"13 Seconds", help me out here

[LABILLBACKER]

18 minutes ago, Donuts and Doritos said:

Just win tomorrow 

& Next week

& 2 weeks after that

 

Then who cares about 13 whatever 

Yup, it all gets washed away forever. 

[Whites Bay]

9 minutes ago, folz said:

Good...everyone get it all out before tomorrow...exorcise those demons. 

I'll tell you what...they lose tomorrow and I'll see all y'all somewhere around Draft Day.  This place will be a shrieking hellscape for awhile.  I have a life I have to get back to living.

[Shaw66]

4 hours ago, strive_for_five_guy said:

What is your source or basis for having this understanding?

There was a report after the game that Farwell huddled up the kickoff team and called the squib kick, but that Bass wasn't in the huddle - he was taking practice kicks into the net.  Farwell's job is to be certain that everyone knows the playcall; either someone needed to go tell Bass, or Bass should have been trained to be in the huddle. 

[PromoTheRobot]

7 hours ago, ProcessTruster said:

This board continues to beat the crap out of McD re:  13 seconds game.   

 

Correct me if someone has the definitive word on this, but my understanding is that McD told Heath Farwell to have Bass squib kick with 13 seconds left (which would have forced the returner to pick up the ball and return it, running the clock down well below 13 sec and ending the game) but Farwell failed to get the call in to Bass.   Taiwan Jones said later he "could not believe" Bass was kicking it through the end zone. 

 

So if my understanding is correct, McD made the right call and Farwell screwed it up.   McD courageously took the heat  (called it a "learning experience for all ")and refused to throw Farwell under the bus (although he fired him "Leslie Frazier style" quietly later).  Bass has never been pushed to talk as far as I know.

 

So instead of continuing to rip McD for 13 seconds, he should be commended for not shunting the blame on his ST coach Farwell, who (my understanding is) totally pooped the bed.   McD manned up and took the blame even though Farwell did the deed.   That's the guy I want at the top of my organization.  

 

If someone has the actually documented facts on this, chime in, but the whole 13 seconds thing has been misrepresented for 3 years IMO.

 

This will help 

[Dr.Sack]

Just go win the next 3 and leave this story in 2022. 

[ChrisWatson#21]

Squib kick or touchback he messed up rushing four defenders.  That is on him.  You want the QB to hold on to the ball as long as possible there is no need to rush four at all in that situation especially when your two safeties are so deep.  He played it as if the Bills were up by more than three points.

[VaMilBill]

14 hours ago, Sojourner said:

Yeah, the squib kick was the starting point but they got absolutely shredded by scheme on 2 plays. That’s where people’s problem is more than the squib imo. 
 

Both are crucial errors by coaching staff period, whether solely Farwell/Smiley or Frazier/Daboll. 

Exactly. The defense was terrible. And the fact they didn’t take into account the chiefs still had two timeouts left was crazy. 
 

in regards to the kick, McD may have had his plan for the squib, but he needed to be better with his communication. 

[GunnerBill]

Conclusion it doesn't matter who did or didn't want to squib vs kick deep. It is on the Head Coach whether the call was wrong or the communication was wrong. In a moment that big the Head Coach has to be in total control. There is no world in which the kick element isn't entirely on McD. 

 

The defense that they played afterwards... a mix of coaching and execution. The calls were too passive but the second on particularly the secondary botched the execution too. 

 

All around coaching failure not helped by some brain freeze among the defensive players.

 

[JerseyBills]

Yup

 

McD did say there was a miscommunication but took the blame

ultimately.  

[colin]

Small point of contention: that season we had success kicking really high and slightly short of the end zone.  Forces a runback that falls to the 20 or less (default was 25 then instead of the way too far 30 that it is now) and burns serious time, like 5-8 seconds.  IMO that was the play to make.  

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

16 hours ago, LABILLBACKER said:

Yup, it all gets washed away forever.*

* Except in multiple threads here at TBD-TSW. 🤔😁

Edited Sunday at 05:55 PM by Ridgewaycynic2013

[Mike R]

McD still ran the most conservative prevent defense in history and allowed the Chiefs to easily march down the field unopposed for the tying fg. It was the most conservative scared playcalling ever and cost the Bills the game. I’ll never forgive him for it as Josh was the most dialed in qb and was playing out of his mind. Shameful waste of a golden opportunity to win the Super Bowl. I’ll never forgive him for it. Although he has improved and become much more aggressive than he used to be, he still reverts to this defense in critical tense situations during games.

I am also tired of playing good defense on first and second down only to play way off the ball and give up third and long, over and over and over again. I’m not sure he can ever get them to the big game with conservative play calling on defense with the game on the line.

