To All the People Saying They Went Into a Shell up 16-0...You're Missing the Strategy

[transplantbillsfan]

1 hour ago, GunnerBill said:

 

And I still say the problems on offense are 75% talent and 25% scheme / coaching. 

 

And I still disagree with that ratio.

 

Gore on the field is obviously a talent problem, but it was a coaching decision to have Gore on so many of those critical (and stupid) runs rather than Motor, including that end of 1st half debacle.

 

Duke Williams on the field over Beasley is a talent discrepancy, though I think the question all season should have been why Foster was active and Duke wasn't. Plus, why wasn't it just Duke over McKenzie rather than Duke over Beasley, who absolutely should have been on the field?

 

Tyler Kroft as a TE who gets more targets than Dawson Knox is a talent AND coaching problem.

 

Having the ball on the opposing 40 with a 4th and 4 early in the 3rd quarter up by only 13 and NOT either going for it (and in today's NFL, that's what teams do more often than not) or kicking the 57 yard FG and then later going for it on 4th and 27 IN THE SAME SPOT and attributing it to "wanting to be aggressive" is coaching lunacy and hypocrisy.

 

Again, McDermott probably keeps his job for years because I think he's a good regular season coach and we can make multiple playoffs with him.

 

But in one and done scenarios, I don't think he has it.

 

And that realization really sucks.

 

I hope he gets better, along with talent on the team, which should ho without saying.

Edited January 5, 2020 by transplantbillsfan

[MAJBobby]

A teams goal should be to get to 24 points always. And until you hit that number you keep your foot on the FREAKING GAS 

also Gore is this year Tolbert.  I will never understand their insistence to feed him the ball. 
 

and the other before the game started part is WHO BUILDS a game plan that TGTs a WR that has zero continuity with your QB 10 times.  If they wanted Duke Williams to play a prominent role in the offense maybe they should have activated him before a ROAD WILDCARD PLAYOFF GAME 

[HardyBoy]

11 minutes ago, Ethan in Portland said:

As for the OP's point. Yes I generally agree and posted during the game one more score and game over. Getting any points to get it to a three score game in the third quarter or early 4th and its a win. But you do that by being aggressive on defense and offense. You can play for a FG if you get behind in down and distance in the red-zone but until then you have to be aggressive.  Lining up in run heavy and then passing to Lee Smith is just dumb. If you want to run it sown their throats and kill clock then do it. No issue with that strategy.  Just stick with it and take it to them. 

 

Fair, and line I said I largely agree on the larger strategy of going for as many points as possible while things are working, but we need to see what their strategy looks like with an upgraded o-line and an additional wr before we are firing people (hopefully the oline is just an offseason for Ford).

 

I would say that we really need to wait to see what the A22 shows as well. We're judging everything on outcome at the moment and not on what the playcall actually was and if they made sense given the formations and looks. Allen might have checked into wrong things too.

 

Now I will absolutely give you they should have been going no huddle and calling plays at the line more, no idea why that happened so rarely. Also, they ran way, way more two TE than they had been. 11 personnel with Duke run blocking seemed like a dream match up given their CB depth, but maybe Watt and their dline caused that.

 

Again, we really need the all 22 before we start firing people. Absolutely Ford got left on an island on the Watt sack, but if it was supposed to be a quick hitter to the left side, throw it away if the first or maaaaybe second read wasn't open (half field read) and Allen went off script and tried to look for his third read and got sacked then that's a good island to put Ford on, because he held up well long enough for that playcall.

 

Going for 19 points there, whatever way they thought was best to get it, even if it meant playing field position for 3 drives to get a fg is the absolute key the moment they went into half 16-0. Everything before doesn't matter coming out of half...that said, neither does the Bills d holding them to 91 yards necessarily and the Texans are a known second half team (Hopkins half stat splits are wild).

[GunnerBill]

3 minutes ago, transplantbillsfan said:

 

And I still disagree with that ratio.

 

Gore on the field is obviously a talent problem, but it was a coaching decision to have Gore on so many of those critical (and stupid) runs rather than Motor, including that end of 1st half debacle.

 

Duke Williams on the field over Beasley is a talent discrepancy, though I think the question all season should have been why Foster was active and Duke wasn't. Plus, why wasn't it just Duke over McKenzie rather than Duke over Beasley, who absolutely should have been on the field?

