ROCKPILE REVIEW - Bengals and 2022 Wrap-Up

[Shaw66]

 

As the Bills lost to the Bengals in the AFC Divisional Round, I wasn’t ready to step off the ledge.  I hoped they’d win, but I expected they wouldn’t.  I hoped a truly competitive playoff team would emerge in January, but I hadn’t seen much evidence of that kind of dominance in December.  It wasn’t their year.

 

I guess I’ve mellowed.  Worst case, I’m losing interest, but I don’t think that’s the case.  I had tickets and a hotel in Atlanta, and I had a hotel and a rental car in Arizona.  I was interested.

 

For now, however, I think less than I used to about what went wrong and what needs to be fixed than in past years.  I have developed a healthy respect for all of the things I don’t know about football, and I no longer can pretend that I see that one thing the Bills need to fix to get over the top.  If it were easy enough for a guy sitting in his family room to figure that out, someone in Orchard Park would have done it already. 

 

What it takes to win a Super Bowl is a complex, almost unknowable combination of factors, many of which are completely or largely outside the control the General Manager and the coaches.  The extreme example was the COVID pandemic season, when the rules that governed practice, travel, and schedule all changed and kept changing throughout the season.  Teams had to figure out on the fly how to accomplish the training and preparation necessary to play the game at a high level under circumstances they’d never seen before.  Even short of that extreme, the variables are constantly changing, and each team is challenged to respond.  Coaches keep experimenting with approaches to offense, trying to find ways to move the ball consistently and score, and as they do, defensive coaches adjust their approach to defense.  What works changes from year to year, even from month to month.  Players come and go, with a quarter to a third of the players on the roster changing annually, and as the players change, the things the team can do effectively on the field change.  The process, from April through February, is like 75 people trying to complete a giant jigsaw puzzle while the picture being built is changing before their eyes. 

 

In that kind of environment, just getting to the point where your team is one of the half dozen that have gotten good enough to compete in the playoffs is a major accomplishment.  The winner will be the team that can keep growing and building a team that can play at increasing levels of physicality. 

 

The winners also invariably talk about how the team is a family, how much they care for each other.  Some people think it’s a cliché, but it’s said so regularly that I’m sure it’s true.  The winners must come together, not just physically and technically, but emotionally, as well. 

 

It is amazingly difficult and unpredictable, and every year the winning players and coaches are justifiably proud of what they’ve accomplished.  And there’s no shame in falling short.

 

The Bills fell short.  I think the emotional roller coaster of the Bills’ 2022 season was too much to overcome.  That is, it simply couldn’t be expected that they could accomplish all of the technical things – the training, the study, the learning, the teamwork, the offense and defense growth and development, the insertion of inexperienced players, like Hamlin, Jaquon Johnson, and others into the lineup – all of that and more, while struggling with the extraordinary events of the 2022 season.  The Bills were central to or lived through three national news stories:  the Topps murders, the blizzard, and Damar Hamlin.  Those events were, at the least, big distractions, and more likely difficult and draining once-in-a-lifetime emotional challenges.  And they lived through Kim Pegula’s health issues and the death of Dawson Knox’s brother. 

 

On field, what went wrong?  Plenty, I’m sure.  Josh Allen didn’t have an MVP season.  Teams figured out how to slow down the Bills’ offense and how to attack their defense, and the coaches didn’t implement strategies and tactics to counter what opponents were doing.  Losing Micah Hyde for almost the entire season was a major blow; he more than anyone else is key to the Bills’ defensive scheme.  Losing Von Miller for the late-season and playoff run hurt the pass rush, as did the failure of Greg Rousseau, Ed Oliver, and others to develop as defensive threats on their own.  The offensive line was not nearly effective enough. 

 

If I had to point to one factor in the Bills’ playoff loss to the Bengals, I’d say “pass rush.”  The real difference in the game was that Joe Burrows regularly had time to throw, and Josh Allen didn’t.  One play stands out for me: I believe it was Allen’s incomplete pass deep to Diggs up the left side on third and four, the Bills’ first possession of the game.   Allen was flushed out of the pocket to the right, found Diggs, and threw.  Diggs was open, but Allen threw the flat deep ball that we saw a lot from him in his early years.  He had plenty of room to throw to open space toward the middle of the field, and Diggs could easily have adjusted to get there.  The right throw would have been completed for a big gain or possibly a touchdown.  Allen didn’t have time, and when QBs don’t have time they rush their throws. 

