Joe Marino All-22 review - "The coaches were duds"

[HappyDays]

Joe breaks down losses better than anyone else in the Bills media sphere. I highly recommend listening to the entire episode. Here are my notes:

 

-Joe was blown away (in a bad way) by our plan on defense. He points out that the Ravens ran the ball out of heavy personnel 82% of the time. The Bills responded by giving them light boxes on 41.2% of rushing plays... Heavy boxes on only 8.8% of rushing plays... Derrick Henry was getting 5.57 yards before contact, and the Ravens as a whole were gaining 8.0 YPC, but we never adjusted. And this was coming off a week where the Ravens rushed for over 270 yards against Dallas so it's not like their offensive game plan was a big shocker. Our defensive game plan gave the Ravens the exact game script they wanted. 

 

-Joe says the Ravens also took advantage of our defensive line tendencies. We run a penetration style defense and the Ravens repeatedly invited Ed Oliver to get up field before wham blocking him out of the play. Again Joe blames defensive coaching for never adjusting to get away from our tendencies, which made things too easy on the Ravens.

 

-Overall on defense he says he wishes some of the players at all levels played better, but he mostly blames the coaches for putting the players into positions where they couldn't be successful. He says Derrick Henry is obviously a great player, but that any RB could have ripped off his two biggest runs where we didn't even lay a finger on him. We needed to force the Ravens to run their offense through the passing game, and instead we gave them easy opportunities to run against light or neutral boxes and they gashed us all night long because of it.

 

-On offense Joe doesn't have as much to say. His big takeaway is that the failures on offense were less about pass catchers uncovering, and more about complete breakdowns in the protection scheme. He points out the Ravens only blitzed 25% of the time, but the threat of the blitz forced us to max protect so frequently that we were sometimes sending 2-3 pass catchers into 5-6 coverage players. The OL did an awful job of passing rushers off which led to too many jailbreaks before routes could develop.

 

So those are his takeaways. Less on the players, more on coaching. On defense we were stubborn and decided to just "do what we do" instead of adjusting our style for the opponent. On offense Brady did not have his players ready to deal with any of the Ravens pressure looks and he never found any answers. We got out coached in pretty much every facet of the game and it showed up on the scoreboard.

 

One positive takeaway - all of these issues are solvable. Failure to execute is a tough problem to figure out in the middle of a season, but failure to gameplan and adjust is entirely fixable if the coaches hold themselves accountable.

[GunnerBill]

The light boxes point is a fair one, but I'm not sure I agree the answer was to go heavier boxes. With who? The two series they tried to play base and brought Morrow in and played with more in the box they were brutal. Jackson just kept throwing dump offs to Justice Hill on Morrow's side and watching him zoom by. Could they have brought their safeties up more often? Yea but they are worried about doing that because they know they don't have a safety on the roster capable of playing center field on his own. It's easy to say "do all this stuff differently" in isolation. Personally I think you have to look at the personnel they have available. 

 

I think Babich panicked in the first half and made bad adjustments. Monken definitely won that battle, hands down, but I think the defensive talent is a definite limiting factor in a game like that. Who did he want to bring into the box to help? His options are Nicholas Morrow (doesn't belong on an NFL roster), Cam Lewis (backup at best), Damar Hamlin (backup at best), Cole Bishop (rookie barely getting his feet wet), Joe Andreessen (rookie UDFA). Hell you could have put all five of them in together and I'm not sure it would have made a difference. 

 

 

EDIT: on offense I'm in a bit more agreement. They weren't beaten by blitzes. They were beaten by confusion. They didn't know who was coming and who was dropping and the OL was constantly missing assignments more than whiffing on blocks. It was that they weren't passing off, were doubling guys while free rushers came, the communication and the execution was dreadful. Maybe a game where they missed Mitch Morse's experience?

Edited October 1 by GunnerBill

[Cray51]

2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

The light boxes point is a fair one, but I'm not sure I agree the answer was to go heavier boxes. With who? The two series they tried to play base and brought Morrow in and played with more in the box they were brutal. Jackson just kept throwing dump offs to Justice Hill on Morrow's side and watching him zoom by. Could they have brought their safeties up more often? Yea but they are worried about doing that because they know they don't have a safety on the roster capable of playing center field on his own. It's easy to say "do all this stuff differently" in isolation. Personally I think you have to look at the personnel they have available. 

