dave mcbride

Interesting stat from yesterday:

No, I know you didn't. I was wondering what your take was on how they shredded the Bills last season with a very different QB.

From 1992 alone: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/202111210buf.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/199210110rai.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/199212270oti.htm

How did they do it last year? They couldn't use RPOs with Rivers.

Yup. I see the Bills getting to 10-6 with one game being a toss-up: the Monday night game vs. NE. I think they lose to TB and NE on the road and win the rest. I also think NE may well lose to the Colts in Indy, which would make that Monday night game determinative of the division winner. Of course, as we well know crazy things can happen every week. I do have a good feeling about the NO game, but I'm wondering if I'm missing something about that team. I haven't seen much of them and they have a couple of good wins. Who is going to start at QB?

I feel like every returner fumbles at some point during a season and then fans jump on him. I can't get too worked up about this. It was a fluke play - he slipped on a very wet surface while cutting. On every subsequent return, he ran it straight up the gut with no cuts. More broadly, he's their only option at this point. There are no miracle solutions at the returner position in the pool of street free agents. So far McKenzie has one fumble and one muffed punt (which worked out to the Bills benefit because by recovering it in the EZ they got it at the 20 instead of the 8 yard line). My guess is that's about league average.

To stop the run with the Bills' bigger D-linemen. They just didn't get the job done. Harrison Phillips played 78 percent of the snaps and Butler 67 percent. Hughes played 30 percent, which is very low for him. Basham played 45 and Oliver 46 percent; Epenesa, Addison, and Obada all played under 30 percent. Hughes actually had a couple of nice pressures, but the interior of the d-line couldn't hold up. Missing Lotuleilei really hurt them.

For the record: Breida has fumbled 1.3 percent of the time over the course of his career (537 touches) Singletary has fumbled 2.1 percent of the time on 482 touches Moss has fumbled it 0.9 percent of the time on 219 touches -- but 2.1 percent this year (2 fumbles on 93 touches; 0 last season) Anyway, we shouldn't be holding Brieda back because of an alleged fumbling issue. He really doesn't fumble it that much.

I mean, the numbers are the numbers. They lead the league in almost every defensive category.

? - he is without a doubt one of the best cover LBs in the league. The passer rating against him this season is 73.3, which is exceptional for a linebacker. It was 70.9 last year. By way of comparison, Devin White, who everyone thinks is great in coverage, has a rating of 96.9 against him this season and was at 109.6 last year. Milano is paid the way he is because he is elite in coverage for a LB.

The Bills have also given up the least yards after catch in the league. Basically, their pass D is great. Before the game yesterday, I said they'd need to put up 35 points simply to force the Colts to pass. Didn't happen, and that's why the Colts could do what they did.

Good stuff, but also sort by "first downs by penalty." The Bills' D leads the league in that category, and not in the good way.

The Bills D is 26th in sacks per game, but first in turnovers forced per game. Go figure! I agree with you about the competition skew but there are some games coming up that will show us how good they really are. Let's wait and see. Yesterday was terrible, but all teams have those games now and then.

The Bills are number one in yards allowed on defense, #2 in points allowed, #1 in points allowed per drive, and #1 in pass defense. Opposing QBs have a 62.2 rating against them, which is abysmal. Yeah, they've played a lot of bad offenses, and I realize that needs to be factored in. My point is that while they're not perfect (no one is), they're doing something right. The problem yesterday is that had a matchup nightmare -- a team that basically dominated them in the playoffs last year but which finished drives this time around. The Colts have the best offensive line in the league and the best running back. They have a top 10 offense and a top five rushing attack. I'm not saying the Bills shouldn't have performed better yesterday, but they were missing two key players in their run defense and the Colts had everyone -- fully healthy. I felt that the pass rush and pass defense was pretty solid yesterday. They had some bad penalties which hurt them, but they played well enough assuming they had been able to stop the run (which they couldn't). It wasn't as if Wentz was lighting them up. Their one passing TD was a very cleverly designed play to a guy who is really hard to bring down (Taylor). Let's keep it in perspective.

