Ryan's Defense: DL-men in Coverage

[John from Riverside]

I totally agree with this post. Mario is a huge defensive end, and is suited to rush quarterbacks. This is why few active players have as many sacks as he does. Marcel probably weighs 360 or more. He is not a pass defender.

 

Rex took a capable, talented defense and destroyed it.

It really is not that simple

 

Would we be saying the same thing if Schwartz remained and the D still declined? Because that is VERY possible. We lost the meatball for most of the season.....Aaron Williams as well. One thing that the Schwartz D had going for it was it was healthy the majority of the year.

 

Lets not act like Schwartz has had these defensive juggernauts before he came to the bills

[FireChan]

It really is not that simple

 

Would we be saying the same thing if Schwartz remained and the D still declined? Because that is VERY possible. We lost the meatball for most of the season.....Aaron Williams as well. One thing that the Schwartz D had going for it was it was healthy the majority of the year.

 

Lets not act like Schwartz has had these defensive juggernauts before he came to the bills

Schwartz lost a starting CB for most of the year as well as a starting LB.

[Nihilarian]

Come on. You saw a regression because he forced a system onto the team. Going from leading the league in sacks (54) to 2nd last (21) in one year is terrible.

I agree and think it's beyond belief that some fans are still making excuses and are still defending what transpired last season. Only I'd call going from first in the NFL in sacks in 2014 and second in the NFL in sacks in 2013 far, far beyond just terrible! Then to go to 31st in the NFL with basically the same players (and the only guy out was DT Kyle Williams after six games). If you look at the sacks per game the 2015 Bills didn't generate much pass rush pressure all season save for a few select games. Last in the NFL in QB pressures in 2015! Dareus missed that first Colts game and yet the defense was able to generate a better rush on Luck than in most of the rest of the games.

 

Shoot, the Bills got a tremendous amount of pressure on Brady in that second NE game to the tune of around fifty percent of Brady's dropbacks and that was without Mario, Kyle, and Aaron Williams. The Bills got a lot of pressure on Fitz in that last game of the year and intercepted him three times without Stephon Gilmore.

 

Some fans would have you believe that losing Kyle Williams had a major impact with the 2015 pass rush. While he had a good impact in 2014 with 5.5 sacks he was more impressive in Pettine's one-gap 3-4 with 10.5 sacks in 2013. His loss for 10 games wasn't that impactful as teams were still going to double on the manster Marcell every game.

 

 

This entire thing has more to do with how the players were being utilized in Rex Ryan's scheme over player injuries, any single D-line player not with the team or anyone's attitude. The players themselves were complaining about their role in Ryan's scheme from training camp. Jeez, what in the world is so difficult or complex for the fans to comprehend that the players themselves were publicly vocal about not being allowed to rush the passer? After all, rushing the passer is what got them to the pro bowl in 2014.

Edited June 7, 2016 by Nihilarian

[John from Riverside]

Schwartz lost a starting CB for most of the year as well as a starting LB.

I would venture to say that Schwartz losses were easier to overcome then RR's losses......because they were team leaders

 

I dont really want to go down the road of defending RR too much......the communication issues were horrible and the penalties were inexcusable

 

but.....there are some reasons why RR'd D did not work and Schwartz did

[3rdand12]

I agree and think it's beyond belief that some fans are still making excuses and are still defending what transpired last season. Only I'd call going from first in the NFL in sacks in 2014 and second in the NFL in sacks in 2013 far, far beyond just terrible! Then to go to 31st in the NFL with basically the same players (and the only guy out was DT Kyle Williams after six games). If you look at the sacks per game the 2015 Bills didn't generate much pass rush pressure all season save for a few select games. Last in the NFL in QB pressures in 2015! Dareus missed that first Colts game and yet the defense was able to generate a better rush on Luck than in most of the rest of the games.

 

Shoot, the Bills got a tremendous amount of pressure on Brady in that second NE game to the tune of around fifty percent of Brady's dropbacks and that was without Mario, Kyle, and Aaron Williams. The Bills got a lot of pressure on Fitz in that last game of the year and intercepted him three times without Stephon Gilmore.

 

Some fans would have you believe that losing Kyle Williams had a major impact with the 2015 pass rush. While he had a good impact in 2014 with 5.5 sacks he was more impressive in Pettine's one-gap 3-4 with 10.5 sacks in 2013. His loss for 10 games wasn't that impactful as teams were still going to double on the manster Marcell every game.

 

 

This entire thing has more to do with how the players were being utilized in Rex Ryan's scheme over player injuries, any single D-line player not with the team or anyone's attitude. The players themselves were complaining about their role in Ryan's scheme from training camp. Jeez, what in the world is so difficult or complex for the fans to comprehend that the players themselves were publicly vocal about not being allowed to rush the passer? After all, rushing the passer is what got them to the pro bowl in 2014.

Its seems very difficult to comprehend for everyone that players were bitching.

instead of doing.

[Nihilarian]

Its seems very difficult to comprehend for everyone that players were bitching.

instead of doing.

Only two D-line players were bitching and the most vocal one from the start of training camp complaining about how he was being utilized played all year about as hard as I've ever seen him play! http://www.rotoworld.com/recent/nfl/6472/marcell-dareus

 

Marcell Dareus has echoed Mario Williams' complaint about coach Rex Ryan having his defensive linemen drop back into coverage too often.

Per Pro Football Focus, Dareus has dropped back only three times this season, but Williams has on 13 different occasions.

"It's not been a lot of times where there have been all four of us, full tilt, ears pined back and we're going after it," Dareus said. Despite boasting one of the league's most talented defensive lines, the Bills have only nine sacks through six games. That needs to change, and in a hurry.