 

Tyler Kroft as a TE who gets more targets than Dawson Knox is a talent AND coaching problem.

 

Having the ball on the opposing 40 with a 4th and 4 early in the 3rd quarter up by only 13 and NOT either going for it (and in today's NFL, that's what teams do more often than not) or kicking the 57 yard FG and then later going for it on 4th and 27 IN THE SAME SPOT and attributing it to "wanting to be aggressive" is coaching lunacy and hypocrisy.

 

Again, McDermott probably keeps his job for years because I think he's a good regular season coach and we can make multiple playoffs with him.

 

But in one and done scenarios, I don't think he has it.

 

And that realization really sucks.

 

I hope he gets better, along with talent on the team, which should ho without saying.

 

If our receivers toe tap and catch balls and our blockers block on QB runs and our DBs don't get spooked on 3rd and forever and Matt Milano wraps up and... and... and...

 

Are there mistakes on the coaching. Yes. But there are more mistakes in execution on the football field. And that is down to the players. I just think they are what they are. Teams that win Championships have 4 or 5 elite players as a rule. We have 1. Until some more of our younger guys - I am thinking Josh, Tremaine, Ed in particular get to that level then on the biggest stage there will be nights when no amount of coaching and culture will overcome. 

[Don Otreply]

2 hours ago, eSJayDee said:

It seems our strategy is to try & win games 17-13.  I was saying in the 3rd quarter we need over 20 pts to win.

Our TD on the 1st drive was largely a result of 2 plats where we had the Dee fooled.  After that drive?  Only FGs.  You're not going to win too many games against good competition in today's NFL scoring less than 20 points.

Yup, the real truth is that any team knows damn well you need a TD every quarter to come close to guaranteeing a win. You gotta be putting up a minimum of 3 TDs and a field goal to be dominant. Yes easier said than done, if your not close, you need to change your strategy/game plan.

 

All that said, this season will end up having been a very good lesson for the coaches and our QB. Me I’m confident that our players will have a no mercy attitude because of this experience.

 

Go Bills!!! AFC 2020 Champions. 

[SirAndrew]

2 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

An elite D doesn't give up a 3rd Q shutout.  

This is the problem with everyone’s elite D dream around here though. It’s 2019, how many teams pitch shutouts these days? The offense needs to make plays at some point. Elite D’s in the sense you’re talking about don’t exist these days. Teams have too many playmakers on offense nowadays. The 85 Bears played a QB named Tony Eason in the Super Bowl, lets just say that Deshaun Watson is a bit more dynamic. The Vikings D just held the Saints to 20 points. By today’s standards that was a spectacular performance against the Saints. We would have lost with our measly 19 points. 

Edited January 6, 2020 by SirAndrew

[HardyBoy]

4 minutes ago, SirAndrew said:

This is the problem with everyone’s elite D dream around here though. It’s 2019, how many teams pitch shutouts these days? The offense needs to make plays at some point. Elite D’s in the sense you’re talking about don’t exist these days. 

 

This was never supposed to be the year, this team is still rebuilding. The offense is light years better than last season. This team is not ultra conservative on defense, and have gotten a lot more aggressive each year as they got better talent. With an extra year to largely finish the rebuild on offense, I am guessing the offensive aggressiveness ramps up to match the defense aggression.

 

 

 

[SirAndrew]

2 minutes ago, HardyBoy said:

 

This was never supposed to be the year, this team is still rebuilding. The offense is light years better than last season. This team is not ultra conservative on defense, and have gotten a lot more aggressive each year as they got better talent. With an extra year to largely finish the rebuild on offense, I am guessing the offensive aggressiveness ramps up to match the defense aggression.

 

 

 

We are ahead of schedule. I hope you’re correct in your assessment. I just worry that McD is a defense first coach who doesn’t have a clue about the other side of the ball. Nothing explains that end of the first half series imo. McD is a good coach, I just worry we are stuck with the second coming of Marty Schottenheimer. 

Edited January 6, 2020 by SirAndrew

[Wayne Arnold]

2 hours ago, transplantbillsfan said:

 

I fear that McDermott isn't ideal for the new NFL. He's good enough that he'll keep his job I think. But his coaching mentality and approach is always going to leave open the risk of good opposing QBs doing exactly what Watson did yesterday. 

