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Good Night / Bad Night - Pre Season Game 2


GunnerBill

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I don't understand the previous reports that claimed Rick Dennison's offense was a great match for Tyrod Taylor.

So far, the passing game seems to be the complete opposite of what Taylor is good at.

 

It's clear the staff is looking for a pure pocket passer. Somebody who can play under center, make quick reads and deliver fast and accurate throws. Not someone with limited field vision, who likes to scramble and extend plays with his feet. Not to mention, Taylor is short and already has trouble with batted passes, even when he isn't playing at the line of scrimmage. From my early perspective, this is a disaster in the making.

 

I understand that Taylor may not fit the mold that Dennison, Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane are looking for. But if the team is "really trying" to win this year, then the offense should be molded to fit the quarterback's strengths and hide his weaknesses. Of course, after 15 years of watching new regimes do the same thing (square peg, round hole, poor fit), I'm really not surprised in the slightest.

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Agreed, mostly. I do think Pass Protection deserves a mention in the bad. Here's hoping Cordy playing fixes that, because he seems to be the only player on our roster capable of playing LT.

I've been a Seantrel Henderson advocate (and he deserves better than his treatment of the league), but he may have played himself right off the team last night. It felt like he was getting blown up (or penalized) on more than half the plays. Everyone who played RT didn't look much better either. Run blocking was its usual above average, but pass protection was an absolute disaster. Cordy Glenn can't come back fast enough.

 

I'm also definitely a fan of Tyrod and feel he's done way more than a lot of people recognize, but last night's performance was an abject disaster. Even though he was running for his life, when he did have time he missed receivers, sometimes by an absurd length.

 

The defense, on the other hand, deserves accolades galore. Lorax was everywhere, as is his style, running down people from behind, stripping out the football. Can't say a bad thing about the defensive line. I penciled in Poyer as the potential TBD whipping boy of this defense, but he played well against the run, pass, and had his name called on a bunch of plays. Credit to Ragland (who was stuck going out into coverage on so many plays and was beat at least once) on a nifty stop behind the line on 4th & inches -- also noticed he was out there on ST, which many have noted that his lack of ST play as a reason he will be shipped or cut.

 

What is it with the Bills and penalties? Through roster and coach turnover, they seem to continually have this same problem despite all logic. Hopefully, McD has a plan and similar to the practice of the other day, he's trying to get the passion out then rein in the sloppiness, but man that was hard to watch last night.

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Yea.... McDermott better get that straightened out... a LOT of them were on teams..... and I am sorry that has been a recurring Crossman theme.

Penalties are a problem, but most of those were not actually penalties. I mean there was no contact on the blocks in the back. The call on Yarbo was terrible. The offensive PI on Logan? The refs were beyond awful.

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Oh dear. Last night did not make for pleasant viewing. Here goes.....

Good Night for......

Jordan Poyer - Really encouraging night for Poyer who blitzed effectively, made tackles in run support and looked athletic and smooth in his movements on the backend of the defense. "Fly to the football" seems to be McDermott's moto and Poyer has taken that to heart. If he turns out to be an unheralded "find" that is good news for our secondary.

Zay Jones - A couple of really nice grabs for Zay who looked fluent in route running and demonstrated the same excellent hands that marked him out as a future NFL starter in his college career. Looked to have slightly more chemistry with Peterman than Tyrod at the moment.... which is a concern, they really need to keep working at that ahead of the Jets game. With Jordan Matthews week to week Zay is the only receiver on this team I have a level of comfort in at this stage.

Nick O'Leary - The competition for the #2 Tight End is now officially over. Croom went out hurt, Logan Thomas had a couple of different penalties and failed to "pop" in the passing game. O'Leary had 3 impressive grabs for 50 yards to end as the Bills leading receiver. He might be one of the surprising beneficiaries of this offense.

Joe Banyard - The Bills are going to keep 2 running backs (McCoy and Williams), 1 full back (DiMarco) and 1 swing HB/FB (Tolbert). There is still the possibility of a 3rd pure running back making the cut and Banyard had a reasonable night both rushing and receiving out of the backfield. The one downside was the fumble.... but if a 3rd running back currently on the roster is in the final 53 Banyard is the one with the inside track on the job.

Run defense - Philly attempted 26 rushes for 66 yards. The first team D shut down the run to the extent that Wentz's final drive was almost all passes and the 2nd and 3rd team D did their bit too. Shout out to Preston Brown in particular who had a really good 1st quarter..... he looks somewhere close to the player he was in the Jim Schwartz defense (and yes.... I still miss Jim Schwartz).