 

I think Babich panicked in the first half and made bad adjustments. Monken definitely won that battle, hands down, but I think the defensive talent is a definite limiting factor in a game like that. Who did he want to bring into the box to help? His options are Nicholas Morrow (doesn't belong on an NFL roster), Cam Lewis (backup at best), Damar Hamlin (backup at best), Cole Bishop (rookie barely getting his feet wet), Joe Andreessen (rookie UDFA). Hell you could have put all five of them in together and I'm not sure it would have made a difference. 

Completely agree.  The moment we went heavy with Morrow, Hill abused him.  There wasn't a solution with the talent we had on the field.  This is where a heavy concept with Williams/Milano/Bernard looks a lot different than Morrow/Spector/Williams.  I dont know that we could have held the Ravens below 28 points even executing our gameplan well.

[GunnerBill]

7 minutes ago, Cray51 said:

Completely agree.  The moment we went heavy with Morrow, Hill abused him.  There wasn't a solution with the talent we had on the field.  This is where a heavy concept with Williams/Milano/Bernard looks a lot different than Morrow/Spector/Williams.  I dont know that we could have held the Ravens below 28 points even executing our gameplan well.

 

I'm going to do my own count when I get to the A22 but my strong suspicion is the Bills heavy boxes were overwhelmingly 2nd and 3rd drive for the Ravens. That is when they were in base. And those were the two worst drives of the game. So sure, they gave up a couple of really bad long runs in nickel. But they just looked totally incapable in base. More of that was not the answer IMO. I respect Joe a ton, I disagree with him here though. 

[HappyDays]

10 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

The light boxes point is a fair one, but I'm not sure I agree the answer was to go heavier boxes. With who? The two series they tried to play base and brought Morrow in and played with more in the box they were brutal. Jackson just kept throwing dump offs to Justice Hill on Morrow's side and watching him zoom by. Could they have brought their safeties up more often? Yea but they are worried about doing that because they know they don't have a safety on the roster capable of playing center field on his own. It's easy to say "do all this stuff differently" in isolation. Personally I think you have to look at the personnel they have available. 

 

I think the idea is that you just have to take your chances and not let the Ravens dictate the game. Even given the personnel issues, if they're going to dominate you, at least let it be on your terms. I mean the only time our defense ever really won reps in this game was when Lamar had the ball. He almost threw a terrible INT that got saved by Agholor. His fumble was a huge momentum shift that gave us life. The first play of the 2nd half we blitzed him and he foolishly drifted back and ended up taking an intentional grounding penalty which killed the drive. Yeah you are going to get burned by him sometimes, but that's better than letting Derrick Henry get a full head of steam before you even get a hand on him all night long. You've said it yourself, the Ravens don't have outside WRs. Our game plan didn't even try to punish them for it.

 

Our whole defensive philosophy is to invite the opponent to pick up cheap yards but don't give up any big plays and hunker down in the red zone. That plan doesn't work when the opponent is rushing with the type of efficiency the Ravens were. Eventually you have to just force the issue, and if you go down swinging so be it.

[MJS]

2 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

 

I'm going to do my own count when I get to the A22 but my strong suspicion is the Bills heavy boxes were overwhelmingly 2nd and 3rd drive for the Ravens. That is when they were in base. And those were the two worst drives of the game. So sure, they gave up a couple of really bad long runs in nickel. But they just looked totally incapable in base. More of that was not the answer IMO. I respect Joe a ton, I disagree with him here though. 

You don't have to change personnel to have more defenders in the box, though.

[GunnerBill]

6 minutes ago, MJS said:

You don't have to change personnel to have more defenders in the box, though.

 

No, but that's my point... your alternative is Lewis or the safeties. And they are weaknesses to start with.

[SoonerBillsFan]

39 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

Joe breaks down losses better than anyone else in the Bills media sphere. I highly recommend listening to the entire episode. Here are my notes:

 

-Joe was blown away (in a bad way) by our plan on defense. He points out that the Ravens ran the ball out of heavy personnel 82% of the time. The Bills responded by giving them light boxes on 41.2% of rushing plays... Heavy boxes on only 8.8% of rushing plays... Derrick Henry was getting 5.57 yards before contact, and the Ravens as a whole were gaining 8.0 YPC, but we never adjusted. And this was coming off a week where the Ravens rushed for over 270 yards against Dallas so it's not like their offensive game plan was a big shocker. Our defensive game plan gave the Ravens the exact game script they wanted. 

