What the film review shows from last night...not your delusional analy

[Coach Tuesday]

Does anyone remember how bland last year's preseason looked? Then they exploded in KC on opening day. We've seen this before. Chill.

[Captain Hindsight]

Please hit something hard when you jump off the cliff

[Dorkington]

 

 

Not exactly. I have no use for the rollercoasters who throw out all sorts of doom and gloom nonsense without objectively analyzing what really happened. There's no contribution in the endless streams of "OMG fire Gailey", "OMG our LB's suck", "OMG or secondary is terrible", "OMG Fitz sucks". People are claiming that Ponder was all world last night yet the vast majority of his passes were less than ten yards. Fitz does the same thing and people are call for Vince Young to start. It's nonsense.

 

My post wasn't meant to blow smoke up your ass and make you feel like the Bills are amazing. The intent was to break down the offensive and defensive plays and point out what went right and what went wrong.

 

Simon is one of the most knowledgable football guys on this board. He puts up a fact based post on what he saw last night and the Jr. Madden's on here have the audacity to tell him he's wrong.

 

If you want to B word, step up and support your argument with actual play based evidence and not your meaningless opinion.

 

Facetiousness is lost on you.

[Ronin]

 

7. ALL OF PONDERS PASSES WERE EITHER SHORT DUMPS, ROLL-OUTS OR QUICK SLANTS. That's right, ALL OF HIS PASSES, with one exception, of the broken flea flicker that Kelsay sniffed out. Every pass attempt that wasn't a roll out or quick pass was a sack. Those sacks came almost exclusively out of our BASE defense.

 

 

Very predictably the team is going to see a lot of this this season. All coaches aren't idiots and play right into the strength of their opponents.

 

This should surprise no one that this happened. I wouldn't say that it wasn't vanilla, as it wasn't anything fancy, rather that it wasn't the typical pro set passing game. But for anyone thinking that all the teams we play are going to predicate their offenses on 7-step drops when we play them, well, let's just say that thinking that would be unwise.

 

As such, it would behoove the Defense to begin to learn to defend it better and to do so they're going to have to get their LBs involved much more effectively than they've been.

 

As to credibility, the whole "vanilla" thing to me is nothing but a cliched meaningless line of nonsense and overused buzzword for people that otherwise don't know what they're talking about and otherwise used for making excuses.

 

It's no coach's duty to play "vanilla" or basic simple sets during preseason. Coaches are free to do whatever they want to do. The smart ones call plays that are going to help sharpen up their regular season offenses. Shouldn't that be obvious?

 

The ones that work on gimmicks, or allow QBs to call whatever plays they want to and go on record as saying that they didn't have a game plan, like us last week, one seriously has to question the competencies of. Why not just play the 3rd teams from the get-go if that's all they're going to do.

 

And then running a spread offense when they don't even have the receiving personnel, obviously, to carry it off, what is that, genius? Hardly, it's idiocy.

[vorpma]

Man, evidence?

 

This would be a real quiet board

 

Great post!!! Love it.

[Ronin]

My post wasn't meant to blow smoke up your ass and make you feel like the Bills are amazing. The intent was to break down the offensive and defensive plays and point out what went right and what went wrong.

 

That only helps if you have the talent to correct the problems.

 

A lot of what people are talking about here are the gaps in level of talent that are affecting the performance of the team, and moreover, which also affected it last season.

 

Our CBs got beat several times yesterday as did our LBs. Is the issue simply pointing this out to those players, or is the issue perhaps one of those players really not being as good Gailey and the team and some here tell us they are?

 

Somewhere there is a gap in understanding, on someone's part. Gailey and Nix can't be doing such a fantastic job yet the team has all of these holes where they have no talent.

 

There are two worlds here, one is fantasyworld, the other is the world of objectivity. You can usually tell the people living in the former, they're typically the most emotional and least factually based.

