All-22 analysis of Bills/Jags

[HappyDays]

 

Joe Marino does these all-22 review podcasts every week. Mostly he broke down what happened with the offense in this one. Some highlights:

 

-He said the run game failures were mostly a case of running the ball against bad looks. A lot of times the Jaguars had 8 or even 9 men in the box and we chose to run it anyways. The 2nd and 1 pitch to Cook that we lost like 5 yards on, he said we had 2 OL blocking 3 defenders on that side. Unsurprisingly the unblocked defender made an easy tackle for a loss. I don't know if Allen is supposed to audible out of those looks or what, but Dorsey or Allen have to a better job of punishing defenses for heavy boxes.

 

-As far as the passing game, Joe said that Allen played terrific and really wasn't to blame at all for any of our passing struggles. He said there have been times in the past where he's seen Allen turn down easy completions, but in this game he was executing his reads the way they were designed and manipulating the pocket well.

 

-He blames several of our stalled drives on skill players. Cook dropping a pass on the first drive, Knox dropping a pass on a 3rd down, Davis dropping a pass on a 2nd down, all of these he says the pass catcher definitely should have come down with them. He also blames Diggs for the interception after watching a few replays. He says the ball was a tad underthrown but it went 70 yards in the air and Diggs gets both hands on it - that's a situation where he says Diggs simply has to win the catch. He says one run should have gone for 8+ yards, but Cook totally misread the leverage and ran away from his blockers outside for a 0 yard gain.

 

-The Jags did a good job using simulated pressures to get advantages on their pass rush opportunities. All our struggles aside, give their defense credit for confusing us and keeping us off balance.

 

-He says more play action passes wouldn't have worked with the way the Jaguars were loading the box and showing heavy pressure looks. I've seen a lot of people criticize Dorsey for a low play action percentage in this game so I thought that was an interesting point.

 

-An alarming statistic he points out - the Jags missed just 3 tackles in this game. We missed 19 tackles... What else can you even say?

 

-Another alarming statistic - only 22% of our receiving yards in this game were YAC, by far the worst in the league for week 5. For context, Joe points out the 2nd lowest was the Ravens at 33%, and most offenses are in the 45%-50% or higher range. The Dolphins were at 78%. Our YAC issues from last year popped up big time in this game and it killed us. No run game and no YAC means literally our entire offense was dependent on Josh Allen's right arm, and that just isn't sustainable.

 

-A few points on defense - He says Elam wasn't quite as bad as he thought watching it live, but he definitely has some technical issues to clean up. Joe thinks the issues are fixable but he isn't at the level of Jackson or Benford right now. Dorian Williams had issues on misdirection plays and missed a couple tackles before McDermott benched him.

 

For a video breakdown of the offensive struggles, Cover1 just put this video out:

 

 

I think the play shown at 5:53 summarizes our issues in this game better than anything. You have 4 pass catchers all end up in the same area of the field so the timing of the play is awful and Allen has nowhere to go with the ball. He extends the play and throws a perfect pass to Knox who then drops it.

 

Way too many missed opportunities in this game. Pass protection, run blocking, situational play calling, skill position players, none of it was good enough.

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by HappyDays

[Shortchaz]

Josh is a great but flawed quarterback. All his physical tools are ideal. He has, and still can (a lot of the time), rely heavily on these tools. He hasn’t had to be a student of the game beyond what is normal (for starting nfl quarterbacks). If he wants to go to the next level he has to develop this aspect of his game. He has to make his changeup as good as his fastball if you will. 
 

These shortcomings are also on coaching. The coordinator and the qb are a package. 
 

These criticisms are in the context of josh already being a great nfl quarterback. 

[Buffalo03]

2 minutes ago, Shortchaz said:

Josh is a great but flawed quarterback. All his physical tools are ideal. He has, and still can (a lot of the time), rely heavily on these tools. He hasn’t had to be a student of the game beyond what is normal (for starting nfl quarterbacks). If he wants to go to the next level he has to develop this aspect of his game. He has to make his changeup as good as his fastball if you will. 
 

These shortcomings are also on coaching. The coordinator and the qb are a package. 
 

These criticisms are in the context of josh already being a great nfl quarterback. 

