Just gonna say it: Daboll’s worst game since the first half of the season

[The Firebaugh Kid]

Agree. Hated the qb runs. Wayyyyyy too many. And no McKenzie. Strange. 

[Rock-A-Bye Beasley]

5 hours ago, DQW87 said:

Yeah but 1st half field position played a huge part in that.  Don't have a lot of options backed up to the endzone all half.

while the field position did play a huge part in that, it was by choice. 
 

you have plenty of options other than runs straight up the gut repeatedly as evidenced by the end of half drive. 
 

I understand the runs if the QB is standing in his own end zone on pass plays. Otherwise let Allen use that big arm on 2nd and 1. 

[billsfanmiamioh]

Yep, didn’t particularly like the plan of attack & play calling today. Oh well, survive and advance.

[Straight Hucklebuck]

5 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

I think it was one of the worst coached games of the McDermott era. And not necessarily Sean himself. I thought the plans by all 3 coordinators were mystifying. 

 

Why did we keep running Allen?

Why did we keep blitzing Rivers on 3rd down?

Why did we insist on the short kickoffs and the bringing out their kicks offs when struggling for Field Position?

 

None of it made much sense. Now ultimately that is on Sean and he will take accountability I am sure, but the Bills had some strange plans.

It’s fine if you looked at the Colts film and concluded you could run on them.

 

So hand it off instead of sweeps by Allen on 3rd downs. His penchant for fumbling is not gone.

 

And once again, our 3rd Down and < 2 yard runs were atrocious. Our line got no push whatsoever.

 

We looked confident in 4-Wide sets throwing the ball, but be more confident in hand-offs to the running backs if it’s something you want to do.

 

 

[AKC]

1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

In the first half, our AVERAGE field position start was the 8 yd line!!!! We started from the 3, 15, 11, 6, and 4 yd lines.  That's pretty awful, and it limits what the offense can do.  It makes 3-and-outs more likely.  The best field position (15 yds) was our first TD. 

 

 

The first half story was how badly we got worked on ST yet walked the tunnel for orange sections with the lead. I’m inclined to believe the QB runs today were at least as much to force the next defense(s) we see to be ready so perhaps BD got a little ahead of himself, but the only thing that matters is the advance to next week. 

[CaptnCoke11]

27 minutes ago, The Firebaugh Kid said:

Agree. Hated the qb runs. Wayyyyyy too many. And no McKenzie. Strange. 

There have been plenty of games with no McKenzie.  The QB runs i agree with.  Went to the well too many times.  

[Miyagi-Do Karate]

6 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

I think it was one of the worst coached games of the McDermott era. And not necessarily Sean himself. I thought the plans by all 3 coordinators were mystifying. 

 

Why did we keep running Allen?

Why did we keep blitzing Rivers on 3rd down?

Why did we insist on the short kickoffs and the bringing out their kicks offs when struggling for Field Position?

 

None of it made much sense. Now ultimately that is on Sean and he will take accountability I am sure, but the Bills had some strange plans.

this is spot on. Also, to your point,  very weird how McDermott had one of his best coaching days today in terms of game tactics (going for it, challenges, timeouts, etc.), but the coordinators’ gameplans were wonky. 

[Green Lightning]

Defense. Good lord dreadful. Giving up a TD in the 4th quarter in under 3 mins followed by giving up a other in under 2 mins was horrendous. The inability to get them off the field on 3rd and 4th downs was unbelievable. Zero pass rush and no ability to cover any of their TEs. This is not a SB D and our only hope is Josh outscoring everyone. If the D would have made them work for a 5 or 6 min TD it wouldn't have been the nailbiter it was.

[Dablitzkrieg]

While I agree the play calling was suspect, this stat is interesting from Sal C...

 

"With how the game looked and felt I definitely didn't expect this stat to read this way:
Total yards per play: Bills 6.8, Colts 6.2
That's the 4th-highest yards per play the Bills have had this season.  They were efficient on offense.  Just didn't have the ball very long."

[Hapless Bills Fan]

2 hours ago, Chaos said:

Colts are not a notably good defense. They were much better prepared than the Bills today. 

 

‘where do you get this notion that they are not a good defense?  Even just go look up their stats, then the # of first team all pros they have

1 hour ago, JohnNord said:

I thought we should’ve scrapped the running game.  I heard the ratio was 60/40.  Probably a bit too high given the fact that Indy has the second ranked defense.

 

We don’t know for sure whether the runs by Josh were the play call or if it was improvised.  
 

The only series I didn’t like were three straight runs deep in Bills territory and then the called run by Josh.

otoh where did you get Indy has #2 defense, they dont

 

[JohnNord]

1 minute ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

‘where do you get this notion that they are not a good defense?  Even just go look up their stats, then the # of first team all pros they have

otoh where did you get Indy has #2 defense, they dont

 

Sorry 2nd ranked rush defense

[NickelCity]

Bizarre playcalling. 