 

Otherwise, the fact that some credentialed person said something does not give that something anymore credence than anyone else making a similar statement or claim. Where words have meaning is where arguments are supported by evidence. Words like "vanilla," since they're so cliched, also need to be defined for purposes of arguing these points.

[Mike in Syracuse]

I don't understand what point you are trying to make. You blast arm chair qbs providing their amateur assessment of the game, followed by your amateur assessment of the game. You could have added your nfl expert perspective without the lecture.

 

Btw Wrt:

 

#1 no dude the root cause of that gain was the fact Barnett was the one that had to try and tackle harvin. Min lined up with the TE in the slot and harvin as a h back. The TE easily swallowed up McK. Well designed play, d hopefully would have audibles in reg season as havin on Barnett is a win for them.

#7 so were Joe Monannas, so you're saying Ponder didn't play well because there were lots of RAC yards? Huh?

#8 it was more cookie dough or moose tracks than vanilla... I love useless terms that become commonplace as if meaningful.

#9 bills went 0-2 and vikes were 2-2 on first drives with all starters in. Not the end of the world but sure, it needs to get better.

 

What I'm attempting to point out is that it isn't as dire as some would like to claim. Missed tackles, blocks and assignments can be corrected. I would have preferred that the Bills looked amazing but then we would've heard people scream "yeah, well pre-season doesn't mean anything".

On #1, I agree with you that it's a mismatch made in heaven to have Barnett on Harvin but he still had a shot to make the tackle and missed.

On #7, Ponder did everything he was supposed to do but outside of one play the vast majority of his yards were YAC. II never said he didn't play well. The bigger point was that the Vikings weren't able to keep him upright for a traditional 7-9 step drop. If we can put that kind of pressure on with our base that's a good sign.

On #9, you simply can't ignore the fact that the Bills did not deviate from their plan to run the ball. They came into the game saying they were going to try to run and the Vikings came into the game determined to play better against the run. On several plays Vikings showed run blitz and the Bills ran the ball anyway. If FItz had audibled at all it's possible that the Bills are 2-2. Again, yes there's room for improvement but no panic.

[marauderswr80]

Ive read numerous post saying Cordy Glenn sucked last night! I thought he did a great job against Jared Allen!! He had a holding call, but even Tasker and Bently said it was not a hold. Then on his false start....he barely mooved!

 

Honestly, the teams saving effort avoiding injuries! Anyone who noticed watched Mario rush full go on one played, the OL couldnt even get their hands on him!

 

At first i cared about preseason, but then watching our guys take it easy is for a reason! The NFL season is not a sprint its a rather gruling marathon....why kill yourself in preseason? Whats last nights game going to mean week 15 when we are fighting for a wildcard spot?

[BuffaloBillsMagic1]

Shep I saw in 2nd half being tied up and knocked back by WRs of Minn. Shepp looks horrible. Need a cahnge at MLB for us to be great,m not average defense.

[#34fan]

I'm a "big picture" type of guy, and I wasn't happy with last night's outcome. -Whatever led to it.

 

Whether it's Anderson jumping a half-second too late, or Ponder throwing only short dump passes, -I don't really give a rat's a$$.

 

We shouldn't be getting man-handled by a bunch of second year players. At the same time, I'm glad we're staying healthy. -I wouldn't want one of our core guys to go down for trying too hard. -That's for rookies, and guys still trying to make the squad.

 

The problem is that there seems to be no flow, or cohesion to what we're doing on either side of the ball. I understand that our foot's off the gas in these games, but it doesn't seem that way. Parts of last night's game looked like we were getting out-played.

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but with all the hype, I think we should have looked sharper.

[Ronin]

Ive read numerous post saying Cordy Glenn sucked last night! I thought he did a great job against Jared Allen!! He had a holding call, but even Tasker and Bently said it was not a hold. Then on his false start....he barely mooved!

 

I'd hardly say that he did a great job, but I agree, rookie Glenn vs. arguably the most prolific DE in the game today, hardly a reason to panic on Glenn's play.

