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

[HappyDays]

5 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

could not agree more

 

for example i think this is second and short and yes I KNOW- we want to move the chains, we want to grind out yards, we want to play complementary football, we want everything small ball is good for. but holy hell he would have thrown this past the safety's ear to Hollins for a TD back in the day

 

 

Wow that is stark to see on the tape. And think of all the 2nd and shorts where we are just running up the middle or an even more mind boggling QB sneak... There has to be a better balance between being risk averse and being big play averse. I hope Brady is seeing this stuff on film and they take the leash off of Allen a bit. Congrats, you successfully got him to throw zero INTs through the month of September. Time to open it back up now.

[Bleeding Bills Blue]

59 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

I consider that play a coaching mistake too. Reminds me of the 83 yard Breece Hall run against us last year. The defense was not aligned correctly... Ravens have heavy personnel to the right of the formation but our LBs are aligned to the left. As a result we didn't have every gap covered and the Ravens easily got to all their blocks, and all Henry had to was run forward in a straight line through wide open space. That's a coaching 101 failure. I'm kind of surprised McDermott didn't see it and call a timeout. Annoying to have to call a timeout on the 1st play, but better than letting the Ravens just get that play off when we weren't in the correct alignment.

 

It was a well timed trap play more than an alignment issue.  Oliver is up field - thus his gap becomes unoccupied.  Williams shot his gap at the LOS so he wasn't in position to replace him.  Groot has outside contain.  They basically played to our tendencies, and called a play that creates a bunch of 1x1 blocks, and they nailed every one.  

[GoBills808]

2 minutes ago, RoscoeParrish said:

It would help if the player running that route was a trusted receiving threat. 
 

Josh is already in the wind up in that screenshot. He made the decision to throw before Mack cleared that defender.

go watch it again

 

Allen looks Hollins way first, he knows the safety doesnt have leverage and Hollins is going to come op

 

he made the decision to throw before Hollins comes free because that's what he's been coached to do. Hollins is absolutely an option here...he even puts his hand up and doesnt slow down until he hits the 30 lol

[HappyDays]

2 minutes ago, RoscoeParrish said:

It would help if the player running that route was a trusted receiving threat. 
 

Josh is already in the wind up in that screenshot. He made the decision to throw before Mack cleared that defender.

 

Yeah but the point is that Allen in the past would look in Hollins direction first and see one DB flat footed and the FS with his back turned and he would throw it out there 100% of the time. Whereas now he is looking to the sticks first and picking up the easy 1st down. And it's not like Allen has lost his fastball (literally). The deep pass that Coleman dropped was an absolute dime. We just aren't really trying to push the ball to that area of the field.

[Nihilarian]

On a good note... we needn't worry about losing both assistant coordinators now. Although, jeez. 

[RoscoeParrish]

8 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

go watch it again

 

Allen looks Hollins way first, he knows the safety doesnt have leverage and Hollins is going to come op

 

he made the decision to throw before Hollins comes free because that's what he's been coached to do. Hollins is absolutely an option here...he even puts his hand up and doesnt slow down until he hits the 30 lol

I don’t pay for the tape, I just launch critiques at those of you that do lol

[K-9]

29 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

i believe they are coached to do that. line blocks left, now your gap is shaded left. like how we bump gaps when the ravens would motion. i think Williams plays his assignment fine and the problem is just that every single Raven wins their rep

Williams abandoned his gap when he bit on the fake. That’s not to say the schematic was correct and the coaches are in no way part of the problem, but in watching Williams since his first snap in the league, he too often bites on play action and run action fakes. We will have to agree to disagree that he plays his position well. Given his athletic chops he has his moments, but he is simply not very good yet imo. 

[Coach Tuesday]

13 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

Yeah but the point is that Allen in the past would look in Hollins direction first and see one DB flat footed and the FS with his back turned and he would throw it out there 100% of the time. Whereas now he is looking to the sticks first and picking up the easy 1st down. And it's not like Allen has lost his fastball (literally). The deep pass that Coleman dropped was an absolute dime. We just aren't really trying to push the ball to that area of the field.

 

We are trying to avoid turnovers and maintain possession.  It's not insane given who he's throwing to.  But one explosive option on the boundary would open up the entire offense.

[bills742]

1 hour ago, HappyDays said:

 

I consider that play a coaching mistake too. Reminds me of the 83 yard Breece Hall run against us last year. The defense was not aligned correctly... Ravens have heavy personnel to the right of the formation but our LBs are aligned to the left. As a result we didn't have every gap covered and the Ravens easily got to all their blocks, and all Henry had to was run forward in a straight line through wide open space. That's a coaching 101 failure. I'm kind of surprised McDermott didn't see it and call a timeout. Annoying to have to call a timeout on the 1st play, but better than letting the Ravens just get that play off when we weren't in the correct alignment.

