Turk Schonert...

[NavarreFL_Bills_Fan]

Stay, but he gets just as much credit as everyone else for this year's failures. He needs to take his lumps too.

 

He is a rookie and still has room to grow and get better. I also don't want to see the team have to install a new system and use that as an excuse next year. Continuity is important and I think will help where we have lack of talent.

[thewildrabbit]

Turk Shonert is not OC material, he was promoted from a system that didn't work and we go into every game looking like one of the worst prepared teams on offense I have ever seen.

 

Oh, and the scoring ranking 5th in the league? The poster was only comparing TE's starts, meanwhile the rest of the teams had to take every game into account on the comparison. Hardly seems fair considering other teams like Dallas also lost their starting QB. If you want to get selective with numbers and compare just a few of our games against a whole season of someone elses, you can make numbers say about anything.

 

Truth of the matter is we have not played one full game, a full 60 minutes where the offense has played well throughout, not one. The play calling has been poor, and the play on the field even poorer. Our offensive philosophy has been flawed since Fairchild brought it here. Mike Martz runs the same offense in San Fran where they lead the league in having their QB sacked. Wonder why our QB is taking a beating? I just told you why.

 

We need the West Coast offense brought into Buffalo and somebody that can coach it and its not Turk "Shotgun"Schonert.

Very well said

[Big Turk]

I think Schonert is going to be a pretty decent OC with another year or two on the job. Statistically, the offense is much better yardage wise than last year, and the running game has finally started coming around. Playcalls are only as good as the execution of the play. A 3rd and 1 play action pass that results in a 60 yard TD is a great call, but that same play call resulting in a fingertip miss by the receiver or a bad throw by the QB is a horrible play call. So much of people's perception of what is good and what is bad is tied to the result of the play, which is in turn tied to the ability of your players to actually execute the play successfully.

 

Look back to the Jacksonville game as an example. Late in the 4th quarter with the Bills trying to protect a lead, Schonert calls a play action rollout in which Edwards hits a wide open Schouman in the flat and he rumbles for about 20 yards before getting tackled, getting a first down in the process. Game basically over there. Because the play worked, it was a great play call. If Edwards rolled out and got sacked, or threw an interception or incomplete pass stopping the clock, it would have been considered a horrible playcall. They attempted the same type of play with Losman in the Jets game...he gets sacked and fumbles after standing there for what seemed like an eternity, when the playcall was clearly to either hit a wide open receiver or throw the ball into the stands. Is Schonert responsible that Losman failed to execute the play properly? No, not really. He may have been responsible for putting a QB in a position for which he was ill-suited, namely feeling backside pressure and getting rid of the ball, two of Losman's weakest traits, although Jauron says he was responsible for the call. Regardless of playcalling, it always comes down to how well your team and the players on the field can execute the play being called. Good execution always makes the playcaller look brilliant, poor execution causes the playcaller to be questioned.

 

The only knock I have on Schonert is that he tends to abandon the run far too early when the Bills get behind(even if only by a TD), although he has seemingly gotten better at this, using the 2nd Jets game and the Broncos game as an example where he kept running the ball. I like the way he generally mixes things up, although I could live without seeing WR's in motion slowing down by the TE and downblocking a DE---its a pretty obvious tipoff by our team its gonna be a run, or at least 90 chance of being a run. Overall though, I think he has done a respectable job in his first season, and I think he will improve next year---lets not forget, Schonert is a rookie at this---he will likely get better over the next year or two the same way players get better as they gain more experience and figure out what works well against certain defenses and alignments...

[thewildrabbit]

Can we please drop this notion that the Offensive coordinator is the one to blame every year for the poor offense. Look Kevin Gilbride won a super bowl ring as the giants offensive coordinator and the giants are doing very well this year also. Dan Henning is now OC in carolina and that team will be one of the top two teams in the NFC. Even Fairchild has improved the colorado state football team (they actually won a bowl game after only winning a total of 7 games the past two years combined).

Dan Henning was FIRED in Carolina a few years ago, He is now the OC at Miami!

 

 

The problem with the Buffalo Bills offense is the system that they use is just horrid. The QB is almost always under duress and getting hit.The Mike Martz system in St Louis is failing, it sucks in Buffalo and it sucks in San Francisco. There is already talk in SF that if Singletary is hired full time that Martz will be fired because of the difference in offensive philosophy! Martz likes to constantly throw and Singletary wants a power running game.

 

Trent Edwards looks so much like Joe Montana when given time to throw,he would flourish in a west coast system that is run properly.

[The Avenger]

He hasn't been able to get his players to go downfield, even if it is incomplete, which would stop teams from crowding the line and stopping our run, which they did most of the season.

 

He hasn't been able to do much against 3-4 defenses, even though all of our division rivals play it.

 

He hasn't been able to find ways to get the ball to two of our three biggest playmakers, Lee Evans and Roscoe Parrish, when every other team in the league would find ways to get the ball to a dangerous guy like Parrish at least five times a game.

 

He won't roll our quarterbacks out even though both of them throw well on the run and it almost always works for us (the Losman fumble the exception, which I guarantee and would bet anything was Shonert's call and not Jauron's, regardless of what Jauron says).

 

He has so far refused to throw the ball to the endzone on so many occasions it's frightening, which has resulted in so many FGs, which could have cost us games.

 

There are numerous plays designed and ran with a maddening set of patterns that don't stretch the field to allow players to find seams, even though we have decent pass protection.

 

They told us all off season and pre-season how they are going to throw the ball downfield to the running backs, then waited 14 and a half games to do it, and presto, it was a 65 yard gain. (They may have tried it to Marshawn once earlier that was incomplete).

 

Not running Marshawn near the goalline was unconscionable, not to mention how stupid it was to run Omon twice into the middle of the line last week, which luckily didn't kill us.

 

The inability to get plays in quickly enough has caused numerous wasted time-outs all season long. As well as a deplorable use of the clock in the final two minutes of the halves, which is mostly on the OC calling the plays.

 

I have failed to see a good game plan taking advantage of a team's weakness, except in rare occasions. We also almost always start out slow on offense, which again leads me to believe he doesn't have a great plan of attack going in.

 

Losman was absolutely abysmal when he was in there but Shonert, like his predecessor, simply refused to take advantage of the things that Losman does well, and instead called play after play after play that puts Losman in a position that he often stinks at: a 7 step drop straight back in the pocket waiting for a play to develop. Edwards and Losman are completely different quarterbacks and you don't need to change an offense for one or the other but what you do need to do is put players in positions to do what they do well and keep them out of positions that they suck at.

 

Shonert had some flashes early in the season of calling a good mix of plays, that worked reasonably well. But those were short lived, and teams adapted but he didn't. And we paid for it, probably with a chance to go to the playoffs.

 

 

Excellent list. The only thing I'd add is that he completely abandoned the play action pass for a couple of games while we were in a slump, even though it's been pretty effective - I couldn't believe he never ran any durring that terrible stretch.