A Big Test of Grays strategic ability is coming up

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

I think the complaints about Gray' strategic ability and rigidity are misplaced and really are reduced to the usual fan whining by the facts of the past.

 

However, he bares a lot of the blame for the run D sucking and the bye week will provide a test of his strategic ability to see whether he can diagnose the problems, design a fix with the personnel we have and implement this fix in a two week period.

 

This unfortunately may still prove to be too late even if he does his job since a loss to NE at their place next week seems pretty likely and even with out weak division where a 9-7 record may well win, we would be beind them in the standings and down on the tiebreaker.

 

First off, I'm not sure where the complaints about Gray being rigidly wedded to the GW style come from and also a comment which lumped the GW and LeBeau Ds together came from because these two Ds are very different from each other.

 

The fact that Gray was schooled in the GW D and adopted it for the Bills and then made the switch to quickly master the zone blitz so he could competently call plays with it in 2003 being part of a D which finished 5th (or so) statistically in the league and then demonstrated a mastery of it by being part of a D which finished 2nd statsically in the league without LeBeau was pretty nice work.

 

Both are aggressive Ds which like the 46 depend upon good coverage by the secondary to allow for blitzes from the front seven, but these two Ds are very different approaches as the zone blitz makes unprecedented use of DEs (and even DTs when Denny moves inside) in pass coverage.

 

The reasonable fear about Gray last year was that though he showed great tactical mastery retaining the DC title when LeBeau came aboard with his great came calls, it was unproven as we entered last year whether he also had the strategic vision to run the D by himself.

 

He showed last year he could do this:

 

A. Gray made tremendous tactical/strategic moves during games- The stats provides strong indications of Gray diagnosing first half problems, designing the proper fix to deal with first half problems, and inpressively installing these changes so they could be used effectively.

 

The stats indicate this was the case in the Bills putting up great performances in the third quarter last year limiting yardage gained and points allowed in the 3rd quarter in amounts near or at the top of the league. A specific example of this is seen in the first Miami game where Sammy Morris gained 80+ yards in the first half put tacked on less than 10 more for the rest of the game.

 

The switch was more than mere tactical shifting or the players playing harder, but struck me as a strategic shift by Gray which emphasized the Bills taking a different approach in the 3rd quarter which shifted their focus to run stopping and bliyzing to stop the pass and the secondary stepped up to the challenge on stopping the pass even though they were often left on an island alone.

 

Those who want to claim that the D performance last year was merely LeBeau leaving a D in place for Gray conveniently forget that when this D was not working it was up to Gray and the D coaches to come up with fixes at halfrime without LeBeau and design and implement them without LeBeau\s help.

 

B. The Miami game is a good example of Gray covering problems, but the other thing he showed which was clearly strategic was he put together game plans which simply stymied other teams from the opening whistle on.

 

Granted the Bills schedule was not against many tough teams (as if there are more than a handful of tough teams in the league these days). However, the standard is to hold opponents to 20 or less to give an adequate O a chance of winning and the Bills accomplished this task in 12 if 14 games (one of which was acually won by the Bills comfortably in a shootout with the Fish). gray demonstrated a good ability last year to gamplan and hold an opponent dow,

 

LeNeau was not there for the individual gameplans (but showed he was the master of the zone blitz by helping the Steelers do in the Buffalo defense).

 

C. The third piece of good strategic work by Gray last year was in the bye week. Hre the Bills put the pedal to the metal and made strategic adjustments to the D which were a big part of the Bills peeling off a winning streak which almost got them into the playoffs.

 

Adjustments by the team greatly enhanced the Bills pass rush and their ability to generate turnovers leading to the team being among the league leaders in both areas.

 

This year Gray will face an even tougher challenge during the bye week as the entire Bills D against the run must be retooled as we face a murderer's row of quality RBs led by LaDamian Tomlinson in the second hal of the season,

 

The irony here is that though Gray demonstrated last year he has some good stratefic ability, I am worried that there is simply too much to do and improve to make the run D good enough. The other problem is that unless NE has a major power outage which is unlikely barring the loss of Brady to injury (and I think no real football fans roots for a debilitating injury to a player, even a hated opponent- though knocking the snot out of him for one game against the Bills is fine by me) it may well be too late to make a fix that would get us into the playoffs.

[DCM]

playoffs?????? playoffs???????

[crazyDingo]

Bring back Wade.

[Dante]

 

However, he bares a lot of the blame for the run D sucking and the bye week will provide a test of his strategic ability to see whether he can diagnose the problems, design a fix with the personnel we have and implement this fix in a two week period.

 

 

487443[/snapback]

So if he is to blame for our run D sucking whom do we blame for the crappy pass coverage? Like our db's playing over 12yds off the receivers on 1st downs giving Collins a easy completion and an even easier 2nd down?

[Adam]

Gray will look great when the talent is there, and not so great when it isn't.....feel free to sub the name of any other good coach in there as well. Losing Williams and S[pikes hurts- no way around that

[Coach Tuesday]

COMING UP? The test came and went, and he flunked it.

[AJ1]

COMING UP?  The test came and went, and he flunked it.

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He did, however, pass one test with flying colors.

 

Mismanagement 101

 

Scores: TD A+

MM A+

TC A+

JG A+

 

Actually TD led them all in answering the 10 point extra credit question 'How to hire dopes for coaches' correctly.