Fewell's defense

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

He's a DB coach. He's had the luxury of working for a very good defensive coach who guided him in developing coverage schemes which worked within his coach's overall defensive gameplan.  Now he'll have to devise his own gameplans and guide his unit coaches.  He's never had any experience doing this.

 

Am I talking about Jerry Gray or Perry Fewell?

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Actually both Gray and Fewell face pretty much the same sitution. They are DCs who are going to insert the defensive guru HCs system.

 

I hope the big difference is not really a judgment on Gray or Fewell, but instead that HC Jauron does not insist on his system even though it is inappropriate to the Bill's players as badly as GW did/

 

Running a system which was great depending on players like Jevon Kearse and Blaine Bishop when you had Chidi Ahanatou and Raion Hill intheir roles was just dumb.

 

Even worse the switch to the 4-3 from he 3-4 came in a space of a few years when we were losing Big Ted, Wiley, Hansen, and even Bruce.

 

Both are obviously to blame for 2001 and 2002, but I think that you have to recognize the reality that:

 

1. When LeBeau came and installed a new system in 2003, Gray did the playcalling and really mastered the system incredibly quickly indicating he was not wed to the TN system.

 

2. The Bills produced tremendous statistical results in 2004 without LeBeau around. Claims that the 04 production was really due to the previous presence of LeBeau and said little for Gray does not actually scan with the fact that 2 of the supposed failings of Gray which would be shown when LeBeau left were actually strong points for the Bills that year particularly during the streak. These were gameplanning and adjustments.

 

The idea that anything good in 04 was leftover LeBeau would make sense if the D was still good but its statistical ranking slipped from a 5 with LeBeau to let's say #10 without him. However, it improved from #5 to #2.

 

The teams record improved from 6-10 to 9-7.

 

A big part of the streak and the move to a winning record were gameplans being developed that allowed the Bills to take a lead and some nice adjustments which actually stopped what opponets did well )ex. Morris gained 80 yds on the Bills in the first half, but adjustments held him under 100 for the game.

 

Gray sucked this year, but if Fewell does as well as Gray did mastering a new system quickly and making successful play calls as he did in 03 and 04 I will be and we should be pretty happy,

[Orton's Arm]

2. The Bills produced tremendous statistical results in 2004 without LeBeau around. . . . ex. Morris gained 80 yds on the Bills in the first half, but adjustments held him under 100 for the game.

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The 2004 defense produced good statistical results by truly dominating the many poor offenses it faced; not by standing up to offensively strong teams. Witness the nine minute Pittsburgh drive that ended Buffalo's playoff hopes. As for Sammy Morris; I remember most of his first half yards coming from one or two really big runs.

[buffaloboyinATL]

He said you need a D line that can get a consistent rush.  Ngata is pure run defender, zero pass rush.

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If the DT can penetrate the middle, which Ngata can, he not only disrupts the run game, but he also forces the QB out of the pocket which allows the ends and LB's to get a better shot. By the way he had 3 sacks last year and 3.5 sacks in his freshman year, even thogh he didn't become a starter until the 5th game, so I wouldn't say he has zero pass rush.

[Sen. John Blutarsky]

Meanwhile, look what happened to the vaunted Bears D in their first playoff game. They were made to look *very bad* all of a sudden. Because they came out with their standard D, which made it easy to prepare for and scheme around. NO adjustments later, and they were 1 and out. Fewell's secondary was GASHED again and again and again.

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More importantly, Steve Smith had something like 16 catches in the first meeting between those 2 teams. In the playoff game they did absolutely nothing different even though Carolina was down to Nick Goings at RB. You can scheme to take away one guy. I was absolutely amazed that the Bears didn't make Carolina beat them with someone OTHER than Steve Smith.

 

To be fair, that's the HC and DC's call not the DB coach so we don't know if Fewell would have played it the same way.

[Fake-Fat Sunny]

The 2004 defense produced good statistical results by truly dominating the many poor offenses it faced; not by standing up to offensively strong teams. Witness the nine minute Pittsburgh drive that ended Buffalo's playoff hopes. As for Sammy Morris; I remember most of his first half yards coming from one or two really big runs.

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The point that we're over-analyzing though is specificially how the 2004 results achieved by a D with LeBeau's scheme as fully implemented by DC Gray without LeBeau around vompare to the 2003 results of the D with LeBeau's scheme as partially implemented by Gray since LeBeau was around.

 

The quality of the opponents is certainly relevant to this analysis, but it actually ciuts a lot of ways in terms of what we are looking for.

 

Perhaps the results achieved in 2004 are mostlty due to the opponents being so bad that a good scheme destroys them regardless of the gameplan or the adjustments. Perhaps not.

 

Simply saying the teams were weak says very little in terms of conclusions actually.

 

My sense is that the key points are that:

 

1. The results achieved by the D in 2001 and 2002 were mostly driven by the fact we had pretty poor players as we went through and emerged from cap hell. Gray's role amd to some extert GW's role were critical in that not only were our players bad but when we switched to a 4-3 TN type D we actually used a D scheme which was an incredibly poor choice for the crappy personnel we had.