 

However, McDermott wasn't playing for a 3 score lead. If he were, he wouldn't have run Gore up the middle on 1st down to end the 1st half with 30 seconds left on the Texans 23 up by 10. He would have allowed Allen to use those 30 seconds to get off 5 or 6 good plays to try to score a TD and THEN be up by 3 scores.

 

Instead, he coached like a weeny, wasted 2 downs, was almost bailed out by a great pass to the EZ that Duke couldn't come down with, we kick the FG and go into the half up by just 2 scores against one of the best QB/WR combos in the NFL.

 

I want a perennial winner year in and year out. McDermott's coaching doesn't set us up for that because he will always leave windows open for the other team to get back into it.

 

This makes no sense to me. 

 

If McDermott wasn't playing for a 3 score lead to end the first half, he would have ran the clock down with runs then kicked the FG. Instead, he was aggressive by letting his 2nd-year QB throw pass attempts into the end zone.

 

If D'haquille doesn't drop a touchdown in the end zone, it's 17-0 Bills at halftime. How is that McDermott's fault?

 

My problem with the coaching occurred in overtime when they forgot Singletary existed and decided to treat their offensive possession like a 2-minute drill even though there's virtually no game clock in overtime in the playoffs.

 

Up to that point I thought McDermott put the players in place to win the game and the players failed to execute.

 

If the Buffalo Bills offense were capable of scoring 100 points per game, they would. McDermott isn't telling them not to score. They're simply not good enough (yet?).

[MAJBobby]

4 minutes ago, Wayne Arnold said:

 

This makes no sense to me. 

 

If McDermott wasn't playing for a 3 score lead to end the first half, he would have ran the clock down with runs then kicked the FG. Instead, he was aggressive by letting his 2nd-year QB throw pass attempts into the end zone.

 

If D'haquille doesn't drop a touchdown in the end zone, it's 17-0 Bills at halftime. How is that McDermott's fault?

 

My problem with the coaching occurred in overtime when they forgot Singletary existed and decided to treat their offensive possession like a 2-minute drill even though there's virtually no game clock in overtime in the playoffs.

 

Up to that point I thought McDermott put the players in place to win the game and the players failed to execute.

 

If the Buffalo Bills offense were capable of scoring 100 points per game, they would. McDermott isn't telling them not to score. They're simply not good enough (yet?).

how many times did “Gore’s turn” kill a drive?

[SirAndrew]

1 minute ago, Wayne Arnold said:

 

This makes no sense to me. 

 

If McDermott wasn't playing for a 3 score lead to end the first half, he would have ran the clock down with runs then kicked the FG. Instead, he was aggressive by letting his 2nd-year QB throw pass attempts into the end zone.

 

If D'haquille doesn't drop a touchdown in the end zone, it's 17-0 Bills at halftime. How is that McDermott's fault?

 

My problem with the coaching occurred in overtime when they forgot Singletary existed and decided to treat their offensive possession like a 2-minute drill even though there's virtually no game clock in overtime in the playoffs.

 

Up to that point I thought McDermott put the players in place to win the game and the players failed to execute.

 

If the Buffalo Bills offense were capable of scoring 100 points per game, they would. McDermott isn't telling them not to score. They're simply not good enough (yet?).

Sure, Duke dropped the pass, but I like my odds of three passes into the end zone more than one. We could have done that, but instead ran Gore, and spiked the ball on second down. McD did this all season in that situation, and it’s a bad way to coach in 2019. I attended the Redskins game this season, and the clock management before the half was quite similar. We didn’t even attempt to score before the end of half in that game. The Redskins were a bad team, and it didn’t matter in that game, but I hated it because I knew that philosophy will haunt us against good teams. Winner and losers aren’t separated by much in the playoffs. You must maximize every opportunity. 

[McBean]

No, the only “goal” is to bury their a$$ and score 100 TD’s.

 

You play to win the game.

[Georgia Bill]

48 minutes ago, MAJBobby said:

A teams goal should be to get to 24 points always. And until you hit that number you keep your foot on the FREAKING GAS 

also Gore is this year Tolbert.  I will never understand their insistence to feed him the ball. 
 

and the other before the game started part is WHO BUILDS a game plan that TGTs a WR that has zero continuity with your QB 10 times.  If they wanted Duke Williams to play a prominent role in the offense maybe they should have activated him before a ROAD WILDCARD PLAYOFF GAME 

That should be the goal, but look at the games this weekend:

22-19 Houston, 20-13 Tennessee (really 14-13 if you don't count the last play pick 6), 17-9 Seattle, and 26-20 Minnesota.   Every game was pretty defense oriented, with high powered offenses struggling to get points.  We were in one of those games and just came up a little short.