Shouldn't it be the responsibility of the player with the green dot (Spector) to shift the alignment? 

[GoBills808]

27 minutes ago, Coach Tuesday said:

 

We are trying to avoid turnovers and maintain possession.  It's not insane given who he's throwing to.  But one explosive option on the boundary would open up the entire offense.

Yes that has been my worry since it became clear this was the direction they wanted to go on offense

 

'complementary football' in and of itself is a sound theory. But to me it very much looks like we have pigeonholed ourselves into one very specific brand of offense that doesn't have much in the way of a counterpunch 

 

So that's a governor on your success outright...imo it's magnified when you consider the unique abilities of the QB running this scheme 

[machine gun kelly]

6 hours 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.

HD, thanks for the review.  I like Marino and make sure to catch his piece at 8 or 8:30 on Wed. with Jeremy and Joe.

[HappyDays]

2 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

'complementary football' in and of itself is a sound theory

 

Also I'm not convinced we have true complementary football going... I know the Chiefs from last year are the epitome of the "small ball" philosophy. They made it work. But they had a defense that can shut teams down in an ugly game while their offense figures it out, and they had an elite kicker that is almost automatic within 55 yards. We have neither. So we have a defense that realistically needs us to score 30 points against any decent opponent to have a chance, we have a kicker that can't be trusted at all, and we have an offense that has to execute 10 plays to perfection to have a successful TD drive. It is the definition of low margin for error football. So yeah when everything goes right against a soft opponent we are going to demolish them, but the moment any adversity hits and we're dragged into a real battle we aren't remotely built for that sort of game script. Which is worrying because that is playoff football in a nutshell.

[GoBills808]

Just now, HappyDays said:

 

Also I'm not convinced we have true complementary football going... I know the Chiefs from last year are the epitome of the "small ball" philosophy. They made it work. But they had a defense that can shut teams down in an ugly game while their offense figures it out, and they had an elite kicker that is almost automatic within 55 yards. We have neither. So we have a defense that realistically needs us to score 30 points against any decent opponent to have a chance, we have a kicker that can't be trusted at all, and we have an offense that has to execute 10 plays to perfection to have a successful TD drive. It is the definition of low margin for error football. So yeah when everything goes right against a soft opponent we are going to demolish them, but the moment any adversity hits and we're dragged into a real battle we aren't remotely built for that sort of game script. Which is worrying because that is playoff football in a nutshell.

Yes lol

 

We are bizarro dolphins

[Don Otreply]

I saw on YouTube that we just signed a D-lineman from the Falcons “Reportedly “  because of the run defense not being all it could be, 

 

(check YouTube is your link info) 😁👍

[dave mcbride]

11 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

Also I'm not convinced we have true complementary football going... I know the Chiefs from last year are the epitome of the "small ball" philosophy. They made it work. But they had a defense that can shut teams down in an ugly game while their offense figures it out, and they had an elite kicker that is almost automatic within 55 yards. We have neither. So we have a defense that realistically needs us to score 30 points against any decent opponent to have a chance, we have a kicker that can't be trusted at all, and we have an offense that has to execute 10 plays to perfection to have a successful TD drive. It is the definition of low margin for error football. So yeah when everything goes right against a soft opponent we are going to demolish them, but the moment any adversity hits and we're dragged into a real battle we aren't remotely built for that sort of game script. Which is worrying because that is playoff football in a nutshell.

I think you're right about the defense as it stands NOW, but let's be optimistic for a second and presume that by late Nov/early Dec, Bernard, Johnson, Milano, Bishop and possibly even Hyde (or a healthy Edwards) are all part of the starting 11 on defense. They have good depth at corner already, and their collection of d-linemen/pass rushers is better than average. That's a good unit. Not having Bernard/Milano/Johnson and neither Bishop nor Edwards being up to speed yet (emphasis on yet) means that they're undermanned. That's not a permanent condition given the roster. Bernard was really good last year, Bishop was great in college and a touted prospect, and both Johnson and Milanos reached all-pro status in the past two years. And Edwards, while not great, is better than Rapp and Hamlin.

