Allen nearly dropped it in there. Well-thrown ball to an open receiver.

Thanks very much for this. I haven't studied the return at all, and I didn't recall the previous kickoffs, either.

I generally agree with you that McDermott is conservative. I think he's conservative in a lot of ways. He comes by it honestly - he studies the game, all the time, and his conclusions from all of his study are that the way to succeed in football most often is to be good consistently rather than to be great occasionally. Listening to you, I think you disagree with that philosophy. There's an endless argument to be had about which is the better philosophy. The problem with trying to be great occasionally is that it requires the coach to be smart about when to try. Once as head coach of the Jets, less than a minute to go with a lead and the opponent inside their own ten, Rex Ryan rushed six and gave up a 90+-yard touchdown to lose the game. Rex was really dumb about trying to be great, and it was one of the reasons he was lousy coach. On the other hand, the best practitioners of being aggressive are good at it. I don't think McDermott is a guy who can be good at the aggressive approach. I think it goes against his nature. He may know he should be more aggressive, but he doesn't give me the feeling that he has the sense of the moment that a good gambler does. That isn't who he is. Yes, he gambles occasionally, especially blitzing late in games, but in general he tends to fall back on the philosophy that it's a long game, we'll have other opportunities, best to preserve field position. And it's hard to argue with that view - he has won a lot games doing it. One other thought that I think people miss: I think this notion of "putting teams away" is mistaken. Look at the scores from yesterday - most of the games were decided by less than a touchdown. It happens every week - that's one consequence of parity in the league. We, the fans, have this mental image of a dominant team rolling over opponent after opponent. Once in a while there's a team like that early in the season, but not late in the season. Games in the NFL are close; they're close more often than they are blow outs, and the same teams isn't recording blowouts over and over. You don't see many games with the backup QB mopping up on the field with eight minutes left. Most games remain undecided at the two minute warning. McDermott's philosophy is that it's easier to teach a team to be good play after play than to teach them to succeed at high-risk, high-reward plays when called on to do it a few times a game. His philosophy clearly is (he's said it often) teach everyone his job on every play in every situation, and if every guy does his job, over the long run he'll have more successful plays than the opponent. I'm not trying to convince you he's right. I'm just trying to explain the reality of how the Bills seem to be organized.

I like this point. If I had to guess, what went wrong on that kick was that Bass told Smiley he could reach the end zone on that kick. Just a guess, but it seems to me there's no way you kick down the middle of the field unless you're trying to reach end zone. I think Smiley's mistake was trusting Bass. And you're right about the next kick. I didn't like that it went out of bounds, but it isn't a "big miss" and the Bills could live with it. I think Smiley recognized that Bass couldn't get it to the end zone, so he called for a directional kick. Bass miss-hit it, but there was no doubt that wind caused it to hook some toward the sideline. Clearly, the touchdown hurt, big-time. It was, essentially, the only play the Cardinals made in the second half (other than one long run by Murray). But I also think that the Bills got bit by something that everyone knew was going to bite some teams early this season: there just isn't enough tape yet for coaches to figure out all the details of excellent kick coverage in this new format. Everyone has done their best installing coverages they believe will work, but it is very much a work in progress. You can be sure that every team, not just the Bills, will be studying that touchdown and adjusting their schemes.

This is a fair point, but the "long time" you're talking about is just the time since his injury. He had that classic Von Miller move for the Bills before then. I think it's coming. The way any athlete in the NFL stands out is when he has multiple ways to attack. One-trick ponies don't succeed for long. Miller showed yesterday that he still has the bull rush that his truly amazing for a guy his size. He looks like a smallish linebacker, and yet he just explodes into tackles and drives them back. Teams are going to see that on film, and tackles are going to get planted to nullify that rush. When the tackles start doing that, Miller will show you what you're looking for.

I think you're wrong about this, in multiple respects. First, I'm surprised you're getting into the business of saying that something is sack only in the stat books. That's the same as saying that an interception is only in the stat books when it goes off the hands of the receiver first. EVERY player accumulates some stats that can be argued were more about being in the right place at the right time. Von was in the right place at the right time to touch Murray down because he executed a classic Von Miller bull rush where he got the tackle off balance right off the snap and drove him all the way into the QB's lap. Whether he gets a tackle or not, that is exactly what we want out of a defensive end. (Nobody would be complaining about Epenesa if he could do that.) As others have said, the presence of his blocker was the single play that was most responsible for Murray tripping. Miller, more than anyone else, caused Murray to go down. Yes, others rushing cut off escape routes that Murray might otherwise have used to get away from Miller attacking the pocket so aggressively, but that is true of half the sacks that are recorded throughout the league. QBs don't get sacked if they have escape routes. But beyond that, as I said my lengthy post elsewhere, it was absolutely clear that Miller turned up his play in the second half. The Bills have always been clear that they brought Miller to Buffalo to make the big play in the fourth quarter, and Miller has been equally clear that he understands that that is his job. That's exactly what he gave the Bills in the fourth quarter yesterday. He was getting consistent pressure in a variety of ways, AND he wasn't letting Murray escape. It was exactly what I was hoping to see out of Miller: Pressure on the QB when the game is on the line.

I didn't say they win every game at the beginning of the season. Lost to the Steelers in 2021, and won the next three games 35-0, 43-21, and 40-0. Won the first two games of 2022 31-10 and 41-7. In 2023, after losing to the Jets, they won 38-10, 37-3, 48-20. Those scores indicate a team that is ahead of the curve on teams early in the season.