Has the bills offense shown any improvement from week 1 until now?

[Jobot]

I don't see improvement on the offense.  If anything, teams around the league are getting better and making things more difficult for Allen and the offense as the year has gone on.  Early on in the season, Allen was given more leash to audible at the line, I feel like this doesn't happen anymore.

[jrober38]

Absolutely not.

 

We have an extremely limited QB, who has never led a prolific offense at any point in his life. 

 

The notion he was going to develop into a top NFL QB never made any sense.

 

Our offensive coordinator is also not functioning properly. Why don't we run the ball more? Why is Lee Smith ever on the field?

[whatdrought]

It seems like a regression... I don’t understand why Beasly isn’t featured anymore. 

[jrober38]

Just now, whatdrought said:

It seems like a regression... I don’t understand why Beasly isn’t featured anymore. 

 

They're just playing better teams.

 

All the cupcakes on our schedule came early. Now we're playing teams with settled rosters (post trade deadline) who are trying to win football games.

 

The result is that our offense is looking worse, because they're playing tougher opponents. 

 

This is a terrible offense. There are major long term problems at QB and OC, and possibly even HC. 

[Jobot]

8 minutes ago, jrober38 said:

Absolutely not.

 

We have an extremely limited QB, who has never led a prolific offense at any point in his life. 

 

The notion he was going to develop into a top NFL QB never made any sense.

 

Our offensive coordinator is also not functioning properly. Why don't we run the ball more? Why is Lee Smith ever on the field?

 

You could be right... but based on the talent on offense, I think it's unrealistic for a second year qb to carry the team.  Until Allen can read a defense in a split second and counter the offense play calling/routes, the team will struggle to put up a lot of points.  We don't have a Julio to just chuck the ball to, or an O-line that smacks the D off the snap.

 

I would imagine that learning curve is different for every qb that enters the league, and I would also imagine that at times Allen may get this right but team mistakes or opposing 'talented' defenses stymie what could have been.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Jobot

[skibum]

The only improvement I see is that Josh Allen has not heaved any back-foot meatballs into the void lately. Otherwise, it's been the same crummy execution. Allen can't throw accurately on the move, or on deep throws at all. Receivers aren't amazing enough to catch balls that are off-target. They don't use Singletary nearly enough. Allen is not running as often or as effectively as last year, and when he does run, he puts the ball on the ground. Pass protection is mediocre, and throws happen late anyway.  Lots of bone-headed play calling - like Daboll is trying  to trick the opposing defense rather than do the thing that is most likely to succeed in a given situation. 

 

It's yet another year of pop-gun offense for the Bills. 

[JoshAllenHasBigHands]

1 minute ago, skibum said:

The only improvement I see is that Josh Allen has not heaved any back-foot meatballs into the void lately. Otherwise, it's been the same crummy execution. Allen can't throw accurately on the move, or on deep throws at all. Receivers aren't amazing enough to catch balls that are off-target. They don't use Singletary nearly enough. Allen is not running as often or as effectively as last year, and when he does run, he puts the ball on the ground. Pass protection is mediocre, and throws happen late anyway.  Lots of bone-headed play calling - like Daboll is trying  to trick the opposing defense rather than do the thing that is most likely to succeed in a given situation. 

 

It's yet another year of pop-gun offense for the Bills. 

Lol

[Jobot]

1 minute ago, skibum said:

like Daboll is trying  to trick the opposing defense rather than do the thing that is most likely to succeed in a given situation

 

Very apparent on a couple of 3rd and shorts yesterday in the second half... it looked like they didn't even have a single route under 10-yards as Allen hucks downfield incompletions.

[whatdrought]

2 minutes ago, jrober38 said:

 

They're just playing better teams.

 

All the cupcakes on our schedule came early. Now we're playing teams with settled rosters (post trade deadline) who are trying to win football games.

 

The result is that our offense is looking worse, because they're playing tougher opponents. 

 

This is a terrible offense. There are major long term problems at QB and OC, and possibly even HC. 

 

I disagree about QB. Allen has done well when given chances. The Offense has no rhythm, and no identity. There’s no plan and no adjustments. Allen is making plays when anything is schemed up for him, it’s just rarely done. 

