Part 2- Another disaster by McDs defense in the playoffs

[bigK14094]

Personnel shortcomings.   Milano has instincts now at 30.  Williams not so much ,but he is faster than Milano now.  DT is a weakness.  Oliver is a B player.  Jones a little over the hill.  Phillips playing because the others can't do the rush job he does after 10 seasons.  bothers me that Carter isn't good enough to be active.  Need another high draft choice in the DL.  And, another safety.  Jury is out on Bishop but I am not pesimistic there.  But, Damar is a C player.  Experienced, complete but slow and non aggressive.  Good tackler though.  (Fa next spring.)  Miller is way over the hill, need a good edge.  Bills have a one ,two 2's in this draft and most if not all will go to the D imho.  So, I think Babich is doing fine w what he has.  Not the caliber D though I think of when I think of a super bowl winner.  Maybe our coaching will win it, maybe not.

[Da webster guy]

The defense is decent, they're not winning us any superbowls on their own but they're middle of the pack.   

 

Look we know this team very well by now, we give up 30 per game, we score 30 a game.  Not shutting down anybody, but it's a fun team, a winning team, and I love watching these guys.

 

Sean is going to be outcoached by Andy this Sunday, but that doesn't mean we still can't get the W.   Last time we were there we won based on a stupid Offside penalty they committed, but last time we played the Chiefs we beat em thanks to Josh keeping Mahomes on the bench.

 

This would be so amazing to pull this win out, praying for the Skins to win on their end, because Sean and Dan Quinn are the same kind of coach (great leaders, individuals) and we aren't getting outsmarted there like we would playing Reid or Sean Payton with two weeks to gameplan.

[BuffaloMatt]

 Oh baby. .  .Win is a Win, no apologies or excuses needed! On to KC. Go 1-0 this week!!!

[GaryPinC]

1 hour ago, Ramza86 said:

This looks like satire....ill give the Bills credit against the Ravens because they have pretty much been unstoppable. They played their asses off. 

 

That said....thank god for the big plays from our players...because the Ravens were going to hang up another 38 on us. 

Idk if anyone has this stat on hand....but we cant be any good at 3rd and medium or longer and this isnt just against Baltimore...this is against any competent offense.

Dont even get me started on the opposition in a must score situation.....Ive never seen teams march down 80 yards on us so fast than I have this season. That has to change asap.

Things aren't going to change and the coaches know it.  Their solution is to establish a lead and have the offense play ball control and milk the clock.  If we're behind, the offense opens up more. 

 

All to try and limit exposure on defense.  For the defense, be extra aggressive early to keep the opponent off balance and hope our playmakers come up with plays and turnovers.

It sucks, but it helped us beat Detroit, Denver, and Baltimore.

 

Hang on.  The stress-filled ride continues until the end!😂

[Florida Bills Fanatic]

Having watched several iterations of this defense throughout the season, I have concluded that McD has pieced this thing together with a bunch of marginal talent.  It may be his best coaching job since coming to Buffalo.  No matter how this season wraps up, Beane will need to reload the defense at all three levels.  Having a first and two seconds should give him the ability to make a significant improvement.

[hondo in seattle]

15 hours ago, SoTier said:

McDermott and Babich have taken a bunch of lemons and made some tasty lemonade.   I don't think that there's anyone who believes that the Bills have a particularly talented defense, but they are probably one of the best coached defenses in the NFL this year.  I don't care that the Ravens didn't punt on Sunday because 3 of their drives resulted in turn overs which yielded 10 of the Bills 27 points.   Moreover, the Bills defense has regularly forced take aways all season and have done it against the best teams they've played including the Chiefs (2) and Lions (1)  as well as the Ravens (3).  

 

 

 

I've used that same expression to describe this defense: making lemons out of lemonade.  

 

Like other McD defenses, we see a lot of teamwork, communication, and effort this year.  We don't often see blown assignments or guys otherwise out of position.  These are all signs of a well-coached unit.  