 

-Joe says the Ravens also took advantage of our defensive line tendencies. We run a penetration style defense and the Ravens repeatedly invited Ed Oliver to get up field before wham blocking him out of the play. Again Joe blames defensive coaching for never adjusting to get away from our tendencies, which made things too easy on the Ravens.

 

-Overall on defense he says he wishes some of the players at all levels played better, but he mostly blames the coaches for putting the players into positions where they couldn't be successful. He says Derrick Henry is obviously a great player, but that any RB could have ripped off his two biggest runs where we didn't even lay a finger on him. We needed to force the Ravens to run their offense through the passing game, and instead we gave them easy opportunities to run against light or neutral boxes and they gashed us all night long because of it.

 

-On offense Joe doesn't have as much to say. His big takeaway is that the failures on offense were less about pass catchers uncovering, and more about complete breakdowns in the protection scheme. He points out the Ravens only blitzed 25% of the time, but the threat of the blitz forced us to max protect so frequently that we were sometimes sending 2-3 pass catchers into 5-6 coverage players. The OL did an awful job of passing rushers off which led to too many jailbreaks before routes could develop.

 

So those are his takeaways. Less on the players, more on coaching. On defense we were stubborn and decided to just "do what we do" instead of adjusting our style for the opponent. On offense Brady did not have his players ready to deal with any of the Ravens pressure looks and he never found any answers. We got out coached in pretty much every facet of the game and it showed up on the scoreboard.

 

One positive takeaway - all of these issues are solvable. Failure to execute is a tough problem to figure out in the middle of a season, but failure to gameplan and adjust is entirely fixable if the coaches hold themselves accountable.

He is 100% spot on, this loss is 100% on coaching.

[Matt_In_NH]

Also, there was not necessarily a problem with "separation", it was poor gameplanning and blocking which is kind of what it looked like.

43 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

-On offense Joe doesn't have as much to say. His big takeaway is that the failures on offense were less about pass catchers uncovering, and more about complete breakdowns in the protection scheme. He points out the Ravens only blitzed 25% of the time, but the threat of the blitz forced us to max protect so frequently that we were sometimes sending 2-3 pass catchers into 5-6 coverage players. The OL did an awful job of passing rushers off which led to too many jailbreaks before routes could develop.

He also talked about mostly dropback passes vs I think play action and rollouts...

[RoscoeParrish]

8 minutes ago, MJS said:

You don't have to change personnel to have more defenders in the box, though.

No, but you have to be comfortable with Hamlin/Rapp back there by himself against play action or even as your last tackler.

 

It’s easy to say they should have done something different. But to be fair, you have to also admit there are potential huge downsides.

 

It’s sorta like the Klein/DW debate last year.

[GunnerBill]

18 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

I think the idea is that you just have to take your chances and not let the Ravens dictate the game. Even given the personnel issues, if they're going to dominate you, at least let it be on your terms. I mean the only time our defense ever really won reps in this game was when Lamar had the ball. He almost threw a terrible INT that got saved by Agholor. His fumble was a huge momentum shift that gave us life. The first play of the 2nd half we blitzed him and he foolishly drifted back and ended up taking an intentional grounding penalty which killed the drive. Yeah you are going to get burned by him sometimes, but that's better than letting Derrick Henry get a full head of steam before you even get a hand on him all night long. You've said it yourself, the Ravens don't have outside WRs. Our game plan didn't even try to punish them for it.

 

Our whole defensive philosophy is to invite the opponent to pick up cheap yards but don't give up any big plays and hunker down in the red zone. That plan doesn't work when the opponent is rushing with the type of efficiency the Ravens were. Eventually you have to just force the issue, and if you go down swinging so be it.

 

I don't understand how putting more guys in the box when those guys are bad is going down swinging. They tried the going down swinging approach the first two drives of the 2nd half. They basically just told Williams and Spector, screw your normal responsibilities and crash the line every play. And they forced two three and outs before the turnover. The issue was as soon as Henry did break the line on 2nd down on the next drive running round the left end he was away for serious yardage because there was no 2nd level we'd emptied it out. Now if you want to argue they should have gone to that plan sooner, sure, I'll listen to it because that was a "we gotta try and stop them dictating" throw of the dice. But the just put more men in the box and bigger bodies.... I mean Morrow actually got a decent run stop grade from PFF - the best on the Bills - but he also got the worst coverage grade by a LONG stretch (27 fwiw) and he was in coverage for 5 of Justice Hill's 6 receptions. That is my point. We gave them a light box, they ran it. We tried going heavier they brutalised Morrow in the pass game (Hill was their leading receiver). You get to a point where you can't stop anything. 