 

Ironically, that's exactly what people are expecting for Gilmore though.

[TheKickIsGood]

Nicely said Mike in Syracuse.

 

http://www.thekickisgood.com

[Sisyphean Bills]

Very predictably the team is going to see a lot of this this season. All coaches aren't idiots and play right into the strength of their opponents.

 

This should surprise no one that this happened. I wouldn't say that it wasn't vanilla, as it wasn't anything fancy, rather that it wasn't the typical pro set passing game. But for anyone thinking that all the teams we play are going to predicate their offenses on 7-step drops when we play them, well, let's just say that thinking that would be unwise.

 

As such, it would behoove the Defense to begin to learn to defend it better and to do so they're going to have to get their LBs involved much more effectively than they've been.

 

As to credibility, the whole "vanilla" thing to me is nothing but a cliched meaningless line of nonsense and overused buzzword for people that otherwise don't know what they're talking about and otherwise used for making excuses.

 

It's no coach's duty to play "vanilla" or basic simple sets during preseason. Coaches are free to do whatever they want to do. The smart ones call plays that are going to help sharpen up their regular season offenses. Shouldn't that be obvious?

 

The ones that work on gimmicks, or allow QBs to call whatever plays they want to and go on record as saying that they didn't have a game plan, like us last week, one seriously has to question the competencies of. Why not just play the 3rd teams from the get-go if that's all they're going to do.

 

And then running a spread offense when they don't even have the receiving personnel, obviously, to carry it off, what is that, genius? Hardly, it's idiocy.

 

The term "vanilla" does seem to be used as a ready excuse all too often. The truth is vanilla does not excuse poor fundamentals. Not many teams' coaching staffs are going to fritter away time game planning these scrimmages, so it comes down to vanilla on vanilla and the best man winning his individual battles. Vanilla doesn't explain away being slow, not tackling, not blocking, dropping passes, fumbling, and all the other mistakes and brain farts we see many players making. Of course many of them aren't going to make a roster either.

[todd]

+1

 

Exactly what I was thinking. I don't think they looked too bad, considering what they were doing.

 

I'm getting really tired of reading all these posts breaking down the Bills play last night with absolute no relation to reality. There were a number of things that can be improved on but the situation is no where near as dire as a lot of the amateur Madden's haere make it sound. A lot of folks are whining about how awful the Bills were last night but they're either not looking at the entirety of the play or they're just flat out making stuff up. Sure there were things that could have gone better but it was FAR from the disaster that some are making it out to be. One of the nicest things about the NFL Preseason package is that you can replay specific plays and actually WATCH what happened or where the breakdown occurred. You armchair analysts are either running with an agenda, really uninformed or really lazy. If you're going to say they sucked, back up your positions with some actual relevant proof.

 

Let's point out some things that are OBVIOUS if you actually look at the plays:

1. Harvin's first HUGE gain was the result of a missed tackle by Barnett on what was essentially a 1 yard pass. Followed by an absolutely awful unnecessary roughness call.

2. Simpson's huge gain (33yds) was the result of Anderson being 1/2 second slow getting his arms up. Made worse by Gillmore giving him the inside and an absolutely hideous, if not embarassing, tackle attempt by Wilson. Shades of Eddie Robinson!

3. Gerhart's 16yd run up the middle was because Sheppard seems more interested in taking on a block than tackling the runner. It was this play that led to him still being in the game in the 3rd quarter.

4. On that very same offensive series we had two sacks. These sacks weren't the result of some amazing blitz package. The first sack happened because Kyle Williams basically shoved the Viking's starting center into Ponder. Straight up bull rush and Williams brought his lunchpail! The second sack I'll also credit Williams with because he straight up ran around his man.

