vincec

It looked to me like a zone blitz where M Williams was trying to drop off and cut off that short pass to the flat and Gilmore had the deeper zone. However Williams, not being a LB, only got 2 or 3 yards of depth and there was plenty of room to throw that completion over his flailing arms. The idea is that you bait that throw on the pre-snap read then surprise the QB with a different coverage than he thought. It wasn't executed well and may have been ill conceived but that's what I saw anyway. What I would like to know is what was the concept for playing that play action rollout that Houston killed them with? The DE certainly can't be expected to stay in his gap to stop the cut back on the zone run and still stop the QB from getting outside the pocket. How were the Bills trying to defend that play? Whatever they were doing, it wasn't working.

The only problem with this is that he has been saying that they will get a franchise QB ever since he got here and all they have done is brought in Levi Jones, Vince Young and Tavaris Jackson. If he is serious about this then he will do what's necessary to get one like Washington did (a move that he criticized in his WGR interview).

Wannstedt will last if Gailey does. If the Bills get to 7-9, then I think Gailey gets one more year, 6-10 is a toss up. If they do worse than that then I think Nix will grudgingly clean house.

These are great. Nice work!

I think that he just doesn't understand what it takes to win in the NFL. He thinks that if you are giving up 30+ points per game then it should look like LSU playing LA Tech on film, but when he watches the film he doesn't see that kind of mismatch. The teams are closely matched physically. Too bad NFL offenses only need a small edge to rip you a new one. The small, occasional breakdowns he's talking about are what separates good from bad in the big leagues.

He didn't look too good in pass protection against Tennessee

If the Bills send a defense player from the worst unit in the league and one of the worst of all time to the Pro Bowl, then their should be an investigation.

Yeah right. Like all Fitz needed was a "QB guru" and he'd become a top flight QB. Time to face facts. The defense stunk under Edwards. It stinks under Wannstedt. It stunk ever since Nix got here and cleaned house. The coaching may be sub par, but there are a lot of bad players on this defense.

7. Almost made it out of the basement...

And decrease advertising revenues, which matter too.

Good luck with that. That business model isn't going anywhere. It's just going to cost them readership.

In other news, Mario texted Chan last night that he has decided to play linebacker in next week's game.

This I agree with. I don't think he has any ideas as to how to fix it however.

Sounds like someone who is in total control of the situation.

Wanny is blitzing more than he ever has to try and help the pass rush. He is playing more varied coverages than he ever has to try and help the DBs. Last week he moved Williams all over the defensive line to try and help him get pressure. He benched Moats two weeks ago to bring in Bradham to try and get better LB play. He's trying a lot, but he doesn't have many tools to work with. The reason that the games are historic blowouts instead of just losses is because many players have quit on the season and give up the minute things go wrong in a game. I put the blame for that evenly on the players and coaching staff's shoulders. The players don't care and the coaching staff doesn't seem to either. In fact the only ones who seem to care are Kelsay, with his comments about the team not playing hard, and Wannstedt, who sounded like he was ready to get into a fight with someone during Tim Graham's interview. Everyone else just seems to make excuses. Stop looking for a scapegoat.

Are the players on defense better than when Nix took over three years ago? Yes or No? Go position by position and tell me. I count worse players at the majority of positions- and that defense was mediocre at best. That's Nix's problem. I watch other games on Sunday and I see players beating man to man blocking, beating chip blocks and even occasionally beating double teams. Is see DBs make plays in one v one coverage. I see LBs cover TEs. People on this board seem to think that if Wannstedt can't draw up a defense to have unblocked guys on every play then it's a problem with the scheme.

So how are they doing since their vast talent has been unchained from Wannstedt's ineptness?

The obvious answer is that it's due to the quality of the opponent. Arizona's OL was much worse than Tennessee's. I like that Wanny is the new scape goat now, replacing George Edwards. Maybe after the third DC crashes and burns someone will take a long hard look at Nix and the defensive personnel, which are very bad. Probably not though.

If this were true, then there would be no difference between offensive and defensive coordinators except for their preferences or arbitrary assignments. I suspect that if you had Chan Gailey coaching the defense and Mike Nolan coaching the offense you'd get some sketchy results. These guys may understand the basics and have some definite ideas on how to attack the other side but that doesn't make them competent to help develop game plans.

It would be nice. Just picture, you decide one day that you don't your boss at work so you start half-assing it. As a result, your boss is fired and someone that you like better is hired.

At this point in Reid's career, I would say that Gailey is a better version of Reid. If Gailey had Jim Johnson coaching the defense and a young Donovan McNabb at QB the Bills would be just as good as the Eagles were a few years ago.

Gailey has said this numerous times during the press conferences. He doesn't sit in on the defensive meetings and doesn't have much in the defensive game plan. He did imply that if things don't improve he may start asking wtf, but frankly I doubt he knows much about coaching defense at the pro level.

I'm not worried about Dareus long term. He's having some issues this season but I'm confident he will pull out of it. I suspect that some of it is psychological. He's well down the list of problems on defense.

This is also the only way he'd consider taking the position. However, judging from how things went in SF I'm not sure that he's head coaching material.

Idle speculation.