 

Our problem is guys getting outmuscled or outrun.  The talent level is pretty mediocre.  We see that when we watch games and then again when we look at the year's yardage stats.  But these guys are good at takeaways which is probably more a factor of coaching - putting people in the right place at the right time - than athleticism. 

 

Unfortunately, takeaways can be fickle.  Even when you're doing all the right things, you might not get any.  And we need the takeaways to win against elite teams.   Let's hope we win the turnover battle two more times this season.  

[hondo in seattle]

5 hours ago, BringBackFlutie said:

 

I don't see the turnovers as luck, I think the entire plan on Sunday was to use our home field advantage and let them make mistakes with a slippery ball, frozen field, cold hands, etc. We basically said, "we can play in this, and the pressure will be on you to keep up and be uncomfortable doing it." We knew we wouldn't turn the ball over and that we could put up points, and we knew that the Ravens weren't going to be patient enough to stick with Henry. The positive turnover differential was inevitable for us.

 

Agreed.

 

They turned the ball over because they made bad plays while we made good plays.  There were no weird bounces or bad ref calls involved.  It wasn't luck.  

 

We didn't give the ball away when we were on offense because of our style of play.  Maybe we didn't throw downfield much because our wideouts couldn't get open.  Or maybe because we wanted to grind it to keep Lamar & Henry off the field.  But maybe also we wanted to stay safe with the football on a day with damp balls, cold hands, and a slick field.  

[Kwai San]

14 hours ago, DabillsDaBillsDaBills said:

 

We did force a lot of negative rushing plays (FOUR), however, we also allowed NINE rushing attempts of 10+ yards. 

 

Henry went: 1, 1 , 2, -1, 10, 7, 2, -1, 12, 6, 3, 17, 15, 5(TD),5, 0 

Hill went: 9, 11, 11, -2, 22

Jackson went: 9, 16, -4, 11, 8

 

It's not like the average was thrown off by one 90+ yard rush, we were consistently giving up chunks of 10+ yards on the ground.

 

 

Lets do the math here.  I know it can be painful but it can also reveal some FACTS!

 

26 total runs you listed

9 runs were 10 or more yards.

 

Thats 35% yes 35% of runs for 10 or more yards.  FAR be if from your descrpiption of consistently giving up chunks of 10+ yards on the ground.  Your post doesn't pass the eye test nor the math test.  You chose to post your feelings about some runs towards the end of the game.  Calm down, have a drink or two and please for the love of god learn some MATH!!!!!!

[BucketList]

16 hours ago, DabillsDaBillsDaBills said:

Obviously it wasn't a disaster, but it would have been without the turnovers. 

 

We forced 0 punts in the entire game. ZERO punts. 

 

Ravens were 7/10 on 3rd down. One of those stops turned into a 4th down that the Ravens converted and the other 2 were FGs.

 

We allowed 177 rushing yards on 29 attempts (excluding end of 1st half kneel down). 

 

The 3 forced turnovers make this a moderately bad defensive game. Without the turnovers this is a historically bad defensive game 

My take is the Bills defense played a moderately good game when you take into consideration the 3 turnovers and the 2/5 red zone rate when you take into consideration they stopped two 2-point conversion attempts. This is against a highly rated offense. 

[notpolian]

I just re-watched the game.  Bottom line is the defense got it done.  I think the plan was good and the aggressiveness was spot on.  The first interception was a gift but the next two turnovers were forced.  That's winning playoff football.

Random thoughts:

- During the game I didn't realize how much we were in base defense.

- DQ and Oliver definitely played well at times.  Gonna need that more and more.

- Philips got some penetration early.  He can be disruptive.  I just don't think you can get too many snaps out of Phillips.

- Milano looked good.  I think they played a lot of dime on the last drive.  He wasn't in there then.  I really think we'd be better off with him in on every snap, but he ain't got the green dot.

- Bernard got tossed around a good bit and was out of position more than once.  We need better MLB play, but that's a future thing.

-Hamlin made some plays but also got in the way a few times.

- After many years of prime Poyer and Hyde, it's a shock to see receivers past our safeties, or CBs not getting help they expect.

- When we blitz, we just struggle to stay with guys in man to man coverage.  Johnson really had issues with that.  I doubt we'll blitz much against KC, but we've got to get pressure.