 

I really hope we clean things up. Let Josh throw for chrissake. 

[Logic]

Personally, I disagree.

The only thing I had a problem with was the lack of the jet sweep and pre-snap motions with McKenzie. McKenzie, though, may well have not been healthy, since he was barely seen in this game.

One or more Bills players said they felt like this was the toughest defense they played against all season. The Colts defense routinely controlled the line of scrimmage. They have 1st team All-Pros at DT and LB. They're well coached and disciplined and fast.

Furthermore, a lot of the runs today seemed to be "check with me's" that Josh audibled into. On other occasions, the execution was poor. On still OTHER occasions, the Bills were repeatedly starting drives from their own 10 yard line or worse.

With all of that said, the Bills still scored 27 points.

Was it Daboll's best game? Absolutely not. I thought it lacked a little of the creativity and diversity we've come to expect from him. But to say it was his WORST game since whenever? I don't know. I didn't see it.

[Stanley Lombardi]

Daboll was on a mission to out-think himself all day.  Fortunately, so was Frank Reich.

[Rick 'r Mortis]

Next week will be completely different. I'm thinking not one designed QB run.

[White Linen]

I agree that the game plans in all 3 phases were incorrect for this game.   I felt we got out coached today but in the end had the better QB.  

[Hapless Bills Fan]

36 minutes ago, JohnNord said:

Sorry 2nd ranked rush defense

 

Ah!  Yes, This is True. 

 

Colts have a very good run D, a kind of mid-pack pass D on yards, and very opportunistic on turnovers.  Overall very solid D, 10 on points 8 on yards.  I kind of feel they're a bit like the Bills in that they had a "wake up call" against the Titans where they just had a horrible, no good very bad game where Henry ran all over them, after which they pulled themselves together and leveled-up for the last 5 games.

 

For this game, they had that "underdog" vibe going on and they were loose and ballin'.

[Doc Brown]

57 minutes ago, Dablitzkrieg said:

While I agree the play calling was suspect, this stat is interesting from Sal C...

 

"With how the game looked and felt I definitely didn't expect this stat to read this way:
Total yards per play: Bills 6.8, Colts 6.2
That's the 4th-highest yards per play the Bills have had this season.  They were efficient on offense.  Just didn't have the ball very long."

Yeah, but we had more three and outs than usual leaving our defense more vulnerable to fatigue as the game wore on.  We were 2 for 9 on 3rd downs which is uncharacteristic for us.  I give a lot of credit to the Colts defense but Allen found a way.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

31 minutes ago, Logic said:

Personally, I disagree.

The only thing I had a problem with was the lack of the jet sweep and pre-snap motions with McKenzie. McKenzie, though, may well have not been healthy, since he was barely seen in this game.

One or more Bills players said they felt like this was the toughest defense they played against all season. The Colts defense routinely controlled the line of scrimmage. They have 1st team All-Pros at DT and LB. They're well coached and disciplined and fast.

Furthermore, a lot of the runs today seemed to be "check with me's" that Josh audibled into. On other occasions, the execution was poor. On still OTHER occasions, the Bills were repeatedly starting drives from their own 10 yard line or worse.

With all of that said, the Bills still scored 27 points.

Was it Daboll's best game? Absolutely not. I thought it lacked a little of the creativity and diversity we've come to expect from him. But to say it was his WORST game since whenever? I don't know. I didn't see it.

 

Yes.

 

This was really a tale of two halves as far as TOP.  In the first half, as I pointed out elsewhere, the Bills average starting position was the 8 yd line.  They started drives from the 3, 15, 11, 6, and 4 yd lines.  One of the same players (Beasley) who stated flat out "this was the best defense we've faced all season" also pointed out that starting a drive from very close to the endzone limits what you can do offensively, and that you pretty much need to get away from the endzone and then you can execute your gameplan.  We got a TD on the 2nd drive (starting from the 15 yd line) and the last drive (starting from the 4 yd line).  The others, we went 3 and out.

 

As a result, there was a huge disparity in TOP in the first half.  But in the 2nd half, the TOP was about equal.

 

It's not a coincidence that in the 2nd half, the Bills were starting drives from the 28, 23, 25 and 24 yd lines and could go right to work.

 

I'll be interested to check the snap counts, but I do wonder if McKenzie was hampered with the ankle injury.  Lost in the concern about Beasley is the fact that he was listed as limited for 2 of the 3 practices this week.

 

Pre-snap motions, I think we had a bunch.  But jet sweeps and screens and stuff, we had no chance with those.  The Colts were freakin' living in our backfield.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ethan in Cleveland]

Just re-watched a chunk of the game. The Bills O-line had an up and down game.  Feliciano was poor in pass protection at times.  Morse was so so.  Boettger was poor in run blocking.  Dawkins and Williams were solid most of the game.