Beck Water

Do players really listen that much to the fans? Lord, I hope not. You have interesting points from the study of psychology. One wonders if you've expressed the same concerns regarding other Bills players who've been the target of fan ire after making 2 or 3 notable gaffs? As far as the injury, from what we know that was Week 2, and I think most fans gave Davis some grace working back from it, but after the Pittsburgh game they were like "OK, Here We Go!" Did he reinjure himself? He hasn't been on the injury report since Week 5. How long does rushing back from an injury in week 1 (which Davis clearly did) affect performance?

Didn't we just have a thread on this? The issue is consistency. Davis has had a very boom-or-bust year. He has had some games where he's made incredible contested catches or shoestring grabs, outrun coverage for long TDs, won the game for us. A lot of his yards are on a handful of deep receptions, which are important. He's also had some games where he's dropped balls a competent NFL WR really needs to catch. If we want to talk stats, Davis overall 55% catch rate is poor, and it's not all on Allen throwing him contested high-degree-of-difficulty balls. His 10% scored drop rate is abysmal, and he has 5 INTs against him. Several of those INTs are not on him - if Josh threw a different ball it woulda been a TD, and I think Davis was probably right and Josh wrong in how he read the coverage on the Jets INT. But I think some are on him. There's some charting out there where at times he seems to be running the wrong route on a play, or a different route than Josh expects him to run, or run the route in a way that allows the DB to jump the route. Then there was that tip on the onside kick.... Now maybe all of that is true for #2 WR on other teams, but for many of the top teams I don't think so. I think their WR is usually a more consistent guy. To be fair, the Bills are riding Davis into the ground. He is out there almost every offensive play, being asked to chip or block if he's not running a route. It's possible he'd run better routes more consistently if the Bills let him catch his breath now and then. But it goes beyond that. The #2 has to be able to run a crosser and make a grab in the middle of the field when he's open. We've had a number of drives end on catchable balls Davis drops, or fails to secure.

That's very true for the Bills offense, but it's equally true of Davis, Knox, Allen and even Diggs. There has been a lot of inconsistency. Anyway for those who are into such things, McKenzie was on the field a lot more yesterday - 56 snaps, 73%. I'd still love a pointer to data on personnel sets, but it seems we ran a LOT of 11 (3 WR, 1 RB, 1 TE) but also mixed in some 4 WR and maybe even a couple 5 WR sets, was I seeing things? Shakir saw a season-high 34 snaps (44%) I could be wrong, but I thought it also had to do with how teams play against Allen as a dual-threat QB.

Maybe Dorsey will watch the defensive game film and Take a Memo

So wait you reached the conclusion in the first post….without actually listening to the clip?

I don’t think you guys understand what “Yips” mean

Significant injury to one of Bills most important players has a scope beyond one game

I really don't think he's a DE. I know Miami just put Ogbah on IR, but if they think Zimmer can play DE in his place they may be disappointed. Wonder if they're looking for advanced intel on the Bills offense, since Zimmer has been on the PS.

Could be a reasonable choice (though I think he's more of a NT than a 3TDT), but as a member of the Steelers PS he would have to be on the active roster for 3 weeks. We need to back-fill a PS guy. Not as far as I know. Raekwon Davis was a limited participant in practice today, but that usually doesn't mean "out" Zimmer gives them 5 DT on the active roster.

No, he was elevated for 1 game last week with Kaiir Elam out for the game. With Kaiir Elam back, the CB may be Jackson, Elam, Benford, with Taron Johnson as the nickel and Lewis backing up outside, nickel, and safety. What will be interesting is how they handle Jordan Poyer, Damar Hamlin, Jaquan Johnson, and Dean Marlowe. I think they may have been concerned Poyer couldn't last the whole game, and they don't want to play Hamlin and Johnson. Last week they had 10 DBs active. I don't think that's correct, the PS elevations this week were Mike Love (DE) and Tanner Gentry (WR).

I don't go with "Shakir, Gentry or a guy off the street" as necessarily better. But Davis has GOT to catch some of those balls. Cover1 thinks we're all off-base dunking on Davis, but even these stats which highlight his, well, highlights...show a bad drop % IDK, it just seems like we play other teams and watch their #2 and #3 guys go off to make critical 3rd down conversions we're missing right now.

Cover1 did a comparison of Dodson vs. Edmunds covering essentially the same play. If you want to understand it, watch the Edmunds play with Turner's voice-over explaining how Edmunds covers correctly, then watch Dodson simply not recognize when he's supposed to pick up the TE. Woof. To be fair to Klein, Frazier stated in an interview that normally, Milano-Edmunds-Taron Johnson work together in a very coordinated fashion. With Milano on IR, Frazier re-distributed some of those responsibilities to give Klein a role he was more suited for.