- On the final Baltimore TD, our DL was Salomon, Jefferson, and Epenesa!  Epenesa was either spying or playing zone.  Seemed like Jefferson was the only guy making any headway, so Jackson had all day to throw.  I would strive not to repeat this situation against Mahomes!

 

We should match up better with KC if we are close to healthy.  To me, the two biggest keys are getting pressure without blitzing and somehow limiting Playoff Kelce, who eats zones for lunch.  The DEs have got to get there with their OTs.

Edited 3 hours ago by notpolian

[DabillsDaBillsDaBills]

3 hours ago, Kwai San said:

Lets do the math here.  I know it can be painful but it can also reveal some FACTS!

 

26 total runs you listed

9 runs were 10 or more yards.

 

Thats 35% yes 35% of runs for 10 or more yards.  FAR be if from your descrpiption of consistently giving up chunks of 10+ yards on the ground.  Your post doesn't pass the eye test nor the math test.  You chose to post your feelings about some runs towards the end of the game.  Calm down, have a drink or two and please for the love of god learn some MATH!!!!!!

 

Do you realize how high 35% is for allowing runs of 10+ yards? If your defense is allowing a rush of 10+ once out of every 3 plays you can see why that would be a problem?

 

Looking at the other teams that played on divisional weekend

 

Bills had 3 carries of 10+ (including Ty Johnson in garbage time) on 34 carries

Eagles had 5 carries of 10+ on 35 carries

Rams had 2 on 21 carries

Commanders had 3 out of 42 

Lions had 7 out of 23

Chiefs had 3 out of 21

Texans had 2 out of 29

 

The Lions were the only team even remotely close. 

 

I will say even though we allowed a huge chunk of runs to go for 10+ at least we didn't allow a long TD run. 

[DapperCam]

I would say that the defense didn't play very well. I think the coaches knew that the defense couldn't hang, and that is part of why they went with an extreme version of ball control offense in the second half. I absolutely believe Allen could have connected with receivers down the field if we tried, but the coaches had no interest in getting into a shoot out with our defense. They instead opted to shorten the game (in terms of number of drives for each team), and were hoping the Ravens would make more mistakes (which they did).

Ravens offense went 70% on 3rd down, had 416 yards, 7.3 yards per play, 5.9 yards per rush. We really only got one "stop" the entire game when we forced the FG. I'm glad we won, and I supposed the coaching strategy to try to protect the defense by limiting possessions worked. I have very little faith that our defense would get the stop in OT if it came to that. The Ravens marched down like a hot knife through butter on that last drive (to the point where they actually went 88 yards and scored too quickly).

The good news is that the KC offense is not as good as the Ravens. I'm a little bit concerned about Pacheco and Hunt running it down our throats all day.

[henry jones]

9 hours ago, bigK14094 said:

Personnel shortcomings.   Milano has instincts now at 30.  Williams not so much ,but he is faster than Milano now.  DT is a weakness.  Oliver is a B player.  Jones a little over the hill.  Phillips playing because the others can't do the rush job he does after 10 seasons.  bothers me that Carter isn't good enough to be active.  Need another high draft choice in the DL.  And, another safety.  Jury is out on Bishop but I am not pesimistic there.  But, Damar is a C player.  Experienced, complete but slow and non aggressive.  Good tackler though.  (Fa next spring.)  Miller is way over the hill, need a good edge.  Bills have a one ,two 2's in this draft and most if not all will go to the D imho.  So, I think Babich is doing fine w what he has.  Not the caliber D though I think of when I think of a super bowl winner.  Maybe our coaching will win it, maybe not.

Agree to all of this.  The defense has been patchwork all year and has been a major liability down the stretch.  As much as I lay blame on McDermott and his philosophy, the personnel is ultimately the issue.  Way too small in the front 7.  CB’s haven’t been great in man coverage.  Safeties have been awful.  It’s a literal miracle we’ve made it this far with this defense.  Just all the more reason why JA should be the MVP.  Take him off this team and we win maybe 4 games