His only flaw is he tries to be Superman a few times here and there when he shouldn't. Other than that, he has no flaws at all. He is not a flaw QB

[GoBills808]

Looked like tired legs

[Xwnyer]

5 minutes ago, Buffalo03 said:

His only flaw is he tries to be Superman a few times here and there when he shouldn't. Other than that, he has no flaws at all. He is not a flaw QB

Does he ever hit a receiver in stride across the middle or in the flat,  sure does on deep ball but not the shorter passes.

[Shortchaz]

1 minute ago, Buffalo03 said:

His only flaw is he tries to be Superman a few times here and there when he shouldn't. Other than that, he has no flaws at all. He is not a flaw QB

I disagree, his recognition and anticipation are not great. 
 

flaw might be the wrong word. Weakness is what I meant 

[BBFL]

Thanks for providing this. Just got done watching the Cover 1 video, great insight especially regarding Elam which I think is accurate.

 

Will watch the Locked in Bills and see where we are at after a let down. 
 

Thanks again!

 

👊🏽

[HappyDays]

1 hour ago, Xwnyer said:

Does he ever hit a receiver in stride across the middle or in the flat,  sure does on deep ball but not the shorter passes.

 

1 hour ago, Shortchaz said:

I disagree, his recognition and anticipation are not great. 

 

These are weird criticisms to make coming out of 4 consecutive games where he has been executing within the structure of the offense and throwing receivers open. Honestly if he has any issues in that area, it's that he doesn't trust anticipatory throws to pass catchers not named Stefon Diggs. But why would he?

 

Edited October 10, 2023 by HappyDays

[Shortchaz]

5 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

 

These are weird criticisms to make coming out of 4 consecutive games where he has been executing within the structure of the offense and throwing receivers to open. Honestly if he has any issues in that area, it's that he doesn't trust anticipatory throws to pass catchers not named Stefon Diggs. But why would he?

I think it’s fair to be critical of josh when the offense struggles because he is in control of it and the one that impacts it the most. It’s his job to make it work, fair or not. That includes the running game. 

[MasterStrategist]

1 minute ago, HappyDays said:

 

 

These are weird criticisms to make coming out of 4 consecutive games where he has been executing within the structure of the offense and throwing receivers to open. Honestly if he has any issues in that area, it's that he doesn't trust anticipatory throws to pass catchers not named Stefon Diggs. But why would he?

^This 

 

And Dorsey still hasn't schemed many easy YAC opportunities.  I blame the personell a little (ie this isn't Gabes strong suit).  But I'm perplexed how guys like Kincaid, Harty, Sherfield (even Shakir) can't be used more in ways that give them YAC chances.

 

Honestly, my patience has been wearing thin with the offense.  1 game Josh looked lost/1 game our playcalling rhythm was horrible/2 above average performances/1 outstanding game.  Not to mention above issues with using our playmakers, add Cook to that list and Knox.  It's not much different than frustration with Dabs, but he at least got all our playmakers involved.

[HappyDays]

6 minutes ago, Shortchaz said:

I think it’s fair to be critical of josh when the offense struggles because he is in control of it and the one that impacts it the most. It’s his job to make it work, fair or not. That includes the running game. 

 

But there are at least 5 drives he points out where the skill position players directly led to the drive stalling out. Allen led his offense to more points than Mahomes led his offense to against the Jaguars. Was Mahomes to blame for that one? No. It's a talent issue around the QBs.

 

As far as the run game woes, I tend to blame coaching for that one. If the rules of the offense say check out of a run play against a heavy box, Allen isn't going to just ignore that rule. And in general I find our run designs to be extremely vanilla. No misdirection, no trickery, the 3-4 run plays we have all look exactly the same every time. Like I said in another thread, a lot of the offensive designs both in the run and pass are just "line up and beat your man." But we don't have the talent to do that consistently. Cook isn't the best at reading leverage, we know the pass catchers other than Diggs are not going to win 1v1 coverage matchups. The receivers are getting confused and ending up right next to each other or not getting to their spot according to the timing of the play structure. A lot of it just looks very messy or more difficult than it needs to be.

 

I think Dorsey is fine but I'm not convinced his offense is anywhere near as crisp or creative as some of the best offensive minds in the league, and that's ultimately who we are going to have to overcome to bring home a Lombardi.

[WideNine]

re: -He says more play action passes wouldn't have worked with the way the Jaguars were loading the box and showing heavy pressure looks. I've seen a lot of people criticize Dorsey for a low play action percentage in this game so I thought that was an interesting point.