Just crunched some numbers from personnel set info in a Mark Gaughan TBN article on the Bills offense in the Browns game and how it differed. I was looking for data on Bills usual personnel usage, but as for the 2 previous years, they do spend most of their time in 11 sets (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WR). As I thought, Diggs and McKenzie's snaps declined vs the Browns because in fact, the personnel usage differed dramatically: 11 set (3 WR) 27 of 62 plays or 43% 12 set (2 WR, 1 RB 2 TE) 10 of 62 plays (note: this includes 2 plays with an extra OLman as a TE) 16% - Bills have used this very sparingly in 2022 21 set (2 WR, 2 RB 1 TE) 15 of 62 plays or 24% (note: this includes 2 RB such as Hines and Cook) 22 set (2 WR, 2 RB, 2 TE) 7 of 62 plays or 12% (note: this includes 4 plays with an extra OLman as a TE) There you have it, folks lusting to see less of McKenzie on the field. You did just that last week - in fact, his snaps were cut in half, from 52 to 26. But it wasn't to give more snaps to Shakir. It was to put an extra RB, TE, or OLman on the field. People mentioned the run game improving when Bates took over at LG last season, but actually, the run game seemed to improve (to my eyes) before that, when the Bills started using more heavy sets with an RB and a FB, or with an extra OLman. So if McDermott is serious about wanting more run threat, this may be a harbringer of things to come. I will add this. Knox had about the same, or perhaps a couple fewer, snaps than he usually sees. But he had 7 receptions on 7 targets. I believe on all but one of them, he was the outlet receiver and managed to get some good YAC because he had 70 yds on those 7 targets and most were near the LOS. If we continue to see this usage of Knox, I think most will feel he has earned his contract, and I think it will help the offense by shifting some of the attention off Diggs and Davis.

On Kyle Brandt's Basement (I think it was), Allen said just that - that one of his feet got stuck in the turf Just very fortunate no one was near him and Allen got to use his own fantastic body control to roll out of it.

Dorsey: "Hold my Beer" https://buffalonews.com/sports/bills/ken-dorsey-watch-bills-pony-package-worked-vs-browns/article_ec4da624-69e3-11ed-a126-3fe5b2e5b27e.html

Kewl Kewl so who are they? Bills need to sign one

He was playing significant snaps on the Bills DL the first 6 weeks of last season, until he tore his ACL That track record probably seems more significant to the Dolphins than how many times he was waived earlier in his career.

Yes, and for 3 more weeks.

I mean, to be fair, against the Bills Wilson looked like a legit NFL QB. You said "Zach Wilson is better, it's not even a debate". Since the point of this board is discussion and debate, a preemptive strike to cut off debate seems out of line by some measures. Pragmatically, if some people watched them play and thought it was debatable, and there are objective metrics (like stats) that seem to support some debate, perhaps it is, in fact, debatable.

I don't know about "this team's Super Bowl", but don't you think that coaches get a bit more revved up for some games than others, when that team has owned them or made them look bad in previous games/years? McDermott seemed to have a little extra edge for the Chiefs and Titans games. Also, too many players on the 2019/2020 Bills commented on "Y'all picked against us!" and "Buffalo -vs- Everybody" for me to think that players don't notice when they're huge underdogs and use that to amp themselves up. Then you have the fact that teams want to prove themselves by defeating the best QBs and teams.

Mmm.

So the Browns will hire him? The standard is, if you're a player you get a big contract with lots of guaranteed money like Watson did? That different standard?

A fair point, but failing to react appropriately to performance and "read the room" will also put you there. Consider if McDermott failed to acknowledge to the team that he made a mistake starting Peterman but instead kept playing him.

I don't know that he threw the D under the bus per se, but he was asked straight out: "you scored 3 points, do you feel you let the defense down?" and he said very shortly "No. No." It came across as very lacking in personal responsibility, especially compared to other QB in the league who had situations where they were playing hurt and had an OL that wasn't even handing defenders a tube of lube as they flew by, but still took responsibility "Yes, starts with me, I have to play better". I think Saleh had to bench Wilson's ass or lose the locker room.

This last is true, but he has been working hard to learn that skill. I see him open at times, but I don't think Allen really trusts him 1) to see the defense the same way and choose the same option 2) to make a smooth catch and hold on in tight coverage. There are catches that McKenzie will make reliably - when the ball is leading him or above him and he has no choice but to catch it with his hands. But if he can, he will try to body-catch the ball and that leads to double-clutching situations. He can't or won't work on and be coached out of this, apparently. Agreed with the first. But where McKenzie had most success last season was against teams that are covering us in man, where he just runs away from guys and Allen leads him with the ball (his most reliable catching). I don't think the Bills have been seeing a lot of man this year. I could be wrong, I haven't watched as much all-22. To the second, yes there are additional differences. One is, Dorsey has been using McKenzie a lot as a quick outlet either on a swing route or in the flat, and Allen hates to take that checkdown. Two is, when there are layered route concepts McKenzie is usually the shallow layer and Allen tries to hit the "kill shot" deep. Third, this could just be me and I welcome points to the contrary but I don't think Dorsey is using as many crossing routes. This may be that they aren't as effective against the coverages we're seeing. Last point, Cover1 touched on this in a recent video on "red zone woes", but there are times where the route tree being run is atrocious and McKenzie (or Cook) should be schemed open but the spacing with other receivers (usually Davis) is off. I'm not savvy enough to figure out who is to blame, but in at least one instance it appears that McKenzie is running a clean, recognizable route and Davis is running...something. It may not be route design, but route execution. McKenzie is a popular whipping boy here at TBD, but from what I see there are other receivers who are not running precise and deceptive routes, or hanging on to the ball when it reaches them. With all that, it's worth noting that in addition to contributing 4 TD (3 passing, 1 rushing; 3rd on the team behind Diggs and Davis) and 17 first downs (14 passing, 3 rushing; 4th on the team other than Josh Allen and 2nd of the receivers), McKenzie does manage to haul in the ball 67% of the time, which is 2nd to Diggs among our WR. Again, it's apparently very fashionable to hate on McK and want him benched or cut, but those who want that don't appear to have a very data-based vision of how to replace him - just a hope that the coaches are all blind and stupid and can't see that Shakir or Hines or Cook or SOMEONE would be better.