Interesting tidbit on Bills from footballoutsiders

[maddog]

Some of you are aware of this website: footballoutsiders.com. They have very analytical, objective information. Their current take on the Bills and their potential playoff success:

 

Sitting right below the big four this week is the hottest team in football, the Buffalo Bills. We make fun of the Bills a lot around here, mostly because a few of us (me, Ian, Al) are definitively anti-Bledsoe. But with one game remaining on the season, the Bills are currently the top team in both defense and special teams, and Bledsoe can’t do anything to ruin that. They’ve actually moved up to third place in weighted DVOA, meaning that the numbers believe they are a better team than either Philadelphia or New England. Subjectively, I don’t believe this – the Bills would fall below the Eagles if you took out last night’s game, and their two biggest losses of the season have come against New England. But if the Bills manage to get into the playoffs, they will be a serious danger to whoever draws them in the first round. While they probably have a better shot at beating the Chargers, a matchup with the Colts would be the more interesting game, pitting this season’s strongest defense against the strongest offense. The Colts, of course, already played a game like this, since Baltimore was the highest-rated defense when two weeks ago. The other thing about a Colts-Bills playoff game is that Dwight Freeney might sack Bledsoe ten times.

[TigerJ]

I can't argue with most of that. I do wonder about Jonathon Ogden, Baltimore's left tackle. Yes, he's supposed to be one of the best in the game, but Aaron Schobel had one of his best games of the season against him. I wonder if he has some nagging injury that limits his mobility. Maybe at 30 he's starting to slow down a bit. At 6'9" he might be an an increasing disadvantage against smaller, quicker DEs like Freeney. While the Bills would certainly have to respect Freeney's speed in the pass rush, I don't necessarily buy that Bledsoe and Jonas Jennings are going to fare a lot worse than Jonathon Ogden and Kyle Boller.

[joshfitz]

Maybe Dwight Freeney is so successful because teams are inevitably forced into a shootout with the Colts, thus more pass rushing situations.

 

If our defense could dampen the Colts offense a bit, we could control the tempo with a balanced attack and hopefully not rely on Bledsoe to drop back as much. This is -- I believe -- one of the biggest reasons we've had such a turnaround.

[Alaska Darin]

I think it's about matchups and I have alot of faith that we could scheme Freeney out of the picture for the most part. Not to mention the fact that we'd likely run the ball somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 times in the game and have a ton of success against the Colts front 7, which would certainly slow Freeney down measurably.

 

Bledsoe looks like a probowler compared to Boller.