Why has tackling become a struggle?

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

6 hours ago, Gambit said:

Lordy Epenesa trying to achieve a high score

just look at the names on the list… tells the whole story. 1 excellent player another ok starter and the rest are second and third tire talents, many starting due to injuries 

[NewEra]

1 hour ago, nosejob said:

Whatever, I still would have been asking what would it take?

Whatever, you have no clue what Beane did.  Cry more

[ganesh]

6 hours ago, LABILLBACKER said:

That Lions game was the worst tackling of the year. Everyone including Milano missed tackles.

Careful,  this is Pennstate10's boy. 

Milano missed one tackle albeit a critical one in the 4th quarter.  He could have shut down the game right there and then.

47 minutes ago, Over 29 years of fanhood said:

just look at the names on the list… tells the whole story. 1 excellent player another ok starter and the rest are second and third tire talents, many starting due to injuries 

Good find! Go Bills!

[DrDawkinstein]

8 hours ago, Big Turk said:

Starters trying to cover for backups who aren't in the right positions?

 

Epenesa is likely due to lack of number of tackle attempts...if he had only 9 attempts but missed 6, it will be 66.7%. 

 

Yeah, his low numbers keep him out of the Sort, but if you drill down you can find him.

 

8 Tackles, 2 Misses. 20% miss rate. Not sure where the 66% is coming from at all. Unless they are counting QB Pressures against him as missed tackles, because he has 8 pressures. That would be 8/18, or 10 misses for 66%. So maybe. But that would be doing AJ dirty.

[hondo in seattle]

17 hours ago, UKBillFan said:

As much as Leslie Frasier has been criticised for play calling on defense, I think our biggest issue is YAC - we seem to be missing a disproportionate number of tackles this year. Is it a case of reserves struggling to execute? Players on offense knowing how we tackle so being able to skip round them? Players not being coached probably to wrap up and hold? It feels like we’re putting ourselves under additional pressure due to not being able to stop the YAC, and I cannot recall us being so porous in previous years.

 

Go back and watch our losses.  Most of the big plays that resulted in scores, or keeping scoring drives alive, involved our backups.   It's not like our starters are perfect, but too often our backups are unable to disengage blocks, make tackles, and/or plays on the ball.  

[LABILLBACKER]

16 hours ago, Lothar said:

We have always been one of the worst tackling teams in the McBeane tenure. It might be the type of linebackers we get or the emphasis we place on scheme and coverage over basics like sound tackling. It's usually hard to find fault with a defense that has been among the top 5 but that is definitely a thing and since the first 2 games this year, it had become a team wide phenomenon.

 

Joe Marino listed the percent missed tackles of every player - he said we should average about 10-12%. Some like Epenesa are over 50% and most of the team is well over that threshold. 

 

 

I would love to compare Epenesa's 66% miss rate to the rest of the league. That's an embarrassing number. We've had games where we tackled poorly but that Lions game was unreal.

[Buffalo ill]

I was disgusted by the weak tackling from this team in the Houston playoff game.  It hasn't improved since.

[ganesh]

2 hours ago, hondo in seattle said:

 

Go back and watch our losses.  Most of the big plays that resulted in scores, or keeping scoring drives alive, involved our backups.   It's not like our starters are perfect, but too often our backups are unable to disengage blocks, make tackles, and/or plays on the ball.  

Our starters including Edmunds couldn't stop a run play on 3rd and Eternity against the Texans a few years ago in the Wild Card.

[John from Riverside]

10 minutes ago, Buffalo ill said:

I was disgusted by the weak tackling from this team in the Houston playoff game.  It hasn't improved since.

I actually think that it has, but it has been inconsistent

[Kenosha2Buffalo]

41 minutes ago, Buffalo ill said:

I was disgusted by the weak tackling from this team in the Houston playoff game.  It hasn't improved since

 

Ridiculous, that ***** was nearly 3 years ago. How tf does that even cross your mind since all the progress this team has made. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

[ExiledInIllinois]

20 hours ago, TH3 said:

when will we run out of things to criticize about an 8-3 team gutting out wins with half its starting defense, half its oline and its possession receiver out? 