Edited October 1 by dave mcbride

[HappyDays]

1 minute ago, dave mcbride said:

I think you're right about the defense as it stands NOW, but let's be optimistic for a second and presume that by late Nov/early Dec, Bernard, Johnson, Milano and possibly even Hyde (or a healthy Edwards) are all part of the starting 11 on defense. They have good depth at corner already, and their collection of d-linemen/pass rushers is better than average. That's a good unit. Not having Bernard/Milano/Johnson and neither Bishop nor Edwards being up to speed yet (emphasis on yet) means that they're undermanned. That's not a permanent condition given the roster. Bernard was really good last year, Bishop was great in college and a touted prospect, and both Johnson and Milanos reached all-pro status in the past two years. And Edwards, while not great, is better than Rapp and Hamlin.

 

I mean it will help for sure. But I'm not convinced getting all of our players healthy is going to solve what I consider to be more fundamental issues on that side of the ball (players and coaches included). Nor do I expect our defense to enter the playoffs fully healthy considering that's never happened before under McDermott. So I think it will take 30+ points in every game past the wildcard for us to have a real shot. And that will have to come from TDs, not FGs...

 

Man the more I think about it the more I revert back to my offseason feelings that we are a guaranteed also-ran this season. In the past I've usually come away from losses 2-3 days later feeling better about the team and feeling like the loss didn't reveal any fundamental flaws. Like the more I talk and read about it the better I feel. This is the first time in the McDermott era I am getting the opposite feeling. The more I talk and read about this loss, the worse it makes me feel.

[dave mcbride]

16 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

I mean it will help for sure. But I'm not convinced getting all of our players healthy is going to solve what I consider to be more fundamental issues on that side of the ball (players and coaches included). Nor do I expect our defense to enter the playoffs fully healthy considering that's never happened before under McDermott. So I think it will take 30+ points in every game past the wildcard for us to have a real shot. And that will have to come from TDs, not FGs...

 

Man the more I think about it the more I revert back to my offseason feelings that we are a guaranteed also-ran this season. In the past I've usually come away from losses 2-3 days later feeling better about the team and feeling like the loss didn't reveal any fundamental flaws. Like the more I talk and read about it the better I feel. This is the first time in the McDermott era I am getting the opposite feeling. The more I talk and read about this loss, the worse it makes me feel.

I am usually the opposite, but ironically I'm not reading too much into the Baltimore game. It was a must win for them, the Bills were coming off a Monday night game with short-term defensive personnel issues, and the Ravens are also a lot better than their record. They're always at least pretty good and often excellent. Also ironically, the Bills have beaten them the last two times they've played them, severely limiting their offense, and they also actually put up a pretty good fight against the 14-2 Ravens in the 2019 season, holding them to 257 yards. The Ravens I'm sure had a bullseye on the Bills. This is the first time in the Josh Allen era that the Ravens have put up 300 yards on a McDermott defense (I'm not counting the 2018 opener, a game Josh actually played in but which was a Peterman-led clown show). 

Edited October 1 by dave mcbride

[Nihilarian]

Something to contemplate is that the Texans and Jets have a higher stat-rated defense in yards allowed. Somehow the Buffalo Bills turned into the Maimi Dolphins against the Ravens...

[Coach Tuesday]

Just now, dave mcbride said:

I am usually the opposite, but ironically I'm not reading too much into the Baltimore game. It was a must win for them, the Bills were coming off a Monday night game with short-term defensive personnel issues, and the Ravens are also a lot better than their record. They're always at least pretty good and often excellent. Also ironically, the Bills have beaten them the last two times they've played them, severely limiting their offense, and they also actually put up a pretty good fight against the 14-2 Ravens in the 2019 season, holding them to 257 yards. The Ravens I'm sure had a bullseye on the Bills. This is the first time in the Josh Allen era that the Ravens have put up 300 yards on a McDermott defense (I'm not counting the 2018 opener, a game Josh actually played in but which was Peterman-led clown show). 

I think it’s more the roster construction and schematic philosophy suggest that they actually think playing ball control with good defense and special teams (when they have neither of those things) will finally get them over the hump in January.  Some of us have our doubts.

[dave mcbride]

Just now, Coach Tuesday said:

I think it’s more the roster construction and schematic philosophy suggest that they actually think playing ball control with good defense and special teams (when they have neither of those things) will finally get them over the hump in January.  Some of us have our doubts.

Way too early to tell. So much of what happens in January comes down to injury situations. A healthier Bills team would have beaten KC last season, I believe. I know everyone has injuries, but one team will often have a worse injury situation than its opponent, and it's often determinative at that time of the season. If KC wasn't missing their starting two tackles in the SB vs Tampa Bay (players they lost LATE in a blowout win over the Bills in the AFC championship game), they may well have won that game.