[Captain Caveman]

2 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

An elite D doesn't give up a 3rd Q shutout.  

And an offense capable of winning a super bowl (even being supported by a top 5 D) needs to be able to score 20 points against the 28th ranked D. 

[Mr. WEO]

1 hour ago, SirAndrew said:

This is the problem with everyone’s elite D dream around here though. It’s 2019, how many teams pitch shutouts these days? The offense needs to make plays at some point. Elite D’s in the sense you’re talking about don’t exist these days. Teams have too many playmakers on offense nowadays. The 85 Bears played a QB named Tony Eason in the Super Bowl, lets just say that Deshaun Watson is a bit more dynamic. The Vikings D just held the Saints to 20 points. By today’s standards that was a spectacular performance against the Saints. We would have lost with our measly 19 points. 

No one is talking about pitching a shutout.  
 

we are talking about a taking a 3 score lead Galway into the 3rd Q and blowing it.  
 

Big difference m.  Yeah the Offense was anemic since Dallas.  But any decent D doesn’t let a team it has on the canvas for a standing 8 count get back up and knock you out.

 

 

59 minutes ago, Captain Caveman said:

And an offense capable of winning a super bowl (even being supported by a top 5 D) needs to be able to score 20 points against the 28th ranked D. 

I agree.

 

But that D shut down the Bills when it mattered while their Offense was slapping that top 5 D

[Bermuda Triangle]

4 hours ago, transplantbillsfan said:

I told @GunnerBill this earlier in the week:

 

I don't think any of us are missing McDermott's strategy, we just think it's a bad one in today's NFL.

 

Today's NFL is built around the offense. The rules themselves favor the offense. In-game playcalling should never change unless it absolutely has to because either it's not working (clearly not the case based on our 1st half) or you've fallen seriously behind (which we didn't).

 

On top of that, it's probably a bad idea to veer away from things that have worked for your offense recently, and with that I'm talking about the no-huddle we'd been using with Daboll talking into Allen's headset about coverage and what he saw as long as he could.

 

I fear that McDermott isn't ideal for the new NFL. He's good enough that he'll keep his job I think. But his coaching mentality and approach is always going to leave open the risk of good opposing QBs doing exactly what Watson did yesterday. 

 

And by the way, I call total BS that 3 scores is the benchmark for McDermott. I think 3 scores with a half to go would be almost acceptable as a benchmark. 

 

Almost.

 

However, McDermott wasn't playing for a 3 score lead. If he were, he wouldn't have run Gore up the middle on 1st down to end the 1st half with 30 seconds left on the Texans 23 up by 10. He would have allowed Allen to use those 30 seconds to get off 5 or 6 good plays to try to score a TD and THEN be up by 3 scores.

 

Instead, he coached like a weeny, wasted 2 downs, was almost bailed out by a great pass to the EZ that Duke couldn't come down with, we kick the FG and go into the half up by just 2 scores against one of the best QB/WR combos in the NFL.

 

Honestly the more I think about this game, the more it irritates me.

 

Allen made a bunch of mistakes and has a lot to work on this offseason. But the thing about Allen is he's not stubborn. He knows he made critical mistakes and you can expect he'll grind this offseason to fix them so he comes back better for 2020.

 

I feel like McDermott is too unaware and/or stubborn to realize that he has work to do with his gameday coaching and maybe needs to reevaluate his whole approach to the game.

 

I want a perennial winner year in and year out. McDermott's coaching doesn't set us up for that because he will always leave windows open for the other team to get back into it.

 

It was almost shameful the was after the game yesterday McDermott seemed to put the onus of the loss on Josh when he said something about Josh trying to do too much--which he did, but probably because McDermott's coaching approach forced him into it--rather than holding himself personally accountable.

 

Here's to hoping everyone gets better this offseason.

 

Great post.  One of the best that I've read in my time lurking and posting here.