No, this was because of yet another failed attempt at a hard count by Allen. Just run the damn play and stop trying to trick the d-line. It ain't working.

Allen is a great player and the best player on the team, but he came out in the third and was forcing bullets in a driving rain storm. The pick and near pick in the first two possessions were him forcing the issue downfield too. If it’s third and 18, just get into fg position. He has thrown 8 interceptable balls in the past three weeks, and it comes from him waiting for plays to develop, facing pressure, and forcing things. Mahomes has been going through the same thing. There are answers: a functional short passing game like the Pats use. If you succeed at that, like magic the deeper stuff will open up again. Ther is just not enough balance. I’ll say this too — a big mistake personnel wise was not going after Ertz. Hindsight is of course 20/20, but the Bills have only one credible TE on the roster, and Ertz has looked great the last three weeks. He would have really helped this offense out. I don’t know what the asking price was, but we should have met it in retrospect. Yes, and a better group of tight ends is how you address this. In retrospect, going into the season with Tommy Sweeney, who is not good, as your only number 2 was not a good move.

Sideline watching from afar for displays of emotion is not a good way to judge people ... just sayin'. Oliver played decently yesterday anyway. He wasn't the problem.

Enh ... he's not very good, and a player like Butler isn't important enough to bring a team down. The bigger issue is being figured out schematically and the QB not adjusting. This has been posted elsewhere, but I'll post it again: https://www.wsj.com/articles/josh-allen-patrick-mahomes-two-high-cover-two-data-11637552010?st=eszmchtgi8gx64h&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

I strongly recommend reading this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/josh-allen-patrick-mahomes-two-high-cover-two-data-11637552010?st=eszmchtgi8gx64h&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink It's less about "heart" or anything like that than being figured out and QBs like Allen and Mahomes not adjusting.

Excellent find. Best analysis I've read yet. This comment on the Jets is hilarious: Allen hasn’t struggled quite as much as Mahomes in these situations, with 0.187 EPA against two-high going into Sunday. But it has also been deployed against him effectively, with the past few weeks showing how. The team that used it most against him, the Jaguars, limited what had been the NFL’s best offense to its worst output of the season. Allen, afterward, said Jacksonville used “two-high shells forcing us to throw underneath” and that he didn’t do a good enough job against it. “We’re going to learn from this,” he added. Fortunately for Allen, the next week he played the New York Jets, who apparently didn’t know much about this. They used two-high just three times against him—and Allen torched them in a 45-17 win. That changed again Sunday. The Colts showered him with those looks. Allen struggled, again. He threw two interceptions and ended the game on the bench after getting blown out 41-15.

Maybe he snapped at himself because the cause of that false start was yet another failed attempt at a hard count. I don’t want to see another hard count from him this season.

I don’t think the emotions are the issue. Rather I think the “culture” he has created tends to prioritize these types of people. I am not condemning those people, but their views on this issue are decidedly unhelpful when it comes to maximizing the potential for team success.

That’s not happening at this point. The question is, what would you do now to adjust?

Convince Allen that he needs to take what is given to him when facing good defensive fronts and to not lose patience and force deeper throws.

Teams weren’t prepared for how good Allen actually was last season as a passer and didnn’t run the appropriate coverages. This year they are and are defending solely against his passing game. Basically, they’ve figured out the Bills strengths and their weaknesses (poor run game, scheme that de-emphasizes the run, and a QB intent on pushing it down the field and who loses patience easily). It’s amazing how many passes he forces into coverage with medium deep throws once he gets on the other side of the field (which seems like most drives). They stall a lot on the other side of the field because he doesn’t take what defenses give him and instead does long-developing pass plays that result in pressure, sacks, and incompletions due to shell coverage with seven DBs. The Bills offensive problems against teams that are half decent seem to be in that range between the opponents’ 25 and 45 yard lines.