I took something different away from the clips. In the second video around the 9:00 mark he actually stressed that play action runs from under center needed to happen a lot more, and kept talking about Dorsey needing to lean into play action under center more. We all know that Allen has a much higher percentage of completions and yards with play action under center, but he mentioned that it has a positive impact on our runs as well when Allen executes from under center. He brings up some stats - that we average 5.8 yards with runs from under center, but only 3.7 yards when we run from out of shotgun.

 

A couple long completions throughout the second video he says, "Surprise, surprise with Allen under center..."

 

Aside from that, some obvious confusion with those mesh routes and receivers all ending up in the same area and I swear that whenever Allen set protection and pointed to the LB where he wanted our OL to slide the protection the Jags would cue off that and have that LB loop to the other side away from how our OL was sliding/setting protection. They did this a lot to overload our protection with just 4-5 rushers.

Credit where credit is due, the Jags put on a master class in how to simulate pressure looks and overload protection.

 

 

 

[HoofHearted]

52 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

Joe Marino does these all-22 review podcasts every week. Mostly he broke down what happened with the offense in this one. Some highlights:

 

-He said the run game failures were mostly a case of running the ball against bad looks. A lot of times the Jaguars had 8 or even 9 men in the box and we chose to run it anyways. The 2nd and 1 pitch to Cook that we lost like 5 yards on, he said we had 2 OL blocking 3 defenders on that side. Unsurprisingly the unblocked defender made an easy tackle for a loss. I don't know if Allen is supposed to audible out of those looks or what, but Dorsey or Allen have to a better job of punishing defenses for heavy boxes.

 

-As far as the passing game, Joe said that Allen played terrific and really wasn't to blame at all for any of our passing struggles. He said there have been times in the past where he's seen Allen turn down easy completions, but in this game he was executing his reads the way they were designed and manipulating the pocket well.

 

-He blames several of our stalled drives on skill players. Cook dropping a pass on the first drive, Knox dropping a pass on a 3rd down, Davis dropping a pass on a 2nd down, all of these he says the pass catcher definitely should have come down with them. He also blames Diggs for the interception after watching a few replays. He says the ball was a tad underthrown but it went 70 yards in the air and Diggs gets both hands on it - that's a situation where he says Diggs simply has to win the catch. He says one run should have gone for 8+ yards, but Cook totally misread the leverage and ran away from his blockers outside for a 0 yard gain.

 

-The Jags did a good job using simulated pressures to get advantages on their pass rush opportunities. All our struggles aside, give their defense credit for confusing us and keeping us off balance.

 

-He says more play action passes wouldn't have worked with the way the Jaguars were loading the box and showing heavy pressure looks. I've seen a lot of people criticize Dorsey for a low play action percentage in this game so I thought that was an interesting point.

 

-An alarming statistic he points out - the Jags missed just 3 tackles in this game. We missed 19 tackles... What else can you even say?

 

-Another alarming statistic - only 22% of our receiving yards in this game were YAC, by far the worst in the league for week 5. For context, Joe points out the 2nd lowest was the Ravens at 33%, and most offenses are in the 45%-50% or higher range. The Dolphins were at 78%. Our YAC issues from last year popped up big time in this game and it killed us. No run game and no YAC means literally our entire offense was dependent on Josh Allen's right arm, and that just isn't sustainable.

 

-A few points on defense - He says Elam wasn't quite as bad as he thought watching it live, but he definitely has some technical issues to clean up. Joe thinks the issues are fixable but he isn't at the level of Jackson or Benford right now. Dorian Williams had issues on misdirection plays and missed a couple tackles before McDermott benched him.

 

For a video breakdown of the offensive struggles, Cover1 just put this video out:

 

 

I think the play shown at 5:53 summarizes our issues in this game better than anything. You have 4 pass catchers all end up in the same area of the field so the timing of the play is awful and Allen has nowhere to go with the ball. He extends the play and throws a perfect pass to Knox who then drops it.

 

Way too many missed opportunities in this game. Pass protection, run blocking, situational play calling, skill position players, none of it was good enough.

 

1st Bold - He's dead wrong. I just got done breaking down every single run play we ran and there were plays to be made all day long. There was only one time where there was a heavy box and that was on the 3rd and 1 conversion on the third series.