 

If they had been asked to rush the passer like under Schwartz or Pettine I highly doubt you would have heard or read anything from the players about what they were being asked to do. It wasn't just the fluke of one season the Bills were great at pass rushing from Schwartz's wide nine in 2014 to Pettine's 3-4 one-gap scheme in 2013.

 

Bills fans can put up color-coded heat flow charts and dissect the stats anyway they want. But the simple fact is the 2015 D-line players were asked to play mostly in a two-gap run-stopping scheme rather than a pass rushing scheme and there were games in which Ryan just didn't call for many blitzes! Hence the reason for being dead last in QB pressures and 31st in QB sacks last year.*

 

Read this article written by an ex-NFL defensive player Stephen White explains it pretty good, http://www.sbnation.com/2015/10/21/9581575/mario-williams-marcell-dareus-rex-ryan-buffalo-bills-defense

 

Some excerpts,

"The point is why would you not use your high priced, elite pass rushers (Kyle Willaims don't come cheap either, bro) to do what they do best? Especially when the Bills -- the guys who blitzed Luck 25 times on 55 pass dropbacks in Week 1 -- only blitzed the Bengals 13 times the whole damn game.

Yes, that means those guys were dropping sometimes when there wasn't even a blitz coming."

Why?

Well, it seems like Rex Ryan is suddenly determined to put square pegs into round holes by putting his scheme over talent, at least he was Sunday. We know that the Bills have four dominant defensive linemen who fit best in an attacking 4-3 scheme.

"Even having Mario Williams, a human cheat code with his ridiculous combination of size, strength and athletic ability, two-gapping an offensive tackle is a pretty dumb thing to do on a regular basis because it's obvious he doesn't like doing it! I greatly admire Williams' game, but he's just not that guy who wants to be lined up head-up and wrestle with a 300-pounder all game. "

Then, if you read this article from the BN by Tyler Dunne he asks the Bills assistant coaches on if they think they players (Mario) were doing what was asked of them and they stated they were happy with the players.

http://bills.buffalonews.com/2015/12/31/marios-swan-song-with-bills-is-near/

"Ryan. Defensive coordinator Dennis Thurman. Defensive line coach Karl Dunbar. Coaches have supported Williams all season long – possibly to a fault. Their message has never wavered.

Dunbar, all smiles, praised the veteran on Thursday.

Asked how one of this generation’s best pass rushers can last 54 snaps without one tackle, one hit, one sack, Dunbar reiterated they’re pleased with Williams’ play.

“He’s doing a good job of coming off the edge and the quarterback’s getting rid of the ball,” Dunbar said. “It’s kind of hard because the defense we play is predicated on what they give us and who’s going to be the hot guy. Yeah, you wish you had more tackles, you wish you had more sacks. But I think he’s helping our defense based upon the things he’s doing.”

If you don't know the difference between the one-gap and two-gap schemes here is a link, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/football-insider/wp/2014/06/11/the-differences-between-1-gap-and-2-gap-principles-on-the-redskins-defensive-line/

Edited June 8, 2016 by Nihilarian

[Hapless Bills Fan]

All of his posts have been laughable. He's trying to take BillsVet spot as king of the NNN's

 

NNN's"?

I haven't seen much discussion of this in the media or elsewhere, but Ryan is on record now as stating that last season instead of running his own defense he attempted to blend his defense and Schwartz's and run a hybrid of the two. That may not be exactly how he stated it, but the gist is the same.

 

We know that Schwartz didn't routinely drop DEs and DTs into coverage, so that part of the "hybrid D" that Ryan ran last season must be his. I don't know whether he was known for this in NY or not, I haven't looked.

 

Either way, sounds idiotic and a very inefficient use of players. What's next, Darby rushing the passer by sneaking up into the NT slot. It's also hardly optimizing the talent on the D, which given the hybrid, is clearly why his D underacheived Schwartz's by a country mile.

 

Is it safe to assume that the D would have been even worse had Ryan run entirely his own, perhaps equaling his last four 20th, 20th, 19th, and 24th ranked scoring Ds in NY, instead of our 15th ranked scoring D last season? Entirely rhetorical but that's the logic of it.

 

In short, it would seem that we can continue to see the things that the defensive linemen complained about the most, aka dropping into coverage, because if those weren't Ryan's ideas then he's lying through his teeth, which is also a distinct possiblity on this team full of people that cannot seem to come clean with anyone.

 

I guess I'm just curious why no one is challenging that outright. Again, maybe they have and I just haven't seen it, although I've been looking since Ryan made those statements and haven't seen it, definitely not in the media.

 

Seems to me that if that happens again we're in for another long season with challenges upon the challenges that we already have rendering it an uphill battle out of the gates.

 

I think you're conflating a number of different questions.

 

1) dropping DLmen into coverage. That's part of a number of stout, proven D at times. Nothing intrinsically wrong with it

2) whether we had the right players last year to execute Rex's scheme and/or whether all the players fully bought in. I think the answer is "no" and "no".

3) whether we will have the right players this year and whether they have fully bought in. The answer is "maybe" and "depends upon results" as buy-in inevitably becomes check-out in the face of losing. I am concerned about the lack of stout NT and mensah-level ILB that seem part of every successful Rex D.

4) meta question: whether Rex's schemes are still effective in todays NFL. Some will say "no" and have reasons, some will say "yes" and have reasons. The concern I have is that everything says Rex runs a D that is reactive to what the other team shows and in terminology/options per play are very complex. In general complexity works against reaction speed.

 

The players have said Rex gave them more input and simplified the game plan towards the end of last season and it helped. Will he learn from that or start a t the beginning? TBD.

Edited June 9, 2016 by Hopeful