Archives for December 23, 2013

‘Buffalo relied on its defense, sacking quarterback Ryan Tannehill seven times before knocking him out of the game in the fourth quarter. The Bills limited Miami to 14 yards rushing.’

‘Mike Pettine has made a big difference in the Bills’ defense. Buffalo’s new defensive coordinator has unleashed a variety of exotic blitzes and has put his defenders in positions to make big plays. This year’s defense has set a franchise record for sacks (56) and is among the NFL leaders with 22 interceptions.’

‘The Bills got to Quarterback Ryan Tannehill early, and often.’

‘Miami had 13 possessions and punted 10 times. There were two drives that ended with an interception and another on downs.’

‘According to a league source, the Bills elected to bench Dareus for tardiness to team meetings throughout the year. The source described the defender as being “habitually late,” and that the benching falls right in line with the overall program to have the players holding more accountability for their actions.’

‘Make no mistake… Fred Jackson is the lead back.’

‘Overall, I just love the way Marrone runs this club. He still has some veterans who aren’t on board with his program and the way he wants things done. They’ll get a chance to state their case in the off season and if Marrone doesn’t get the answers he wants, they will be gone.’

‘It was the first shutout the Bills have pitched at home in seven years. And as you watched the total domination by Mike Pettine’s unit, you couldn’t help but wonder what might have been.’

‘New England on the road. Would you bet against the Bills picking up a win in New England when it devastates their draft stock and essentially won’t mean anything to the Patriots? I won’t. Buffalo 26-23.’

‘The Bills showed continue to show resolve in the Doug Marrone era. Instead of running for the bus they showed up and played like they were the team with something to play for and not the Dolphins. It feels good to get their second straight win and to cause serious damage to Miami’s playoff hopes in the process.’

‘Doug Marrone got his team a second straight win and they were ready to play. Would have liked to see him play Moeaki a bit more and really go for it on 4th and inches in the first half instead of trying to get them to jump offsides. Also settled for three instead of going for seven too much in the second half.’

‘The Bills completed the season sweep of the Dolphins for the first time since 2007.’

‘”We’ve built a foundation from the beginning, but we wanted to finish it,” Pettine said. “We wanted to have momentum going into next year. I think the guys really took that to heart, and said, ‘Hey, listen, if this is our playoff game.’ And again, you just looked at the view from the sideline, our guys just looked a step quicker than they did.”‘

‘Sunday’s season finale against the New England Patriots has been flexed to a 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff, the NFL announced on Sunday night.’

‘For the players, I thought they went out there and we did a good job up front. It’s that same story, I said it before to the team, we protect the quarterback well at home, we run the ball, we’ve done some better things at home than we have on the road. I thought the offense went out and did that. They did exactly what they needed to do. I thought early on we hit a lot of third downs; we were about 50% at halftime, which was big. I think you have to be careful when you look at the second half there were things strategically that we wanted to do to get the clock going and not take as many chances.’