 

I think Joe is great but I'd have gone the other way. I'd have stayed in nickel and accepted that they might run it down the field as much as they wanted and tried to rally and tackle and then stiffen in the redzone. What you might call the Frazier, 2020 Chiefs regular season, plan. Because with the personnel available we didn't have the personnel to stop them otherwise. Whichever way we went they had an answer.

[Goin Breakdown]

When I listened to Joe on the pod cast and now re read a lot of what he said along with my own thoughts coupled with you all. It actually makes me

angry that our coaching staff can be so.......idk, inept at time. Ego might be the issue idk. The game plan this week looked like they wanted to lose the game. Which is crazy. But it reminded me of my son. When he thinks he's right and gets Stuburn he will purposefully fail at the first sign of opposition. 

[Generic_Bills_Fan]

53 minutes ago, Cray51 said:

Completely agree.  The moment we went heavy with Morrow, Hill abused him.  There wasn't a solution with the talent we had on the field.  This is where a heavy concept with Williams/Milano/Bernard looks a lot different than Morrow/Spector/Williams.  I dont know that we could have held the Ravens below 28 points even executing our gameplan well.

That’s kind of where I’m at…it’s easy to say coaches had a bad night but I don’t think any other coaching staff does THAT much better with the talent we had on the field that night 

[HappyDays]

9 minutes ago, GunnerBill said:

They tried the going down swinging approach the first two drives of the 2nd half. They basically just told Williams and Spector, screw your normal responsibilities and crash the line every play. And they forced two three and outs before the turnover. The issue was as soon as Henry did break the line on 2nd down on the next drive running round the left end he was away for serious yardage because there was no 2nd level we'd emptied it out.

 

But that strategy worked... Two 3 and outs as soon as we changed it up. That needed to be the plan coming into the game IMO. So what if he got a lot yardage on one play three drives in? He got an 87 yard TD on the first snap the way that we played it. I said it in the score prediction thread - the one way the Bills lose is if they let Derrick Henry take over the game. He took over the game from the first snap and they never looked back. The book on Lamar Jackson is force him to drop back and throw outside the numbers. When we did that we didn't dominate them by any means but we forced a few mistakes and we got them off the field.

 

Maybe none of it would have mattered anyways because the offense was so awful. I guess I give a little more grace to Brady (other than the trick play) because the Ravens threw some things at us that we hadn't seen yet. It is still early in the season and the OL should gain more chemistry and be more prepared to deal with exotic pressure looks as time goes on. I take it as hopefully a learning experience for Brady where he'll develop some counters to that style of defense, which we'll need against the Chiefs. But for the defense I find myself giving the coaches very little grace, even with the personnel issues. We came into the game knowing exactly what the Ravens wanted to do and we made it easy for them. 5.57 yards before contact per rush... And the Ravens are known to have issues up front. So that is primarily a scheme issue, not a personnel issue IMO.

[Coach Tuesday]

It sure looked like a coaching failure watching it in realtime.  I agree with @GunnerBill that a 3rd linebacker was not the solution (given who that LB is) but a 5th DL may have been, and/or run blitzing (to try to prevent Henry from gaining steam and getting to the second level).  But being passive - on both offense and defense - and waiting to get hit in the mouth (which they then were, repeatedly) by a physical team needing a win playing at home on primetime - was an incredibly stupid strategy.  It does bug me that McD seems to get outcoached several times per season (and the playoffs) and that often that takes the form of being passive/reactive trying to "find their feet" before adjusting.  For goodness sake just come out aggressive in big games Sean.  Belichek and Reid seem to have a much lower rate of this kind of thing happening.

Edited October 1 by Coach Tuesday

[GunnerBill]

8 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

But that strategy worked... Two 3 and outs as soon as we changed it up. That needed to be the plan coming into the game IMO. So what if he got a lot yardage on one play three drives in? He got an 87 yard TD on the first snap the way that we played it. I said it in the score prediction thread - the one way the Bills lose is if they let Derrick Henry take over the game. He took over the game from the first snap and they never looked back. The book on Lamar Jackson is force him to drop back and throw outside the numbers. When we did that we didn't dominate them by any means but we forced a few mistakes and we got them off the field.