 

Under Sean McDermott, the Bills are enjoying great success.  There is no reason to complain about him or his abilities, not yet.  Ten, thirteen, eleven, and thirteen wins in the past four seasons, four and five in the playoffs.  Andy Reid won his first conference championship game in his sixth year and didn’t win another one until more than ten years later.  Zac Taylor has already lost a Super Bowl and a Conference Championship game.  Sean McVay is looking more lucky than good.  Kyle Shanahan doesn’t have a Lombardi.  

 

The sports news media, particularly one Associated Press article after the Bengals game, made a big deal about the Bills going “all in” to win the Super Bowl this season.  That’s simply wrong.  Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott have always been very clear that their objective is sustained, long-term success.  The Rams went went “all in” last season, trading for Von Miller in his free agent season, signing Odell Beckham, and it paid off for them.  Then they collapsed.  The Bills signed Miller to a six-year deal, with the likelihood that he’ll play at least three.  The Bills made no short-term plays to win it all this season. 

 

The Bills have become a dominant team in the NFL, a team that should be in the mix to win the Super Bowl for years to come.  It didn’t happen in the 2022 season, and that’s disappointing, but it’s easy to see that things simply didn’t fall together the right way this season.  Now, they’re in the process of building for next season.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Shaw66

[JMM]

 Nice job as always.

[US Egg]

8 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

In that kind of environment, just getting to the point where your team is one of the half dozen that have gotten good enough to compete in the playoffs is a major accomplishment.

🎯

[Success]

Great post & thoughts.

 

The question around "what it takes to win a Super Bowl" is one that is vexing - it's much more of a mystery to me now than it was when I first started watching football, and really, for decades after that.  You have to have a very good or great team, of course - but there are injuries, psychological factors, "getting hot at the right time," et al.  On the latter, I felt we did in '20 for sure, and also in '21 to an extent.  We were derailed in '20 by injuries to the receiving corps., and last year by bad coaching decisions with less than a quarter of a minute to go. 

 

This year, we had the unfortunate luck of playing the team that "got hot at the right time."  I'll always wonder how it all would have gone if Huntley didn't try that leap to the endzone from the 2.

 

And no doubt - this team was emotionally spent.  People will say that all teams deal w/ adversity, and winning a title is about overcoming that - but adversity can hit a critical mass at a certain point.

 

[WhoTom]

9 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

I have developed a healthy respect for all of the things I don’t know about football, and I no longer can pretend that I see that one thing the Bills need to fix to get over the top.  If it were easy enough for a guy sitting in his family room to figure that out, someone in Orchard Park would have done it already. 

 

What it takes to win a Super Bowl is a complex, almost unknowable combination of factors, many of which are completely or largely outside the control the General Manager and the coaches.  ... The process, from April through February, is like 75 people trying to complete a giant jigsaw puzzle while the picture being built is changing before their eyes. 

 

 

Well said, Shaw. The whole post is spot on, with the two quotes above standing out the most.

 

[Robert Paulson]

nice job talking me off the ledge. I'm now half way back into the apartment window 

 

still a bit worried about our playoff defensive philosophy and  the roster vs. cap 

[WhoTom]

4 minutes ago, Success said:

I'll always wonder how it all would have gone if Huntley didn't try that leap to the endzone from the 2.

 

Ditto. I think we could have handled the Ravens, but I suspect we'd have faced the same fate against KC as the Bengals did.

 

 

[Shaw66]

4 minutes ago, WhoTom said:

 

Ditto. I think we could have handled the Ravens, but I suspect we'd have faced the same fate against KC as the Bengals did.

 

 

Chiefs were outstanding.  

 

And for those people complaining about Davis not being a good enough #2 and not drafting a Tee Higgins or whatever, Chiefs lost Tyreek Hill and no wideouts left from when they won the Super Bowl.  Didn't matter.  Great coaching and tenacious defense wins. 

[Lost]

4 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

Chiefs were outstanding.  

 

And for those people complaining about Davis not being a good enough #2 and not drafting a Tee Higgins or whatever, Chiefs lost Tyreek Hill and no wideouts left from when they won the Super Bowl.  Didn't matter.  Great coaching and tenacious defense wins. 

 

So, I'm curious why are you going soft on the coaches?   We seem to have progressively regressed in each of our playoff exits the last 3 years.   Strangely enough, the Ravens with a backup QB playing laid out a precise roadmap for taking down a very talented Bengals team and for some reason the Bills staff saw it and said "nah, we're good" and then proceeded to get stomped as if they were a high school team out there.

[Shaw66]

11 minutes ago, Lost said:

 

So, I'm curious why are you going soft on the coaches?   We seem to have progressively regressed in each of our playoff exits the last 3 years.   Strangely enough, the Ravens with a backup QB playing laid out a precise roadmap for taking down a very talented Bengals team and for some reason the Bills staff saw it and said "nah, we're good" and then proceeded to get stomped as if they were a high school team out there.

