My Meaningless Opinion

[R. Rich]

Wow, the season is here! It just didn't feel right w/out having the Bills do what they do 'round the beginning of a season: get my hopes up and then rip the heart out of my chest. That is one area where I dare say the Bills can claim to be the absolute best in the league. If there's another team that's better @ these kinda gut wrenching games, then I feel sorry for their fans.

 

Like my good friend William mentioned in his "Thoughts" (required reading on the Wall), the absence of Posluszny was certainly felt last night. This is a better defense w/ him in there, and I hope he's not out for long.

 

Demetrius Bell....yikes. Plenty of mistakes and poor play (who was he blocking on that final sack?). I feel sorry for the kid, who, lest we forget, was making his NFL debut. He shows flashes of potential, so maybe he'll learn from the mistakes and improve. I sure hope so. Eric Wood and Andy Levitre really played well. Wood had struggled a bit in pre-season after what I felt was a fine first game vs the Titans and Levitre had struggled quite a bit more throughout the pre-season. But both guys gave the Bills what we have wanted to see for years: toughness up the middle. Vince Wilfork, a member of the New England All Time Team, was virtually a non-factor. Congrats to Wood, Levitre, and Hangartner for a job well done!

 

Trent Edwards did what he's done successfully before: limited bad plays by not going all out for the big play. It worked well for the Bills in the sense that they were able to sustain some drives and keep the NE defense (if they don't play any better than they did last night, even w/ a healthy Jarod Mayo, they're not going anywhere; the LB play was putrid) guessing for most of the game. One thing I was anxious to see out of him is how would he respond if the team needed him in the clutch. W/ less than a minute remaining and w/ the team needing to get into FG range for the win, he did some things that I think need work. He needs to work on better awareness in the pocket; so if your newbie OT is struggling and you are working w/ just seconds left in the game, GET RID OF THE FOOTBALL!! Holding onto it and then coming up w/ a completion for short yardage, an incompletion, or a sack does nothing to help the team win. On that last drive, Edwards did all three of those things. Like many components of this team, he showed some good stuff and some bad stuff. All in all though, he worked his tail off to put the Bills in a position to win the game.

 

Fred Jackson did a fantastic job in this game! He was able to not only be decisive when running the ball, but he also had a good feel for knowing when to bail out the QB in terms of being the safety valve receiver. He got open and made big plays to keep drives alive. And his TD reception helped to sucker me in one more time! "We're winning 24-13 w/ 5 minutes to go! We're actually gonna do it!!!" Hey Fred, you did your best to stop the Bills from being, well.......the Bills. Great effort, and I look forward to more of that.

 

I have been critical of the TEs, but they did a solid job. Schouman and Nelson made some nice catches, and I also saw some good things in terms of helping out the O line in blocking. I hope to continue to be pleasantly surprised by their play this year.

 

WRs, on the other hand, did not look that great. People will get on Owens for only having 2 catches, but he was being blanketed by the Patriots (as they should've done, being that he's the top offensive option on the team) w/ double coverage and w/ a safety rolled to his side all night. That said, his drop on the 3rd down conversion was inexcusable. Gotta come up w/ those. Josh Reed did make a great catch 'cross the middle, but where was he the rest of the game? And as for Lee Evans....wow. If any of you still have the game tivo'd or taped or whatever (gluttons), go back and watch his route running. It is atrocious. Oh, and even though it was desparation time @ the end of the game, did you see the apathetic way Evans ran his route on the final play? Instead of actually getting into a position where maybe he could get the ball tossed to him and do something in open space, Evans just half-a**ed a route AWAY FROM THE PLAY!!! It's getting very tough to overlook his shortcomings and to consider him an "elite WR". Not to say he can't get there, but he must do a better job of getting open and helping out his QB. Watch Welker work w/out the ball and you'll see the difference. The guy busts his butt to get into a position to help the team. Lee? Not so much.

 

Props to the defense for keeping the Bills in that game! Kyle Williams did a solid job of coming up the middle for most of the evening. Marcus Stroud got a good push and helped to either blow up plays in his direction or force the action away from him and put the pursuit in place to make plays for either no gain or a loss. Denney kept up the pressure from the strong side, even though he did screw up on the interference call (it was legit; please no conspiracy theories). Aaron Maybin, as a situational rusher, also put good pressure on Brady. I look forward to his continued development. The other Aaron, Mr Schobel, went all out! Many on the boards, myself included, have been skeptical of his performance. But he really worked hard all game. Getting that sack and then the INT for a score showed that he still has plenty left. I still have concerns on the huge holes he leaves by always going to the OT's outside shoulder (why Belichick didn't take more of an advantage of this, especially when their backs had some success running on early downs, I have no idea), but you can't fault the guy's effort in this one.