 

Maybe none of it would have mattered anyways because the offense was so awful. I guess I give a little more grace to Brady (other than the trick play) because the Ravens threw some things at us that we hadn't seen yet. It is still early in the season and the OL should gain more chemistry and be more prepared to deal with exotic pressure looks as time goes on. I take it as hopefully a learning experience for Brady where he'll develop some counters to that style of defense, which we'll need against the Chiefs. But for the defense I find myself giving the coaches very little grace, even with the personnel issues. We came into the game knowing exactly what the Ravens wanted to do and we made it easy for them. 5.57 yards before contact per rush... And the Ravens are known to have issues up front. So that is primarily a scheme issue, not a personnel issue IMO.

 

Yea I'm willing to listen to they should have gone to that sooner. Or to the bear front type approach and played with three defensive tackles (I suspect they hadn't practiced that because it is generally more a response to outside zone teams and I doubt they expected as much outside zone from the Ravens as they got). What I'm not accepting is they should have just gone to a heavy look and more men in the box. I'm not sure that was the changeup that was going to work for them and the evidence is when they tried their heavier personnel look it failed. 

 

But the first snap, I mean that can happen. It's frustrating, but it can. I just think their personnel really limited their options. They have a glaring weakness at the moment at the second level and then no NFL starting talents behind them at safety. I think Babich had a rough first half but in my view that was because he went to too much heavy personnel rather than too little. 

[mushypeaches]

I felt like going into the game that we should have tried some 5 man fronts with 2 LB's instead of expecting Cam Lewis and the safeties to do all the heavy lifting

 

I think that would have forced the Ravens to approach their blocking for the run game differently as well as have bigger bodies on the field for early downs

 

I was in the upper upper deck of the stadium so it was difficult to see all the details, but it seemed like we continually fell right into their game plan and by the time we adjusted in the 2nd half, it was far too late

[AlCowlingsTaxiService]

Just listened at the gym. While I don’t always agree with Joe, I do respect his opinions and felt that he was pretty accurate in his assessment of this game. The bills are a light, nickel based defense and generally that has been successful for them, but the weaknesses were on full display Sunday night 

[Lost]

I watched the all 22 myself.

 

Baltimore D had their corners in man coverage against our receivers almost every snap.  The lack of separation was astounding.  

 

On the flip side our soft zone D left massive holes all over the field giving Lamar easy targets when he did want to throw.  Granted it's hard to not respect the threat of Henry, and LJ running the ball but it's not like the bills don't have equal threats in those departments.   

 

Makes me wonder if the Bills shouldn't be playing some man coverage more, at least on the boundaries as I think corner is definitely a strength of this team.  

Edited October 1 by Lost

[Rockinon]

1 hour ago, HappyDays said:

 

I think the idea is that you just have to take your chances and not let the Ravens dictate the game. Even given the personnel issues, if they're going to dominate you, at least let it be on your terms. I mean the only time our defense ever really won reps in this game was when Lamar had the ball. He almost threw a terrible INT that got saved by Agholor. His fumble was a huge momentum shift that gave us life. The first play of the 2nd half we blitzed him and he foolishly drifted back and ended up taking an intentional grounding penalty which killed the drive. Yeah you are going to get burned by him sometimes, but that's better than letting Derrick Henry get a full head of steam before you even get a hand on him all night long. You've said it yourself, the Ravens don't have outside WRs. Our game plan didn't even try to punish them for it.

 

Our whole defensive philosophy is to invite the opponent to pick up cheap yards but don't give up any big plays and hunker down in the red zone. That plan doesn't work when the opponent is rushing with the type of efficiency the Ravens were. Eventually you have to just force the issue, and if you go down swinging so be it.

Very good point. The defense was sitting back and reacting most of the game. You have to be aggressive, show blitz often even if you are dropping guys in coverage. Show blitz by having the LBs move like they are coming but instead send someone from the edge. Baltimore did that to us many times, disguising where the blitz is coming from. I do think the Bills were reluctant to play aggressive like that because of personnel, but that is how you have to play this team. You can't sit back and let that offense do the dictating.