HoofHearted

This is where Dorsey differs from Daboll. Daboll was pretty vanilla as far as moving guys around. Guys played where they played for the most part. Dorsey schemes guys open and will move their positioning on the field in order to do so. Diggs is our best slot receiver and it’s not even close. His percentage of targets from the slot has doubled from last year. We should really be talking about who is the best replacement outside. Shakir doesn’t have the fast twitch to do the things Beasley did for us from the slot last season. I think he’s much better served outside. He has really good body control and can win a lot of those 50/50 balls. Move Diggs inside and let him go to work on slot corners, safeties, and backers in space.

There’s no such thing as an 8 man pressure. It’s not schematically sound in any defense.

Don’t even bother giving the guy a response. We run stunts/games all the time.

Just for clarification, is zone coverage considered "prevent defense" to most of you?

To the people talking about this being a scheme issue… it’s not. We’re littered with back-up players in the backend of our defense and have been for extended periods of time this season. I did some digging. This year we are currently the 11th worst defense in conversion rate on third and longs (3rd and 7+). However since McDermott got here the Bills rank 9th in the league in the same metric. I think what gets lost on a lot of people here is how important Poyer and Hyde are to our defense, not from an ability standpoint, but from a mental standpoint. Our ability to be extremely simple with our scheme but show multiple different pre-snap looks out of the same call because our Safety tandem is intelligent enough to handle multiple different disguise looks is invaluable to our defense in those situations. Sitting at the game yesterday there was very little disguising going on in the back end. We telegraphed all game when we were in 3 vs when we were in man based on alignments and stances. Poyer at times was telling Hamlin where to line up or cheat to. We don’t have the players on the back end to rush 6 and sit in man coverage behind it on 3rd and longs. However without the ability to show one coverage look pre-snap and move to an entirely different coverage post-snap we’re making it easy for opposing QBs to diagnose what we’re in. Unfortunately that’s just where we’re at with so many injuries. Only so much we can do right now. Have to slow the bleed - force teams to be patient and take the underneath throws all game - and hope they make mistakes along the way.

The guys on WGR couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re playing extremely simplistic right now with all these guys in compared to what we’ve done in the past with Poyer and Hyde in to disguise coverages. The pressure stuff stands out when it works because of the big negative plays. We blitzed and played man in the first half of the game as well and got burned on it multiple times (Taron Johnson gave up a touchdown when we were in man). The point is we’re running these pressures consistently throughout games. People only notice when we get sacks though.

No doubt.

They did double Jefferson - like the whole game. We sat in 2-man more than I’ve ever seen us before.

His issue is at the collision point. He’s not a man corner - neither is Benford - their hips aren’t as fluid as the receivers they’ve been lining up across from and their getting beat at the collision point and then having the play their trail technique which is why they are trying to play through receivers hands and not turning around. Jefferson and Cooper were both doing a really outstanding job of flashing hands as late as they possibly could so that our punch throughs were late. Really good WR play.

Yeah… he’s an old school Mike. He can hold up in the run game but just looks awful in space.

Played a ton of 3 today to get an extra body down in the box. Corners were on an island the majority of the game. Frazier sold out to stop the run. Unrelated - if we aren’t going to be able to afford to keep Edmunds I hope we have a good replacement plan. Dodson is too un-athletic to hold up there with what we ask out of the position.

Only time I saw him get visibly frustrated was when the Bills ran a Smash concept early on when the offense was sputtering and Josh threw the low route to Knox even though Diggs was wide open on the corner.

It'll all come down to tackling. Fits have been mostly good. Tackling from these backup defensive players has been mostly atrocious, and a lot of it comes down to taking bad angles.

If there's any season ticket holder that isn't planning on using their code I'll gladly use it for you. 😀

We played 2 man almost the entire game - he was doubled.