Bad Night for......

Tyrod Taylor - Let me preface this before the usual Tyrod loyalists turn on me by saying that trading his favourite receiver away a week into pre-season and the performance of the line are mitigating factors in what was an ugly night for the Bills starting Quarterback as he went 8/18 with 2 interceptions. However, the concern that I have had all offseason about his fit in this offense looked well founded last night. The design of the WCO requires the ball to come out in time with the feet, at the top of the drop and if it doesn't the receiver is not necessarily going to still be open because their route is based on the same timing. Tyrod does not look comfortable and his feet and the throw are not at all in sync. He was getting frustrated with himself out there and the more frustrated he got the worse the accuracy got. Yes - it is only pre-season. But this was concerning, make no mistake.

Anquan Boldin - Boldin certainly has an excuse for looking "behind the curve" in terms of preparedness and knowledge of the offense but his route running looked clunky and his feet look slow. There is still work to be done on his chemistry with the Quarterback but they also have to use him as intended - as a short yardage specialist.

Austin Rehkow - The UDFA punter out of Idaho started camp with a realistic chance to displace Colton Schmidt as the Bills punter, especially given his place kicking experience and the fact that he could be an option to kick off. However, Schmidt has so far punted pretty well in pre-season after a rough 2nd half of 2016 and Rehkow's kick off out of bounds last night might have been the moment that this mountain became too high for him to climb.

Special Teams - Penalties, penalties and more penalties. No need to say any more but I do wonder if the sheer volume of "illegal block in the back" calls that the Bills got last night and have had since Danny Crossman has been here point to an issue with the technique he coaches for coverage units and kick return units?

Juan Castillo - I could just make the point again that Vlad Ducasse sucks.... but I am not going to. He has always sucked - his whole NFL career, it is not his fault he is being put out there against players he simply cannot ever hope to hold up against. Miller wasn't perfect last night either and Eric Wood did not have a good night but Ducasse is so obviously not good enough that the continued insistence in giving him time with the first unit can only be down to Castillo who was involved in bringing him over from Baltimore. This has all the hallmarks of Doug Marrone deciding Eric Pears was a better guard than Kraig Urbik - the tape doesn't support it and McDermott / Dennison need to pull rank on their offensive line coach before he sinks the whole unit for the year for the sake of his pet project.

Agree? disagree? anyone else catch your eye?

 

 

 

Thanks for this.......very good takes......I was watching at a restaurant with friends so didn't get to focus on the play of Poyer......will watch the replay today.

Dline is coming together nicely. They will keep us in some games this year.

 

Yardborougho had another solid game, too.

 

 

Yeah right now the DL seems to be the best unit.

 

That's not surprising because they have 3 stars and a #1 pick in the front unit but EY and Davis had strong games......Adolphus and Worthy have a lot of upside.......the DL is the key to McDermott's defense so that part is encouraging.

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Thanks for this.......very good takes......I was watching at a restaurant with friends so didn't get to focus on the play of Poyer......will watch the replay today.

 

 

Yeah right now the DL seems to be the best unit.

 

That's not surprising because they have 3 stars and a #1 pick in the front unit but EY and Davis had strong games......Adolphus and Worthy have a lot of upside.......the DL is the key to McDermott's defense so that part is encouraging.

 

I'll also say that I'm in relative shock at how good the LB unit has looked thus far--of course, with the DL playing well it definitely has a cascade effect.

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It wasn't just Worthy - at times it seemed like the whole D-line was over the ball. I was trying to watch Shaq the frst few series and I swear sometimes he was easily over a foot offsides - it was weird

 

That may have been one of the worst football games I ever watched

 

 

Agreed, for all the penalties the refs called I have no idea how they didn't throw offsides flags on the Bills DL. I saw a couple plays where two right next to each other appeared to have their hands behind where the ball was.......seemed obvious.

 

Not encouraged by the sloppiness from a guy in McDermott who is spoda clean that up.

 

I asked the question in a thread if McDermott was Jauron-ian..........but one thing Jauron did was IMMEDIATELY scrub the place clean of the penalties and mental mistakes that plagued Mularkey..........you can't play not to lose and beat yourself with penalties.

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Is it too early to feel that we are doomed?

 

Never too early! But just for optics i was hoping Yates would get the job done at the end. win the game in the last seconds,,,just to give us the feel of a culture change. But Alas, he throws the pickle on the final play to show us the Buffalo Bills continue to do, what we do best!

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