Given only 8 points total in all 3 losses... Your answer:  When they should be 11-0. 😏 

 

😉😜 

[Buffalo Barbarian]

Because they don't allow contact anymore in practice

 

 

[Teddy KGB]

Why don’t the backups tackle like starters !

[Thurman#1]

22 hours ago, Eastport bills said:

Frazier and Sean are not coaching up young, inexperienced dbs to wrap up and bring fundamentals and physicality to tackling. These guys are trying to strip and grab and teams like Detroit and the Jets ran for big numbers. Good tackling is a mentality and other than Johnson, White and Elam our secondary is not there yet. When Milano or Edmunds are not on the field, we struggle in the run game.

 

 

You know for sure that it's that the coaches aren't coaching it, and not the players executing badly? Tell me, what's it like to be at all the practices?

 

As for struggling against the run, we're 10th best at defensive YPC, and that's with many starters missing a lot of games. And 9th best at YPA, with the same large number of games missed.

 

We're 5th in points allowed per game, 1.1 PPG behind the best in the league. 12th in yards allowed per game, 19 yards per game behind the #1 team.

 

All against an extremely tough schedule.

 

 

[ganesh]

4 hours ago, ExiledInIllinois said:

Given only 8 points total in all 3 losses... Your answer:  When they should be 11-0. 😏 

 

😉😜 

The issue was that they were up by 14 against both the Vikes and Jets and yet managed to find a way to lose the game in the 2nd half.   Both the defense and offense need to take the blame in the 2nd half of both those games.

[K-9]

It’s a league wide issue attributable to the practice rules negotiated in the CBA. 

[BillsFanSD]

I truly don't understand why people expect our defense -- any defense -- to just keep humming along when we are missing half our starters and several depth guys, many of whom are pro bowlers and/or HOFers.  Football is a team sport, especially defense.

[Nitro]

Watch college football.  The bad tackling  is on full display.   Group hug and strip the ball is the norm.  Guys able to win one on one consistently is becoming rare.

[Eastport bills]

12 hours ago, Thurman#1 said:

 

 

You know for sure that it's that the coaches aren't coaching it, and not the players executing badly? Tell me, what's it like to be at all the practices?

 

As for struggling against the run, we're 10th best at defensive YPC, and that's with many starters missing a lot of games. And 9th best at YPA, with the same large number of games missed.

 

We're 5th in points allowed per game, 1.1 PPG behind the best in the league. 12th in yards allowed per game, 19 yards per game behind the #1 team.

 

All against an extremely tough schedule.

 

 

It’s a reasonable argument to point to injuries, tough schedule and being statistically impressive, but we’re talking about the last 4 games and the depth personnel we’ve put out there. Now I understand you’re reluctant to acknowledge our tackling and pass defense has been substandard and my observations are the knee jerk reaction of some overly critical red hot, but I’ m just a fan like you who has a take on my team.

[Bronxbomber21]

On 11/26/2022 at 7:07 AM, UKBillFan said:

As much as Leslie Frasier has been criticised for play calling on defense, I think our biggest issue is YAC - we seem to be missing a disproportionate number of tackles this year. Is it a case of reserves struggling to execute? Players on offense knowing how we tackle so being able to skip round them? Players not being coached probably to wrap up and hold? It feels like we’re putting ourselves under additional pressure due to not being able to stop the YAC, and I cannot recall us being so porous in previous years.

It is because we are playing with at lest 5 backups as starters every game. It all started when Hyde went down. 

 

No lie I saw a lineup of Elam, Benford, Johnson, Hamlin, Neal, Dodson, Bernard( who is trash at the Moment), Basham, Lawson, Settle & Phillips. I wanted to cry then they brought in Cam (freaking) Lewis and I had to take a Xanax. 

 What happened to that state of the art health center they built? They should  be called the Buffalo walking wounded and now they can add Von, Groot &  Dawkins to that list now. Its a miracle to be 8-3 and to be honest we should still be 11-0 and this is all against a top 3 schedule