They're playing "Palms" which is a pattern match Quarters coverage also known as 2-Read. Both Corner and Safety are keying the #2 receiver. The corner is aligned outside leverage of #1 because the coverage can turn into a Cover 2 look depending on the route combination they get. If the #2 receiver were to break out the corner would drive the out and pass off the #1 receiver to the Safety. The corner needs to be outside leverage of this in order to force the #1 receiver to inside release him to give the Safety more time to work over the top of #1. In the Double Post scenario we gave them both #2 and #1 were vertical. Once the #2 and #1 receivers get past linebacker depth it turns into Cover 0 for the Safety and Corner with the ability to still trade off the route if they run some type of deep Scissors concept. In the case of the Double Post - as soon as the corner sees the inbreak of the #2 receiver he now knows he has true man coverage on the #1 receiver and can begin to push to inside leverage of the #1 to take away the Post. Linebackers are relate to #2 players in Palms. Once they get their pass read they will drop to the curl window and work to the inside hip of the #2 receiver. His rules are to wall any seam or inbreaking route by #2 and force it outside and over the top in order to push it to the Safety. Once #2 has released vertically he can settle and look for anything else coming out and potentially trying to cross his face. If anything crosses his face he has it man to man. So a swing by the back would widen the outside linebacker to the flat. If the back were to wheel it up the sideline the linebacker would carry the wheel of the back.

I'm asking why you think there's drop off in expertise of offensive knowledge.

Why do you say this?

Yes. You cannot be a successful defensive coordinator if you don't understand what offenses are doing and what the rules are within the schemes they are attacking you with.

If Gronk can determine the difference between man or zone on the fly then anyone can 😆

This notion that defensive coaches know nothing about offense baffles me... how can you defend something you know nothing about?

Yeah, it's a little different with Tight Ends in the pass game than RBs because of protections. You can free release a Tight End whenever you want and still be sound in protections. The box count and the post-snap pressure reads can dictate whether or not backs can release or not which takes time to learn/develop when there's probably 6-7 different types of protections that we run. Additionally, as I described in my post to Scott the EP verbiage system relies heavily on memorization of concepts and understanding where you fit into the concept based on your pre-snap alignment (and how those responsibilities can change based on motions/shifts). In every other system the call will tell each player what his responsibility is.

We're getting guys open - wide open at times. I think it's more so growing pains than anything else at this point. We're relying on some younger guys to produce for us offensively and we're incorporating some new concepts here and there as well which I think has some of our guys thinking at times. I think Josh did a really good job early on of taking what the defense gave him and he's gotten more and more away from that as the season has progressed, and I think when the offense is sputtering he tries to make something big happen to get it going again rather than just take the easy completions at times. I also don't think he trusts his OL to hold up in pass protection. He's rarely stepping back up into the pocket these past however many weeks which is forcing scramble drill situations. We're also seeing a lot more two man than I can remember us seeing in the past which has played into some of this as well. I don't think Dorsey doesn't want to incorporate tight ends or backs, but he is using them to chip quite a bit which ultimately just makes those guys safety valves to the flats or the hook depending on the protection. There has been a very clear desire to try and incorporate backs in the redzone by singling them up with a linebacker, but with all the zone coverage we're seeing down there they aren't getting the matchups they want. Every NFL offense is complex. There's multiple protections, multiple blocking schemes each with their own set of rules for different fronts that you could potentially see, and then all the choice routes that are incorporated into this offenses passing schemes. The EP system gets complex with verbiage because everything isn't spelled out for everyone. Concepts are given names so you have to understand what your responsibility is in that concept whereas in other system they call tells each individual player what their responsibility is on the play. Additionally these concepts carry over through formations - so for example you could have the same concept run out of a 3x1 set or a 2x2 set. So if we take a simple flood concept and run it out of 3x1 the #1 has a Go, #2 has an out, and #3 has an arrow. Call the same concept out of 2x2 and #1 & #2 has the same concept, but now the RB has the arrow. So it's a lot of understanding your alignment within formations as well.

This isn't true. Quarters rules have the LB play the wheel of #3. Peterson would have been in the exact same spot regardless of what Singletary did. That's all well and good, but limits you as a play caller. All the choice concepts we have would have to be thrown out the window for instance. RB is a tough spot if they aren't familiar with the offense. You have to learn run schemes and your keys in those, the pass schemes and the option routes incorporated with those, as well as all the protections on top of all the new verbiage. It's a lot of information that has to be known and digested so that these guys can make decisions in a split second.

Junky because the defensive end sniffed it out and it didn't work, but the concept was good. 2nd and 2 and you show Trap (which is what Singletary had the big run on earlier) with the blocking scheme to pull the inside backer away from the screen. If their end is lined up in anything other than a 9 tech it's likely an easy completion for a first down because of the misdirection. For those talking about lack of creativity this play contradicts that notion.