[jrober38]

1 minute ago, Jobot said:

 

You could be right... but based on the talent on offense, I think it's unrealistic for a second year qb to carry the team.  Until Allen can read a defense in a split second and counter the offense play calling/routes, the team will struggle to put up a lot of points.  We don't have a Julio to just chuck the ball to, or an O-line that smacks the D off the snap.

 

I would imagine that learning curve is different for every qb that enters the league, and I would also imagine that at times Allen may get this right but team mistakes or opposing 'talented' defenses stymie what could have been.

 

Stop making excuses.

 

He's not suddenly going to learn this between now and next season.

 

The year QBs typically make their big jump is year 1 to year 2. After that what you see is almost always what you get.

 

The guys who succeed in the NFL as first round picks almost always show they're really good shortly after they get on the field.

 

The guys who struggle the way Allen has in his 2nd year (29th in the NFL in QB Rating), are usually on new teams by their 5th season.

3 minutes ago, whatdrought said:

 

I disagree about QB. Allen has done well when given chances. The Offense has no rhythm, and no identity. There’s no plan and no adjustments. Allen is making plays when anything is schemed up for him, it’s just rarely done. 

 

The offense has no rhythm because their QB is one of the most inefficient passers in the NFL. 

[whatdrought]

5 minutes ago, jrober38 said:

 

Stop making excuses.

 

He's not suddenly going to learn this between now and next season.

 

The year QBs typically make their big jump is year 1 to year 2. After that what you see is almost always what you get.

 

The guys who succeed in the NFL as first round picks almost always show they're really good shortly after they get on the field.

 

The guys who struggle the way Allen has in his 2nd year (29th in the NFL in QB Rating), are usually on new teams by their 5th season.

 

The offense has no rhythm because their QB is one of the most inefficient passers in the NFL. 

 

You’re seeing what you want to see. Allen played a good game yesterday and was let down by a lack of balance in play calling and a lack of protection in the line. There were several 3rd and short plays where the entire offense was running 10+ yard routes and the line wasn’t protecting long enough to give him room. Everyone knows you’re a bitter JA hater, and that’s fine. You’re entitled to your opinion. But blaming the offensive issues of yesterday on Allen reveals just how devoid of football knowledge you are.

Edited November 11, 2019 by whatdrought

[Jobot]

3 minutes ago, jrober38 said:

 

Stop making excuses.

 

He's not suddenly going to learn this between now and next season.

 

The year QBs typically make their big jump is year 1 to year 2. After that what you see is almost always what you get.

 

The guys who succeed in the NFL as first round picks almost always show they're really good shortly after they get on the field.

 

The guys who struggle the way Allen has in his 2nd year (29th in the NFL in QB Rating), are usually on new teams by their 5th season.

 

The offense has no rhythm because their QB is one of the most inefficient passers in the NFL. 

 

Reality is not an excuse... But he hasn't played 2-full seasons, and throwing the towel in on him today is the dumbest idea anyone could suggest. 

 

Say the defense stopped Cleveland on that final drive... would you be as pissed off today complaining about Allen and the team?  I doubt it, so take a step back from the emotions from watching yesterday's game to think critically.

 

[billsfan714]

Well outside of the Giants and Skins games our ceiling on offense is around 20 points.  And thats the ceiling.

[jrober38]

14 minutes ago, whatdrought said:

 

You’re seeing what you want to see. Allen played a good game yesterday and was let down by a lack of balance in play calling and a lack of protection in the line. There were several 3rd and short plays where the entire offense was running 10+ yard routes and the line wasn’t protecting long enough to give him room. Everyone knows you’re a bitter JA hater, and that’s fine. You’re entitled to your opinion. But blaming the offensive issues of yesterday on Allen reveals just how devoid of football knowledge you are.

Good god.

 

He had another QB rating under 80 and we scored 16 points. 

 

How low is the bar for what a competent QB and offense should look like?

 

He's 29th in the NFL in QB Rating, has thrown 10 TDs in 9 games and leads one of the worst offenses in the NFL.

 

Our offense is awful because what we're getting from the QB position has been awful. Aside from beating up on garbage teams, he hasn't looked good all season. 

