Archives for September 2006

‘New England was able to run on Buffalo to the tune of 41 carries for 183 yards, controlling the clock for 12:01 of the fourth quarter thanks to converting two fourth downs. But it wasn’t for lack of effort on the Bills’ part.’

‘Report card vs. Patriots…’

‘Buffalo was never the same after its failed fourth-down try. The rest of the game, they were out-gained 204-5 in yardage and out-scored 12-0. New England marched 93 yards in 12 plays to a TD, converting two long third downs, after the turnover on downs. “If you look at the momentum shift, it was pretty much like a red zone turnover,” LB London Fletcher-Baker said. “We don’t get points and they do. A team will feed off of that. We didn’t play good third-down defense on that particular drive. Regardless of what happened with our offense, we didn’t stop them on third down and that’s where we have to improve if we want to get better as a team.”‘

‘This young Bills team showed it has great speed on defense, and while the run defense needs to improve for sure, it did respond in the second half, but finally got tired when the offense simply couldn’t sustain anything.’

‘"Oh man, I think it was a bad spot. I clearly reached across," McGahee said following a brief practice as the Bills prepare to play at Miami on Sunday. "I reached. I did an extended reach at that. But things happen, we’re at their home. It was just going to go their way."’

‘On the run defense: We’re concerned. We knew how we wanted to play the game and for the most part, we just didn’t win in the end. They made a play to win, we did not. That doesn’t mean we’re satisfied giving up that many yards in the run game. We made some mistakes, we’ve got to correct those and they did a nice job against us. They’re pretty good at it, but we need to make some corrections and some more plays when we’re out there. We certainly would have rather had them (Spikes and Vincent) on the field rather than injured. I think in our business, every team has injuries to some degree. You have to win in spite of injuries to be a playoff caliber team.’

‘Buffalo could win more than folks expect this season, because it has a pretty good formula in place: a quick, swarming and very aggressive defense composed of the lighter, more athletic players that head coach Dick Jauron and defensive coordinator Perry Fewell favor; a strong running game that gave New England’s defense fits in the first half (71 yards on 14 carries, 5.1 average); and the Bills’ always superb special-teams units. If those three components show up consistently, Buffalo won’t need third-year quarterback J.P. Losman to decide too many games all by himself.’

‘Jauron put his stamp on this Buffalo roster immediately. Losing simply wouldn’t be accepted anymore. For the competitors on the squad, it’s been uplifting. "We wanted to come in here and take it and we almost did," said Evans. They’re the defending (AFC East) champs and we knew we had to come in here and take what we wanted. "We didn’t win, but we will learn from this and we will win these games."’

‘Painful fact of the week: The play of the game was turned in by New England defensive end Ty Warren who sacked J.P. Losman for a safety for the game-winning points in the 19-17 win. Warren was New England’s first-round pick in 2003 taken 13th overall. The painful fact is that was the pick Buffalo traded to New England in the trade for Drew Bledsoe.’

‘On their running game being good and the Bills run defense performing poorly: It was both. The Patriots are a good football team and they had some plays that, against certain defenses that we have, they’re going to get some yardage. There were some times when we didn’t tackle well. They had a lot of yards after contact.’

‘On the loss being a moral victory: I guess you could look at it like, ‘it’s the Patriots and we lost 17-19,’ but at the same time it doesn’t matter if we lost 40-10. You can look at it as a moral victory, but we’re 0-1 right now.’

The decisive play in this game was J.P. Losman being sacked in the end zone for a safety. Losman also should have been more aware of his place on the field and avoided being brought down in the end zone.

‘”There’s a thin line between winning and losing, especially when you go into somebody else’s place,” said Bills linebacker London Fletcher. “You can’t beat yourselves, and we had a lot of mistakes on our part.”‘

‘”It was their quick indoctrination into the National Football League,” said Bills defensive coordinator Perry Fewell. “I was proud of them because we have been on them about alignments, assignments. And then to throw them in the bath like that against a football team like New England, for the most part they responded well.”‘

‘Still, they competed. They hung with the Pats despite losing Takeo Spikes and Vincent to hamstring injuries early in the game. There were times when the Bills had five rookie defenders on the field at once – safeties Whitney and Ko Simpson, linebacker Keith Ellison and tackles Kyle Williams and John McCargo.’