5. On our opening series, two of our run plays were run into an oncoming (and obvious) run blitz. No audible

6. Fitz was spot on with his passes. If someone picks up Harrison Smith on his blitz that drive likely continues.

7. ALL OF PONDERS PASSES WERE EITHER SHORT DUMPS, ROLL-OUTS OR QUICK SLANTS. That's right, ALL OF HIS PASSES, with one exception, of the broken flea flicker that Kelsay sniffed out. Every pass attempt that wasn't a roll out or quick pass was a sack. Those sacks came almost exclusively out of our BASE defense.

8. If you're going to claim that the Viking's played a "vanilla" game plan I'm going to call you an idiot. The Vikings were VERY aware of Buffalo's pass rush capability and Fraser was not going to let his QB get killed.

9. Despite the contention of some that the BIlls were getting waxed, the score t was 10-7 when the starters began rotating out of the game.

10. Cordy Glenn went up against one of the best DT's in the game and didn't get embarassed.

 

So if you're going to B word about how the Bills looked, I challenge you to put up the specific plays and just break it down so you'll actually have some !@#$ing credibility.

[Alaska Darin]

If we didn't lose anyone to injury, then it was a very successful preseason game. No one should read much into the rest of it.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

Man, evidence?

 

This would be a real quiet board

 

Some of us come here to talk football a bit seriously, which pretty much means evidence and facts.

Like the fact that Fitz left the game 8/11 or 72% completion for QB rating of 115

Like the fact that the game was eminently in reach with both the 1st and 2nd stringers in there - 14 to 16 for the 1st 10 minutes of the 3rd quarter.

It only went to hell in a handcart when the 3rd stringers threw 2 pick-6 back to back.

 

Like the fact that while the Vikes looked scary because we Keystone-copped them several big plays, the Bills left the game with the same number of 1st downs by passing as the Vikes (10) - the difference was 2 more Vike 1st downs by rushing and 1 by penalty. The Vikes 3rd down efficiency was overall, every bit as sucky as ours - 4 of 14 vs 5 of 14. The Vikes got into FG range a lot, but were not particularly effective in the red zone, 1 for 3. The TOP was not lopsided, either.

 

Mike is correct: this is not armageddeon or the impending apocalypse, folks, It's a few gaffs that led to big plays and some garbage-time scoring.

 

There are points of concern - I don't like the fact that Mario and Dareus are taking it easy when they're in there. That's something for our coaching staff to address whether or not it's desireable.

Shep is having trouble disengaging from blockers and flowing to the ball. There may have been communication issues - Chan said they were trying to have Wilson call the D. That may need to go the way of Levitre playing Center, and quickly? Communication and being on the same page is more the issue than Shep or Wilson or Barnett missing a tackle- EVERY player is going to miss a tackle from time to time, but if the team is flowing to the ball, it'll be the difference between a 1 yd gain and a 4 yd gain, not the difference between a 1 yd gain and being embarassed.

 

Coincidentally, these are the concerns I hear coming from Gailey ("we can't give up the big plays") and the players (Dareus: we hold our destiny in our hands, we have to communicate)

[Buffaloed in Pa]

I'm getting really tired of reading all these posts breaking down the Bills play last night with absolute no relation to reality. There were a number of things that can be improved on but the situation is no where near as dire as a lot of the amateur Madden's haere make it sound. A lot of folks are whining about how awful the Bills were last night but they're either not looking at the entirety of the play or they're just flat out making stuff up. Sure there were things that could have gone better but it was FAR from the disaster that some are making it out to be. One of the nicest things about the NFL Preseason package is that you can replay specific plays and actually WATCH what happened or where the breakdown occurred. You armchair analysts are either running with an agenda, really uninformed or really lazy. If you're going to say they sucked, back up your positions with some actual relevant proof.

 

Let's point out some things that are OBVIOUS if you actually look at the plays:

1. Harvin's first HUGE gain was the result of a missed tackle by Barnett on what was essentially a 1 yard pass. Followed by an absolutely awful unnecessary roughness call.