Well, I'm not.  I just don't know enough to comment much.  I said the coaches didn't respond well to what teams were doing to them.  

 

Given McDermott's success as aHC so far, I'll leave it to him to figure out what to do.  Like I said, it isn't easy to do what they're trying to do.  31 teams fail at it every year, and no one other Belichick has won a lot of Super Bowls. 

[corta765]

This was really well written and agree with most of it especially the idea they were not good enough and couldn't hit the hurdles at the end which requires a mix of factors.

 

I don't think Josh having MVP season matters that much. He still was top 5 for most peoples ballots and if anything this season showed how much he can cover up (a lot) despite an immense amount of pressure and lack of support.

 

Your point on one play with Josh not having time rings incredibly true. Once teams started doing what the Packers did in the 2nd half, double Diggs and dare Josh to beat them while they only rushed 3-4 it really became dicey on offense without a ton of composed sustained drives. It with very chunky and at points Josh turning water into wine type situations. For a QB who then had an injury right after this had to impact his mental mechanics that his line constantly was breaking down and after a while you start feeling like you gotta press. Josh had his flaws for sure as the GB/NYJ/MIN stretch he was incredibly sloppy with the ball and it 100% cost us against MIN. You also saw with that the growing pains of a new OC where at points he really had it right and other times not at all. One of my biggest frustrations in the CIN game was after the 2nd drive you can see your being eaten alive at the line so you adjust tenfold. No screens, no slants, no outside runs or sweeps, nothing to work the middle of the field with Knox and Beasley who both were catching balls etc.. It was a very frustrating game plan that screamed inexperience which in turn exposed your flaws even more. But they know they have to add around Josh to give him some time and some guys to help. Dorsey is getting one more year so fine show you have evolved and work some easier passes in for Josh to add some rhythm. The offense to me is fixing some parts and adjusting the scheme to be a little more friendly while creative and taking a little more what is given to you.

 

The defense is the main source of concern which stems to coaching to me. I agree McD is not going anywhere at this point, but the scheme and philosophy has gone as far as it can even factoring in injuries. You rarely field a fully healthy perfect roster and sometimes you are out guys. Von is a game changer and it showed, but Von was not the reason the Bills allowed a 3rd and 4 conversion, playing 8 yards off the line did that. Fundamentally the defense seems to eat lower to mid level offenses alive, but come resistance with bigger teams or the playoffs when it matters they can't raise the bar. They are going to lose Poyer, maybe Edmunds although I think he stays and patience is needed for Hyde/Von/White to all find themselves. Coaching can raise and hide flaws, it can also create holes and weakness. Fundamentally coaching and scheme need a change because even with the upcoming attrition there is enough talent in Von/Milano/Tre/Hyde/Groot/Johnson and Edmunds as a if he stays to field a competent defense that isn't a sieve against bigger competition and take advantage of a banged up offensive line.

[Just in Atlanta]

Nice write up. 

To me, if there is one thing to point to that made the biggest impact, it wasn't the pass rush, it was our DC's scheme. Our CBs were lined up 10 yards from their receivers on most plays. Against a QB well-known for his quick release. Holes everywhere. 

 

It was like we were trying to prevent the "big" play. But all the Bengals needed was one 10 yard pass after another. Over and over. 

 

Truly awful strategy. Add that to a masterful scheme from Lou Anarumo that took our rookie OC to school, and you have a recipe for a meltdown. 

[Shaw66]

12 minutes ago, Just in Atlanta said:

Nice write up. 

To me, if there is one thing to point to that made the biggest impact, it wasn't the pass rush, it was our DC's scheme. Our CBs were lined up 10 yards from their receivers on most plays. Against a QB well-known for his quick release. Holes everywhere. 

 

It was like we were trying to prevent the "big" play. But all the Bengals needed was one 10 yard pass after another. Over and over. 

 

Truly awful strategy. Add that to a masterful scheme from Lou Anarumo that took our rookie OC to school, and you have a recipe for a meltdown. 

The problem is by the end there were multiple "one things."  DC's scheme.  Pass rush.  Pass protection.  Ferociousness.  

 

Maybe intensity was the biggest problem.  And maybe that's what Saffold meant when he said they were "exhausted."  In neither playoff game did they hit like they need to in the playoffs.  

 

It wasn't their year. 

