PoundingDog

There are variations of man coverage. Cover 0 guarantees a free runner at the QB, but at risk of one mistake failing the whole plan. In general, Brady likes to go with 5 man protection (going back to his LSU days), we can send out 5 targets. If the Jags are confident in their pass rushers, they may send the normal 4, with 5 in coverage, they have 2 free guys who can do spying on Josh etc.

The Jags interior D-Line has people who are good at run stopping but not much pass rushing ability. Their linebackers are strong, led by 2022 1st rounder pick and Kincaid's teammate at Utah Devin Lloyd. Under Dorsey, the Bills offense is more predictable thus allowing them to match up the bills better. Last week the Browns and Watson actually passed a lot from their heavy personnel set because of matchup they saw. I do believe Brady and Allen will surely take note of that, and frankly the Bills personnel are better suited now to do that; I can see the Bills using more 12 personnel grouping on Monday. The big surprise is Jags offense. On paper, they have talent who panned out in the past. A #1 over pick QB (not a bust), Evan Engram is probably better than any Bills TE receiving wise. Christian Kirk, Davis, Thomas on paper is better than the Bills counterpart. Travis Etienne is definitely better than what the Bills have. Yet they underperformed significantly. Their O-Line tackles had issues with both Miami and Cleveland. Being 0-2, I'd imagine Doug Peterson will empty his bags on Monday night. If the Bills can run on Jags consistently, even with their heavy personnel grouping, I'd say it's a new era of the Bills offense since we drafted Josh Allen - truly "run first". But chances are we will do the smart thing of running on their pass rush grouping and passing on their heavy grouping. Josh just needs to be patient and not forcing things, even when things are not going well. Keep an eye on Josh Hines-Allen vs Dawkins and Brown. He has beaten them both 1-on-1 in the past causing issues. OBD's Chris Brown and others have repeatedly pointed out that this year Brady has not used more than 5 blockers at all so there will be plenty of 1-on-1's in the pass setting. Basically he's telling Josh, we give you max set of targets, you deal with handling pass rush and finding the open guy.

I quoted Dolphins game to show that the Bills and jags faced the same running attack from the Dolphins on the same field for a somewhat measure of run defense of the Jags. Last year's game showed why it's a bad matchup. We ran a total 29 yards on 14 tries and 14 of the yards was from Alan. Assuming we can run on them without doing anything special is far fetched in my opinion. When you can't run, and then facing a top notch D-line with pass rushing abilities is bad for your passing scheme looking to big plays. That was the Bills problem last year. And that was the problem for the Dolphins week 1 until the Tyreek Hill 80 yard TD play. We all have reasons to believe Brady won't use last year's script and hope for a 80 yard TD play to beat Jags next Monday. But it will be a challenge. More than likely we have to win by passing the ball. But it might be dink and dunk quick game. Maybe they can unleash something new like screens which is effective against pass rush but notoriously bad in Josh Allen era Bills offense. They do have the personnel to do that now... unless the problem is Josh. We shall see.

I don't quite get the logic. Last I checked, Cowboys and Jags are 2 different teams and have completely different set of personnel and schemes. Both the Bills and Jags played the same opponent, both on the road I may add. Miami's Achane had 24 yards and Wilson had 26 yards whole game against the Jags. Not sure you can assume the Bills can run on them like we did to the Cowboys.

Not sure the Bills are THAT more talented than the Jags at this point. It is somewhat a bad matchup actually. I will say Josh (our Josh) looks to be more level headed compared to last year at this time, i.e. not looking for killer shots often while finding quick answers whereas Lawrence is just the opposite. This will be the strongest defense we see up to this point. Less mistake from Josh and more mistake from Lawrence may tilt the balance.

Exactly Miyagi. It's a brand new year and people are not sure what to make of this Bills team yet. It's no surprise that teams are kind of using prior years' strategies. But I expect that to change soon, right around game 3 or so. Challenging the Bills to throw deep or 1 on 1 outside is likely more to come. Already teams are bracketing Kincaid in the middle ...

The Browns D line gave Jags a lot of issues. Lawrence held the ball a bit longer than Tua but not as long as Murray. Etienne and Thomas are studs. You get the feeling that they will figure out sooner or later with the talent but hopefully not this week. Confusing and getting to Lawrence is the key in my opinion. Generally speaking they have been a team with bigger guys which is why they have been giving the smaller speeding Bills team of recent years trouble. The Bills have upgraded the offense size-wise consciously but the D is still considered small, fast flowing schemed. The game will be closer than you think.

Let's see the Bills D for a few more weeks to see how teams are going to attack them. Ravens have probably the potential best running attack whereas the Texans may present more air attack with a more balanced QB than Tua. On offense, though, I think the focus so far is on running attack where they featured more bigger WRs and TEs from snap perspective. Explosive passing seemed to be something that is lacking - they tried with MVS, but no fruits for now. That is an area (with no known quality at the beginning of the season) they need to figure out, not necessarily to be a strength but a tool that is functional. I can see a team like the Jets go with man outside and crowd the middle to stop the run and short passing game to give the Bills offense a bigger challenge. Hopefully someone will step up with the progression of the season, e.g. Coleman winning more one-on-one outside.

Mike White may play a bigger role than you think. He was the backup QB for the Dolphins and I'm pretty sure he ran the scouting team earlier this week. It just seems like the Bills knew where the Dolphins primary targets (Hill, Waddle) were on every play, and they took that away. You can say well we know them well enough, but not to this extent - not a single leakage nor near miss. There are talks now that Mike White might be a target to go back to Miami if they cannot find anyone better during Tua's outage. McDaniel admitted that they are looking outside

Payback to last year's blocked punt when the Pats uncovered outside guys.