 

Keith Ellison was overmatched on the inside guys when NE ran the spread offense. But, why didn't Perry Fewell do a better job of matching up? Why didn't he go to more DBs? Ellis Lankster showed that he can play in the pre-season; maybe he would've helped stop those short conversions by Kevin Faulk? Also, whatever happened to the press coverage, Fewell? Didn't you say that you didn't bring Leodis McKelvin here to play 10 yards off the ball? I could've sworn I read that somewhere. Terrence McGee shadowed Moss for most of the night, and though Moss ended up w/ plenty of catches and yards, he was not THE factor for the Pats' win. McGee worked hard to make that so, and he deserves some praise for it. Donte Whitner didn't get any sacks or picks, but did do a good job of minimizing the gains of the NE receivers. W/out many of his sure open field tackles, you have to wonder how many more points NE may have put up. Decent effort. 'Til these guys are put in a scheme where they can be factors instead of playing in this "play not to lose" type scheme where they're too far off the ball to actually make any kind of difference, how much more can we expect from any of these guys?

 

That leaves everyone's Goat of the Day: Leodis McKelvin. I like the guy and I think he'll be a terrific corner for the Bills. I really do. But he made plenty of bad plays last night. Yeah yeah, the fumbled kick was disgusting. Before that, though, McKelvin had @ least 3 opportunities to come up and make a tackle for minimal gain, only to take a poor angle and watch the receiver get away from him. His open field tackling was as poor as Whitner's was good. In coverage, he still is too far off the ball to make the kind of impact plays that I'm sure he can make. All you have to do is watch 'em on kick returns (well, not that last one) to see that when he gets the ball in his hands, he can make a difference. On a pick, where there's no coverage set up and, in many cases, it's just a matter of beating one or two guys, he will do damage. Of course, it's tough to get in those spots when you're so far off the ball. The guy really screwed up on the return, but he worked to do something to put the Bills back on top. It was that same aggressiveness that caused him to fight for extra yards instead of just going down and keeping possession. Considering how well he runs on returns, I don't know if I'd wanna tinker w/ that much if I were Bobby April. It's almost akin to Ben Roethlisberger and the sacks: he gets so many by how he plays, so the Stillers live w/ it, even when it hurts 'em. Take the good w/ the bad.

 

Coaching wise, ask yourself this: how confident were you when the Bills got the ball late? No, not after NE scored the go ahead TD, but after NE closed the gap to 24-19? W/ McKelvin's fumble, we won't know how Jauron would've handled the situation, but I admit that as they were teeing it up, I was concerned. I still think there's too much of the "play not to lose" mentality w/ Jauron. Now, I don't think that of Alex Van Pelt's play calling. Some of the plays, like the play action throw to Nelson and the well called and executed counter to the left side, were examples of Van Pelt not calling "same ol' Bills" type calls and catching NE off guard. It will be interesting to see if they can continue to keep opposing defenses guessing this year, or if they've "shot their wad" w/ this game. But, I was impressed w/ the start.

 

So, here we are. Another heartbreaking loss in the opening game. Yeah, like we haven't seen that before. But, though there were plenty of negatives to hit on (and I'm sure folks 'round here will continue to hit on 'em for the rest of the week), there's some positives as well. How many of you thought the Bills had a chance of not embarrASSing themselves last night? Well, they not only did that, but were in control of it for nearly 55 minutes! Moral victory and all, but hey, this team hasn't had much success over the past decade, so take what you can get. Despite the annual heart ripping loss, I still feel good 'bout this team's potential. In fact, I can't wait.............well, you know!

[bills_fan_in_raleigh]

R. Rich a great an thoughtful writeup. Many positives from last night.

[JÂy RÛßeÒ]

Comments on AVP's performance? Personally I was very impressed. As the announcing crew pointed out, the # plays and TOP was way too lopsided but I liked the way he called things.

[colin]

good points. evans dropping the ball on 3rd down after catching it because he got hit sums him up for me. we've horribly over rated him. he needs to get some heart in a hurry.

[tennesseeboy]

Good analysis. I'm still wary of the offensive line although (with the exception of Bell...but who needs a left tackle?) they held up much better than I thought they would. AVP called a nice game. Players played like losers the last two minutes in a hundred different ways. I'm revising the prediction of a 3 win team to perhaps even a 7 win team as of right now. That being said the o-line will improve (remember Jim Kelly calling out Howard Ballard?) and there may beven be further revisions in coming weeks.

[bizell]

gonna have to disagree about the sustaining drives bit. we had our first 3rd down conversion mid-third quarter.