[Shaw66]

You know, even through all the playoffs (except Super Bowl), Bills still have the best DVOA on Football Outsiders.   They played superior football.  But DVOA is best over a lot of games, like a whole season, and doesn't mean much in individual games.  

[HomeskillitMoorman]

7 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

The problem is by the end there were multiple "one things."  DC's scheme.  Pass rush.  Pass protection.  Ferociousness.  

 

Maybe intensity was the biggest problem.  And maybe that's what Saffold meant when he said they were "exhausted."  In neither playoff game did they hit like they need to in the playoffs.  

 

It wasn't their year. 

 

It's McDermott's scheme. Frazier could be a problem, but he's an extension of McD. It would be like if a Bengals fan wanted to fire their OC after they lost. That's Zac Taylor's show, just like the D is McDermott's here. 

 

McD is not a helpless bystander and victim. If he doesn't like something, he can step in. He can change whatever he wants. I think he's kept Frazier here because it's become such an easy scapegoat and he gets to avoid most of the debris of accountability. 

Edited February 1, 2023 by HomeskillitMoorman

[Shaw66]

14 minutes ago, HomeskillitMoorman said:

 

It's McDermott's scheme. Frazier could be a problem, but he's an extension of McD. It would be like if a Bengals fan wanted to fire their OC after they lost. That's Zac Taylor's show, just like the D is McDermott's here. 

 

McD is not a helpless bystander and victim. If he doesn't like something, he can step in. He can change whatever he wants. I think he's kept Frazier here because it's become such an easy scapegoat and he gets to avoid most of the debris of accountability. 

Uh, okay.  Who said he's a victim?  And to suggest that he keeps Frazier around to have a scapegoat is truly ridiculous.  McDermott wants to win, so he knowingly keeps a DC around who can't win?   That's truly ridiculous, meaning worthy of ridicule. 

[WhoTom]

38 minutes ago, HomeskillitMoorman said:

McD is not a helpless bystander and victim. If he doesn't like something, he can step in. He can change whatever he wants. I think he's kept Frazier here because it's become such an easy scapegoat and he gets to avoid most of the debris of accountability. 

 

Even if we assume that this is McD's defense and not Frazier's (which McD himself flatly denied, even when the D was in top form), the "scapegoating to avoid accountability" thing would be to fire Frazier. 

 

We can debate whether McD is too loyal to fire an underperforming coordinator, but he's shown no sign of deflecting blame onto a scapegoat. It's more likely that he looked at the injuries and realized that no DC could get more out of a bunch of 2nd and 3rd stringers in key positions.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by WhoTom

[HappyDays]

2 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Andy Reid won his first conference championship game in his sixth year and didn’t win another one until more than ten years later.  Zac Taylor has already lost a Super Bowl and a Conference Championship game.  Sean McVay is looking more lucky than good.  Kyle Shanahan doesn’t have a Lombardi.  

 

The difference in these situations is they didn't have Josh Allen at QB. That's why I'm growing impatient with this regime. We have an elite QB and haven't even sniffed a Super Bowl appearance yet. I mean last year Josh Allen arguably had the greatest postseason run of any QB in history and we didn't even make it out of the divisional round. Why? Because our defensive head coach's defense fell apart yet again, and a huge coaching mistake cost us in the final 13 seconds of the game. I can't look at that outcome and what happened this year and compare it to Kyle Shanahan leading a who's who of mediocre QBs to a Super Bowl and conference championship. The Chiefs have now made it to 3 Super Bowls and always the conference championship since Mahomes took over. Mahomes may be better than Allen but he isn't that much better. The difference is coaching on both sides of the ball and at the top.

 

So McDermott gets another year to prove he can finally adapt to playoff football. But I won't have any great expectations regardless of how the team looks in the regular season. We have seen them falter when it counts too many times and I have to start thinking that maybe that's just who this team is under McDermott. A team that wins a lot of games because of elite QB play but never gets over the hump.

 

As usual your posts are much appreciated.

[Billsfan1972]

Shaw you really are a better man then me and with a keen eye.  

 

I said the exact same thing the 3rd play of the game and it was a TD if the OL gave Josh .25 seconds more.  

 

However & we've gone at it before, you always absolve McD.  Sorry this team with Josh would be +-1 win with any competent coach.  

 

The Bills this year were 13-3 on talent alone.  The three losses all could be pinned on coaching and I'll give you the Ravens game as one they did a good job coaching.  Heck they beat KC, so throw that one in too. 

 

This team had more then enough talent to breeze through the schedule they had.

 

So what is McD responsible for (since now we're told not the D either)?

 

Please don't say culture.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Billsfan1972

[twist_to_open]

That was a spot on assessment right there. Well done.