Guest weese Posted September 14, 2004 Posted September 14, 2004 Here's a problem that seems to be overlooked. A non-contender on a 9 game road losing streak comes into Buffalo and holds the home team to 10 pts. The 10 pts came basically from defensive turnovers nontheless. A lot of comments I have read seem to conclude that Bledsoe was not that bad. The fact is that the gameplan was devised to disguise his various weaknesses. The coaches planned everything possible to protect him. Only an ultra conservative passing plan can keep him from self destructing from sacks and interceptions. Hence, very few if any deep passes, and not coincidentally, few points. The defensive coordinators around the league know what the Bills plan to do. It's like the Bills offense has one hand tied behind their back. Mularkey even said it himself that at one point the Jags had all 11 men within 2 yds from the line of scrimmage. (ie no respect for Bledsoe) Basically the Bills offense has two obstacles: the opposing defense and its own limited and ineffective QB. Any running game can be controlled when your QB is not capable of punishing the defense. The ineffective QB is at the root of the Bills problems. Ther are few gameplans or coaches that can salvage an offense which has such a fundamental flaw. Bledsoe's last coordinator in NE couldn't salvage Bledsoe, but he seems to be doing OK with Brady. Maybe the fundamental problem is Bledsoe and not the coaches,the gameplan,the OL,etc.
Kelly the Dog Posted September 14, 2004 Posted September 14, 2004 From what I saw, the good thing which Jax did with their D was that they also mixed up their coverages and how they played them. Good Ds do this and holding the Bills O to 10 points provides a pretty strong indication that their D played a good game. Examples of where the Jax D creeped up were on plays like our fumbled backward pass where Boldin read the play and jumped on Moulds reception not only behind the line but behind Bledsoe. Also several of ou intial incompletions saw good coverage only a few yards downfield which is not the sign of a backtracking or deep cover. Jax did mix it up and sometimes Bledsoe read it well and actually caught them hanging back or in a blown coverage like Moulds TD. However, the overall summary of whether Jax was in two-deep all the time or crept up from time to time in a productive way was that we were only able to get 10 points off of them. I think they could be exploited and we saw this because between the 20s we got some good gains, but they also proved to be big hitters and managed to get a big turnover off of Moulds in the redzone and Lindell failed on a 42 yarder. All in all I think it goes too far to describe them as always sitting back. Ultimately, the Bills failed to be aggressive enough to put more points on the board. In the future they will need to improve further in their run attack so they not only get tough yards as they did, but produce a higher yards per carry from the run so that teams are forced to creep up even more so we can exploit them with the long pass. 30926[/snapback] Good points, for the most part. obviously, they didnt play deep on every single play. But I was watching their set up against Evans from the upper deck all day long and they were in cover-two the vast, vast majority of the game. And Boldin is a CB, not a safety. The Bills didnt get it done on the scoreboard, but Moulds does not fumble often, nor will it likely become a trend. That dubious hold cost us some points. The offense was pretty efficient against a very good defense, they just didnt close the deal. Whether we were seeing a deja vu to last year is debatable but I highly doubt it. There were some questionable calls but there are those in all games, even some blowouts. It's just as stupid to say we should have run on both third and shorts as it was for Killdrive to throw on every 3rd and short. The key is to keep a team off balance. Every single good and great team in the history of modern football throws play-action on third and short. You can't always do one or the other. I am willing to bet anyone $100 this is a good to very good offense by mid-season, in the middle to upper middle of the league.
The Avenger Posted September 14, 2004 Posted September 14, 2004 The amount of running we did was fine, but the passing should have been more diverse than just 1 pass attempt greater than 20 yds (to the TE no less). 30508[/snapback] That was the longest play of the game but the pass was a short pass that became 27 yards due to YAC, not because it was a long pass ply to stretch a defense.
John from Riverside Posted September 14, 2004 Posted September 14, 2004 Here's a problem that seems to be overlooked. A non-contender on a 9 game road losing streak comes into Buffalo and holds the home team to 10 pts. The 10 pts came basically from defensive turnovers nontheless. A lot of comments I have read seem to conclude that Bledsoe was not that bad. The fact is that the gameplan was devised to disguise his various weaknesses. The coaches planned everything possible to protect him. Only an ultra conservative passing plan can keep him from self destructing from sacks and interceptions. Hence, very few if any deep passes, and not coincidentally, few points. The defensive coordinators around the league know what the Bills plan to do. It's like the Bills offense has one hand tied behind their back. Mularkey even said it himself that at one point the Jags had all 11 men within 2 yds from the line of scrimmage. (ie no respect for Bledsoe) Basically the Bills offense has two obstacles: the opposing defense and its own limited and ineffective QB. Any running game can be controlled when your QB is not capable of punishing the defense. The ineffective QB is at the root of the Bills problems. Ther are few gameplans or coaches that can salvage an offense which has such a fundamental flaw. Bledsoe's last coordinator in NE couldn't salvage Bledsoe, but he seems to be doing OK with Brady. Maybe the fundamental problem is Bledsoe and not the coaches,the gameplan,the OL,etc. 30986[/snapback] I think there is a flip side to that arguement..... - I dont think we are covering up Drews weaknesses as much as we are the O Lines and trying to biuld their confidence........ - I think that the short game IS NOT Drews strong suit while deep balls are his strength (or has everybody seem to have forgotten that) so the offense was not set up to take advantage of Drews tools either...... But I think that will change as time goes on......
jjamie12 Posted September 14, 2004 Posted September 14, 2004 The safeties, in the Jax game, did NOT creep up. They were way back, almost always to Evans side, BTW. There was no need to throw deep to keep them from creeping up. There are still good reasons to throw deep, of course, but it wasn't necessary. The field was open. The deep lanes were covered. 30843[/snapback] Gotcha... sorry about that... you were agreeing with me, and I read it the wrong way! Nothing like trying to win an argument that you aren't having, eh??????!?!?!
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