[DRA3196]

I think they have two options regarding their offensive identity. Either open things up and let Josh run his offense helter skelter gunslinger style , and win or lose roll with it. OR run our offense through Singletary and make Josh a game manager. Neither are great solutions at this point. But at least they are directions

[D. L. Hot-Flamethrower]

Good Topic! Warning this is not just a yes they're regressing. Although that could be the answer.

 

I started out by asking the OPs question and trying to answer objectively. I don't have access to anything more than traditional stats. But, that should suffice for purposes of comparing the early part of the season, to the later part.

 

Breaking up into buckets beginning with week 1 and ending with Game 4 NE, this is fair, end of Sept., to the eye appears to be a watershed game for the team, this will be referred to as P1 going forward. And, of course the second bucket-P2, will be game 5 through yesterday-5 games. Everything will of course be per game. Let's see if there are any trends?

 

1. PPG and YPG; P1 19.0 ppg/387ypg, P2 19.6 ppg/297ypg, surprisingly perhaps the Schedule is pretty even in each period. P1 .324%, P2.348, the difference is balanced off by one extra home game in P2, so we can put the SOS to bed for the purposes of this discussion. Production down.

 

2. Where is drop in yardage coming from? P1 Passing 240ypg/ Rushing 147ypg P2 Passing 191 ypg/ Rushing 106ypg, that's a 20% decline in passing yards, and 28% in rushing yards. So both are well down.

 

3. Is this being driven by the number of attempts either way? This is a very interesting to me. P1 Pass Att/Rush Att 37pg/31pg drop of 16%; P2 29pg/26pg drop of 11%. Overall the Bills are running 14% fewer plays! Does that mean our defense is on the field more? The answer is perhaps surprisingly NO, P1 63, P2 60 a drop of 5% give or take. Coincidentally or not, Bills games have dropped from 131 plays to 115 plays. Games time have also shorted to an average of 2:53 from 3:13 in P1. Does it seem to anyone else like we've slowed the pace of our games down? huddle more? running the clock down under 5 secs? It does to me. We need to answer my original efficiency question another way.

 

4. Yards Per Rush P1 5.1 P2 4.2, is this because Josh is running less and worse? Surprisingly no. His attempts/yard/average P1 8/33/4.3 P2 7/29/4.5 pretty similar. I'll save you the suspense and tell you the initials of the biggest drop off, you probably could guess FG.

 

5. How about the passing game? It has actually been much more efficient. Completion % is steady at 60%, But with P1 being 3 TDs/6INT and P2 being 7TDS/ 1 INT ; much of the efficiency gain is here, Yards per attempt is relativitely close 6.5 to 6.3. As are Yards Per Comp. So, Josh was asked after NE to stop playing "hero" ball, cut down on the mistakes and let the rest of the team do its job. He has done that, the team has performed worse.

 

My summary:

It appears like the coaching staff, after NE, has decided to slow the game pace down, and has asked Josh not to make throwing errors. Play to the strength of our defense, which is a story for another day. I know some will scream they are trying to protect Josh, and perhaps to a certain extent they are. But, doing this also protects McD's defense. As to the drop in the running game, The first 4 games was a lot of McKenzie motion, the one game since NE where there was a lot of that was...Washington. Devin Singletary's big running game. I have no answer to the Singletary usage conundrum. IMHO laying the regression at the feet of JA is both simple and incorrect. Others have a lot to answer for. Have they actually helped our raw QB succeed by putting adequate resources around him, and creating a QB friendly environment? The answer to that may depend on your biases, I say no and he's doing what he's asked.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2019 by D. L. Hot-Flamethrower

[1st Ammendment NoMas]

NO! F'k NO. Pathetic to watch. I think it is regression. Defenses figured us out and Daboll snipped off Allen's balls and keeps them in a Petri dish at UB hoping he can get some of his  own mojo back.  

[papazoid]

2nd year qb lamar jackson says hello

 

sound the alarm....josh allen is mediocre at best.....currently ranked 29th & 30th in passer rating and total qbr....not good enough

[TAinLack.]

Time for the "No Huddle" - what have we got to lose!!!

[Stank_Nasty]

i'm baffled by the lack of looks for Beasley on those short 3rd and 4th downs.... hasn't that been how he's made his hay in the NFL? its mind blowing he hasn't seen any looks there.