[transplantbillsfan]

2 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

 

If our receivers toe tap and catch balls and our blockers block on QB runs and our DBs don't get spooked on 3rd and forever and Matt Milano wraps up and... and... and...

 

Are there mistakes on the coaching. Yes. But there are more mistakes in execution on the football field. And that is down to the players. I just think they are what they are. Teams that win Championships have 4 or 5 elite players as a rule. We have 1. Until some more of our younger guys - I am thinking Josh, Tremaine, Ed in particular get to that level then on the biggest stage there will be nights when no amount of coaching and culture will overcome. 

 

Yeah exactly. We can play the "if if if if..." "then then then then..." game in absolutely every way possible and all we want, but very simply, in that game the Bills had a 2 score lead before you can really even make an argument that our talent was exposed in any way.

 

And then the coach put Gore in there and called a run up the middle with 30 seconds left in the 1st half, wasted a down asking Josh to spike it on 2nd down... bringing the clock down to just 15 seconds.

 

You can argue talent on that 3rd down pass to Duke that he didn't come down with, but the simple fact is that Allen and the offense should have had 5 or 6 meaningful plays on offense rather than 1.

 

Tackling is a problem, obviously. But again, is that really talent or coaching? You think Milano and Edmunds and Oliver and Hyde and so on on Defense lack talent? Really??? It couldn't be that they're not getting enough fundamental reps during the week?

 

What's the excuse for not going for it with 4th and 4 on the 40 but going for it on 4th and 27 on the 42 and attributing it to wanting to be aggressive?

 

What's the excuse for losing the defensive aggressiveness of the 1st half in favor of what resembled the dreaded prevent defense all too often?

 

 

Sure, all of this is cherry picking as you insinuate. The problem is that coaches have the benefit of being on the sidelines and are especially responsible for what happens between the snaps and plays that are called when the ball is snapped, among other things.

 

Buffalo should upgrade their talent, but this team yesterday had the talent for that specific game. They may not have the 4 or 5 Elite players you say are necessary for Championship teams--then again, who were those 4 or 5 Elite players last year on the Patriots? Or the year before on the Eagles? Or the year before on the Falcons team that lost that 28 point lead?--but as far as Bills vs Texans, it seems pretty obvious the Bills had the talent to win, but the coaches bungled it up.

[GunnerBill]

8 minutes ago, transplantbillsfan said:

 

 

And then the coach put Gore in there and called a run up the middle with 30 seconds left in the 1st half, wasted a down asking Josh to spike it on 2nd down... bringing the clock down to just 15 seconds.

 

 

 

No they didn't. As @Coach Tuesday rightly spotted Josh checked into that run. It was 100% not the call. He killed the call very clearly.

8 minutes ago, transplantbillsfan said:

They may not have the 4 or 5 Elite players you say are necessary for Championship teams--then again, who were those 4 or 5 Elite players last year on the Patriots? Or the year before on the Eagles? Or the year before on the Falcons team that lost that 28 point lead?--but as far as Bills vs Texans, it seems pretty obvious the Bills had the talent to win, but the coaches bungled it up.

 

Patriots last year: Brady, Edelman, Gronk, Gilmore, McCourty. 

 

Eagles: Cox, Ertz, Kelce, Peters

 

Falcons: Ryan, Jones, Mack, Garrett

 

And those are literally top of the head without even thinking. Teams that win Superbowls have 4 or 5 guys in that bracket. 

Edited January 6, 2020 by GunnerBill

[Da webster guy]

We all said "just dont take a sack at this point on the field" and you'd think Daboll would have called a quick pass, handoff, anything but a full 7 step drop.

 

Same exact playcalling fail that Shanahan did in the superbowl Falcs vs NE, cost them the game as well.  Already in fg range, never give up that 3pts because its just as important as the 7.   Score is meaningless at that point, its all about possessions.

 

 

[Bermuda Triangle]

4 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I don’t think the goal is to get up by 3 scores unless they are TDs.  McDermott has said over and over they want 21 points

 

I think you might be missing that we understand the strategy, we just disagree

 

IMO, what McDermott says runs counter to how he coaches.  Nothing about the strategy at the end of the first half would lead one to believe that the goal was to get to 21 points.

 

His comments to Allen earlier in the year, to "play fearlessly"?  Did it seem like Allen had carte blanche to play fearlessly against NE, Pitt or Houston?