 

2nd Bold - The 2nd and 1 Crack Toss didn't work because they blitzed the Safety and he made a great play. Cook needed to keep a flatter initial path until he hit the edge, but we just got unlucky there. If the Safety sits and plays coverage we gain big yardage because they didn't have any edge whatsoever.

 

3rd Bold - 100% Diggs needs to come down with that. Also the earlier big gain where Allen hit Diggs deep Diggs misjudged the ball and ended up having to jump for it and landed on the ground. Diggs had to work back for the ball - I get high pointing it - but he took it to the extreme to the point where he couldn't make a play after the catch.

 

4th Bold - The play he's referring to here we ran ISO again which had worked really well to that point with gains of 6 and 4 the previous two times we ran it. This time they crashed the end and instead of Knox blocking down and Shakir working to pick up most dangerous outside, Know tried to scroop the crashing end and Shakir tried to fit it inside as well. The failure to adjust their blocks based on the defensive movement killed the play.

[HappyDays]

6 minutes ago, HoofHearted said:

I just got done breaking down every single run play we ran and there were plays to be made all day long.

 

Thank you for your comments. When you say there were plays to be made, do you mean the RBs missed the plays or do you mean they weren't blocked properly? Or some of both?

[Sherlock Holmes]

Why can't we ***** tackle ever?!?! We have to be the worst tackling team in all of football.

[Buffalo03]

1 hour ago, Xwnyer said:

Does he ever hit a receiver in stride across the middle or in the flat,  sure does on deep ball but not the shorter passes.

He has plenty of times, yes

1 hour ago, Shortchaz said:

I disagree, his recognition and anticipation are not great. 
 

flaw might be the wrong word. Weakness is what I meant 

What do you mean his recognition and anticipation? If by recognition you mean he should know when to audible out of certain calls, I agree. Otherwise, I don't think he has problems with recognition in plays on the field 

46 minutes ago, Shortchaz said:

I think it’s fair to be critical of josh when the offense struggles because he is in control of it and the one that impacts it the most. It’s his job to make it work, fair or not. That includes the running game. 

So, if we struggle because of dropped passes, that's on Josh? Are you really that ignorant?

[Buffalo03]

35 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

But there are at least 5 drives he points out where the skill position players directly led to the drive stalling out. Allen led his offense to more points than Mahomes led his offense to against the Jaguars. Was Mahomes to blame for that one? No. It's a talent issue around the QBs.

 

As far as the run game woes, I tend to blame coaching for that one. If the rules of the offense say check out of a run play against a heavy box, Allen isn't going to just ignore that rule. And in general I find our run designs to be extremely vanilla. No misdirection, no trickery, the 3-4 run plays we have all look exactly the same every time. Like I said in another thread, a lot of the offensive designs both in the run and pass are just "line up and beat your man." But we don't have the talent to do that consistently. Cook isn't the best at reading leverage, we know the pass catchers other than Diggs are not going to win 1v1 coverage matchups. The receivers are getting confused and ending up right next to each other or not getting to their spot according to the timing of the play structure. A lot of it just looks very messy or more difficult than it needs to be.

 

I think Dorsey is fine but I'm not convinced his offense is anywhere near as crisp or creative as some of the best offensive minds in the league, and that's ultimately who we are going to have to overcome to bring home a Lombardi.

Shhhh. It's all Josh's fault

[LABILLBACKER]

1. The team didn't stand a chance once the schedule came out. Goodell and his greed made sure of that.

 

2. Dorsey did a crappy job adjusting to early heavy boxes.  And for some stupid reason he abandoned the behind center play action. 

 

3. Multiple dropped passes that killed drives.

 

4. Deciding to leave Thursday instead of Monday. 

[BBFL]

13 minutes ago, Sherlock Holmes said:

Why can't we ***** tackle ever?!?! We have to be the worst tackling team in all of football.

Maybe a tackle is one big process? You just have to trust it’ll happen…

[Buffalo03]

54 minutes ago, Shortchaz said:

I think it’s fair to be critical of josh when the offense struggles because he is in control of it and the one that impacts it the most. It’s his job to make it work, fair or not. That includes the running game. 

The sad part is, no matter how many valid points we make. You won't change your mind. It is NOT Josh's fault if WRs drop passes unless they are insanely off target which is not the case most times. It is not Josh's fault if he drops back to pass and had the entire defense in his face as soon as he drops back. But you think it is, you realize how that makes no sense and why you are ignorant, right?