[MJS]

17 hours ago, Governor said:

The Houston game was worse. In total control most of the game and then McD collapses.

In what way did McDermott collapse?

[QB Bills]

1 hour ago, JerseyBills said:

Yup

 

McD did say there was a miscommunication but took the blame

ultimately.  

Actually he did the opposite. Threw the players under the bus by blaming it on execution. When it was his stupid ass running up and down the sidelines screaming for timeouts at the end of regulation to call the most ridiculous defensive plays ever.

[Shaw66]

3 hours ago, GunnerBill said:

Conclusion it doesn't matter who did or didn't want to squib vs kick deep. It is on the Head Coach whether the call was wrong or the communication was wrong. In a moment that big the Head Coach has to be in total control. There is no world in which the kick element isn't entirely on McD. 

 

The defense that they played afterwards... a mix of coaching and execution. The calls were too passive but the second on particularly the secondary botched the execution too. 

 

All around coaching failure not helped by some brain freeze among the defensive players.

 

I agree with this. I've always said it. 

 

Several years ago, a US nuclear submarine surfaced off Hawaii and accidentally sank or at least incapacitated a Japanese ship carrying students on a summer scientific excursion.  Several kids died.  I heard the captain of that sub speaking several months later, and the interviewer tried to get the captain to say that it was the seaman's fault who failed to see the ship on radar. before they surfaced.  Over and over, the captain refused. Essentially he said that if mistakes were made, it meant that people weren't trained well enough, and if they weren't trained well enough, then the blame lay with him, the captain. He's responsible to see that everyone does his job.  

 

In that sense, 13 seconds absolutely was on McDermott.  It wasn't a dropped pass; no one fumbled.  It was a team not performing as well as it could and should have, and when the team doesn't perform, it's on the coach.  (Which is why I wonder how Daboll still has his job.)

 

However, I've also said repeatedly that the growth mindset and continuous improvement that is the core of how McDermott runs the team applies to him as much as anyone else, and he's been clear about that from the start.  Any rookie head coach has to learn how to do the job, has to grow into it, has to mature and develop judgment that can come only from doing the job.  And McDermott clearly has grown. We've seen it in his sideline decision making, and we've read about in multiple interviews and columns talking about how his approach to the job has changed over his years in charge. 

 

McDermott's team still might blow it at the end of a tight game, because each situation is new and it's difficult to make all the decisions correctly, but I'm sure he's better now than he was back then.  Evidence of his development can be seen in the most important place - the team. We're seeing a team with a deeper understanding of what they're doing, a confidence that allows them to respond to adversity. We talked last week about how the Bills responded after the Broncos gashed them for a first-possession touchdown. For the Bills, it was business as usual. They didn't expect to post a shut out, so the fact that Denver had scored was no reason to despair.  They just went to work and soon it was clear that they knew how to beat the Broncos. 

 

As I watched the Chiefs dismantle the Texans last night, I stopped to appreciate how magnificent that team has been.  To put together the string of AFC championship game appearances they have is truly remarkable, and their late-game success, game after game, this season has been superb.  Much of it is, I'm sure, due to Reid.  He has a multiple decades of the kinds of experiences that McDermott has seen for only a half-dozen years.  He's built his knowledge of in-game events, and he's built  a culture where his team can approach those events with calmness and understanding.  Yes, Reid has the QB he needs, but Mahomes too is a product of Reid's mentorship.

 

We can see the same thing happening to McDermott, and I believe that we see it in Allen, too. McDermott said recently that he doesn't need to talk teach much to Allen any more, because Allen understands completely where McDermott wants to go. McDermott, for his part, has gotten an offensive coordinator who has put together an offense that suits Allen nearly perfectly,. And now that they've gotten to where they are, it will be easier for that success to continue even if Brady leaves, because McDermott now knows what he needs in a coordinator and how to develop that guy. In fact, Allen will help McDermott teach Brady's successor. 

 

The point is that building a high-functioning team is hard to do, but Reid and Belichick have shown that once you've built it, maintaining and growing it is an easier task. McDermott is now emerging into the same space.  He has shown that his team can better year after year, even in a year when most of the fans, and most of us here, thought that overall talent had declined.  (We all thought and hoped that the Chiefs would get worse when Hill left, but Reid and Mahomes showed us the error of our ways.) 

 

13 seconds truly is disappearing in the rearview mirror. 

[Shaw66]

1 hour ago, Mike R said:

I am also tired of playing good defense on first and second down only to play way off the ball and give up third and long, over and over and over again. I’m not sure he can ever get them to the big game with conservative play calling on defense with the game on the line.