2. Simpson's huge gain (33yds) was the result of Anderson being 1/2 second slow getting his arms up. Made worse by Gillmore giving him the inside and an absolutely hideous, if not embarassing, tackle attempt by Wilson. Shades of Eddie Robinson!

3. Gerhart's 16yd run up the middle was because Sheppard seems more interested in taking on a block than tackling the runner. It was this play that led to him still being in the game in the 3rd quarter.

4. On that very same offensive series we had two sacks. These sacks weren't the result of some amazing blitz package. The first sack happened because Kyle Williams basically shoved the Viking's starting center into Ponder. Straight up bull rush and Williams brought his lunchpail! The second sack I'll also credit Williams with because he straight up ran around his man.

5. On our opening series, two of our run plays were run into an oncoming (and obvious) run blitz. No audible

6. Fitz was spot on with his passes. If someone picks up Harrison Smith on his blitz that drive likely continues.

7. ALL OF PONDERS PASSES WERE EITHER SHORT DUMPS, ROLL-OUTS OR QUICK SLANTS. That's right, ALL OF HIS PASSES, with one exception, of the broken flea flicker that Kelsay sniffed out. Every pass attempt that wasn't a roll out or quick pass was a sack. Those sacks came almost exclusively out of our BASE defense.

8. If you're going to claim that the Viking's played a "vanilla" game plan I'm going to call you an idiot. The Vikings were VERY aware of Buffalo's pass rush capability and Fraser was not going to let his QB get killed.

9. Despite the contention of some that the BIlls were getting waxed, the score t was 10-7 when the starters began rotating out of the game.

10. Cordy Glenn went up against one of the best DT's in the game and didn't get embarassed.

 

So if you're going to B word about how the Bills looked, I challenge you to put up the specific plays and just break it down so you'll actually have some !@#$ing credibility.

sounds like alot of excuses to ME.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

I share your concern with Shepp. I think Wanny was pissed last night and left him in late into the 3rd. I'm suspicious that he's a bit slowed by the injury but if he doesn't pick it up and fast I wouldn't hesitate to put Carder in the middle. At least he's not a complete liability in coverage.

 

The slants do make me as crazy as the WR's running 6 or 7 yard outs when we need 8 yards.

 

I think the 6 or 7 yd outs are part of what's meant when Chan and the WR are talking about mental mistakes and not being in the right spot.

 

I'm puzzled why you think they'd put Carder in the middle. They keep him, but right now McKillop is playing ahead of him at MLB and McKillop isn't ready to start at Mike either.

 

Me, I think if Shep doesn't shape up pretty quickly, they do something like move Barnett back to Mike (that *is* his natural home and he has the experience and the chops to call the D) and try Morrison or Bradham at Will with Moats at Sam.

[BobChalmers]

7. ALL OF PONDERS PASSES WERE EITHER SHORT DUMPS, ROLL-OUTS OR QUICK SLANTS. That's right, ALL OF HIS PASSES, with one exception, of the broken flea flicker that Kelsay sniffed out. Every pass attempt that wasn't a roll out or quick pass was a sack. Those sacks came almost exclusively out of our BASE defense.

8. If you're going to claim that the Viking's played a "vanilla" game plan I'm going to call you an idiot. The Vikings were VERY aware of Buffalo's pass rush capability and Fraser was not going to let his QB get killed.

 

I noticed these two points while I was watchnig the game - and saw some of the same with the Redskins.

 

Both teams threw a lot of screens and quick outs - they were anticipating trouble up front and protecting their young star QBs.

 

The Steelers game will be very interesting - as Fitz mentioned last night, they will gameplan a bit for the Steelers.

[vincec]

sounds like alot of excuses to ME.

This. Don't worry though, it'll all be fixed when the Bills finally start trying.

 

What is it that they say? The first step in dealing with a problem is to admit that you have a problem in the first place. I saw problems in the Bills run defense and their underneath coverages. Hopefully, the team is not in the kind of denial this board is and it working on fixing these issues instead of just waiting for the regular season when everything will magically be fixed.