 

A. Between simply having to cut players and take what we could get in 2001 it was going to be even worse switching to a scheme which demanded more DL player when we were losing 2 of our 3 starters as a cap cut (Big Ted) and as an FA (Wiley). Particularly after losing BS as a cap casualty the year before and Hansen to retirement the next year, moving to a 4-3 had huge bad implications. Gray does not escape blame for this as it was his D, but it is a big legit question how much or whether primary blame should fall on GW.

 

B. Another issue which Gray cannot escaoe blame for though again it is unclear how much blame gets shared with GW are a series of poor assessments of players. The D picked up Robinson to play LB and Jenkins to start at SS and it became quickly apparent neither of these players had enough gas left in the tank to play NFL ball. I can see how Gray is at fault because he was loyal to his old buddies or looked at them through rose glasses. If so he learned the same bitter lesson that Ralph and Butler should have learned when they falsely assessed Jimbo has having a few years of good play left in him that led to the handshake deal between Jimbo and Ralph.

 

Even if Gray deserves lead blame for poor assessment of former teamates, I stilll think blamed is shared and primary blame falls on GW because this adult is supposed to exert checks and balances on loyalty to fellow players shown by Gray.

 

2. The acquuisition and use of LeBeau by the Bills to a great extent is a kudo for Gray. Rather than being addicted to the TN style D, he quickly learned and proved capable of play calling good enough for the Bills to finish statistically 5th in the NFL in D in 2003.

 

I think LeBeau deserves a ton of credit because clearly this was his scheme. However, if anyone looks bad here it is GW because we jettisoned his design 9even though Gray ran it) and used LeBeau;s design (ut Gray ran that as well. The indicators in the real world are that Gray clearly was not so wedded to the TN that he was incapable of doing anything else. The results heighten the potential that the D disasters of 01 and 02 though Gray was DC and thus responsible are probably more closely linked to GW's desires.

 

I think this is where the Gray/Fewell analogy is strongest. Just as Gray;s primary job was to run GW's D design, I think Fewell's primary job will be to run Jauron's D design.

 

3. Still as far as assessing Gray, the question is whether the 2003 results were mostly the result of the LeBeau scheme or does Gray deserve a lot o the lionshare of the credit since he implemented it.

 

I think this question was pretty much answered by the events of 2004. The legit concern on Gray withot LeBeau would he be able to gameplan and also make adjusments. LeBeau was around all week and had the schedule so it makes sense that he led the way gameplanning for the next opponent in 2003. Further, since LeBeau was watching the game from on high and not distracted by immediate play calling that it really was him who diagnosed the first half play and designed adjustments which either simply Gray or Gray and LeBeau got implemented.

 

The key to over-analysis of this situation is not simply how the raw results in 2003 compared to the raw results in 04 (its important but not the key), but looking at the 2004 games however we played and determining whether there was a gameplanning issue or an adjustment issue in the individual games.

 

The comparison of opponent skill is relevant (though actually I think that speaks in Gray's favor as statistically the team moved up from 5th to2nd, It is this uptick that might be explained by the lesser opponents but even still if the performance was about the same under Gray as it was under Gray/LeBeau kudos to Gray.

 

The team finished second and behind LeBeau at #1, but it is hard for me to see how they could have done much better than #2. If the team's performance took a down turn (particularly against even weaker opponents then is more clearly on Gray, but they didn't and though the statistically better finish can be attributed to weaker opposition it still is kudos to Gray I think in any ratuional judgment.

 

Still the key thing is to identify any comparative shortcoming in gameplanning or adjustment in 03 versus 04. Much to my surprise in the final outcome I do not think there was any.

 

A look at the 2004 season reveals only the NE games where I would say Gray was outgameplanned by the opponents, They gave up over 30 once to NE and 29 twice to NE and Pitts (the teams which ended up 1 and 2 in the AFC). In the other games even if they were weak Gray's D beat them like he should beat them. I do not think you can rationally disregard his D performance by saying the teams were weak if he beat weak teams like he is supposed to beat them.

 

The 2004 model was pretty good though the results of having opponents break 30 3 times compared to 1 for Gray in 2004 may be where the weak opponent issue kicks in. However, again it seems to indicate at worse Gray did well as LeBeay and does not produce a result that in any real way support a claim LeBeau was better/

 

Likewise if one looks at the individual games at the adjustment issue, the biggest "knock" on Gray is that there are few great adjustment examples because he gameplanned well and the team got and maintained leads on most opponents.

 

However, again there is a general feeling I rememeber of the Gray led squad shutting down what worked for opponents in the 1st half. There certainly is no record of the Bills getting beaten in the secind half or in the last minutes like they did in 2001 and 2002.

 

The way you describe the Miami/Morris game to attack Gray is amusing because it is exactly the points you make that probably show good adjustment by Gray, Morris made big gaind on a couple of plays in the first half. The problem was not him consistenly beating our players, but MI ran some plays that beat our scheme.

 

In the second half this did not happen. Perhaps the Bills and Gray made a good adjustment and cut this off.