Well, maybe you need more sleep. The fact is that the Bills won 13 games playing in a way that seems to tire you out, and would have won a 14th if the Pats game had meant anything.  

 

McDermott is 8th among active coaches in playoff wins.  Three of those ahead of him are already out of the playoffs - Payton, Shanahan, and Tomlin, and a fourth didn't make the playoffs and got fired - McCarthy.  McVay has two more wins and has been a head coach for the same number of years as McDermott. The other two with more wins are Reid and Harbaugh, but they've been head coaches three times and twice as long McDermott, respectively. 

 

So, I'm sorry your tired, but you need to get used to it. McDermott is a big-time success as a head coach, and his style of play has made him a success. 

[Beast]

Here we have one of the biggest games in franchise history staring at us…..

 

And we are stuck on a loss from 3 years ago.

[DCOrange]

2 hours ago, colin said:

Small point of contention: that season we had success kicking really high and slightly short of the end zone.  Forces a runback that falls to the 20 or less (default was 25 then instead of the way too far 30 that it is now) and burns serious time, like 5-8 seconds.  IMO that was the play to make.  

In addition to this, the OP says a squib kick needs to be scooped and returned, which would take a lot of time off the clock. That just isn't true. If they scoop it at, say, the 30 yard line (not abnormal for a squib kick) and just give themselves up immediately, maybe 0-1 seconds come off the clock and they get better field position than the touchback gave them. The squib really only makes sense if you're trying to prevent a dangerous kick returner from making an explosive play, which is the same thing you accomplish by kicking it out of the end zone. Otherwise you're just counting on whoever scoops the squib to not know the rules. 

Edited Sunday at 04:21 PM by DCOrange

[Just Jack]

4 hours ago, VaMilBill said:

Exactly. The defense was terrible. And the fact they didn’t take into account the chiefs still had two timeouts left was crazy. 
 

in regards to the kick, McD may have had his plan for the squib, but he needed to be better with his communication. 

 

They had three TO's left.  

 

 

I'm just gonna keep posting this anytime someone brings up that game....

Several factors contributed to the loss

1) 13 seconds

2) they had all three time outs left

3) they had Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill

4) some Bills players and coaches were already celebrating on the sidelines like the game was over

5) they only needed a FG to tie and go to OT.

[JohnNord]

19 hours ago, GoBills808 said:

 

...Immediately after the PAT, the kickoff team huddled together with special teams coordinator Heath Farwell instructing them to run “Squib Left! Squib Left!” That is, the kicker would hit the ball low and hard to force the Chiefs to return it and, of course, burn time off the clock. As those 10 players took the field, they were expecting what most everyone at home was expecting: a squib. To their shock, the ball sailed out of the end zone. Watch a replay of the Coaches View on NFL Game Pass and you’ll even see one confused player, Siran Neal, throw his hands up.

 

That’s because the message, somehow, did not reach the kicker himself: Tyler Bass.

 

Afterward, Bass wasn’t in the mood to talk about the kick with teammates and he didn’t respond to comment for this story, as well. When McDermott dropped that “execution” line a second time, Bass caught plenty of flak publicly because, in coachspeak, this word is often code for a bad play being a player’s fault. Yet, the players I spoke to believe Bass was doing what he was told. “To be honest,” one said, “that’s all we do. What we’re told.” And through their own investigating, multiple players say McDermott called for a touchback at some point during those 126 seconds.

 

“What I’ve been told by many players on the team,” one veteran said, “and some special teams players, is our special team coordinator Heath Farwell, that’s his job, right? He’s aware of the situation. He has studied that. So, he tells McDermott to kick the squib. And McDermott said to kick the ball out of the field. So then, Farwell is arguing the case for why we should kick the squib. But then also you’ve got special teams on the other side and he has to get them together and give them their pep talk and play call and what they’re trying to do. He’s on the other side and telling them to do that, and then he runs down and goes back and in the midst of all this confusion, the kicker didn’t get the information that he needed to kick the squib. So that’s what happened. They get out there and didn’t kick the squib.

Erik Turner on Cover 1 talks to a lot of players off record and what he says largely matches Dunne’s report. From what I can recall, he heard the plan was a squib which somehow never made it to Bass.  

As far as Farwell, this might have been the final nail in the coffin.  I remember reading that he either wasn’t happy in Buffalo or they weren’t happy with him, and both parties were likely headed toward a divorce after 2021.  
 

Where you can hold McDermott and Frazier responsible if of the defense on the final series.