hondo in seattle

The Bills could easily be 4-0 right now. But they could also easily be 0-4. And I find myself worrying about the direction of the Bills offense… Nathaniel Hackett is a young offensive coordinator with limited NFL experience. So I've been counting on the more worldly Doug Marrone to mentor the juvenile Hackett. After all, Marrone had a successful stint as offensive coordinator for the Saints. But with Drew Brees as his QB there and Sean Payton as his own mentor and Head Coach, it was virtually guaranteed that Marrone's Saints offense would put points on the board. It's hard to know yet if Marrone is the right teacher or Hackett the right student. So far, the uptempo offense the two of them created at Syracuse and brought to Buffalo has seemingly created more problems for our defense than opportunities for our offense. Because the Bills offense doesn't run a lot of time off the clock, Bills opponents are running about 75 plays per game – tied with another uptempo team (Philadelphia) for the league’s most. And despite running more offensive plays than any team in the league (except Houston), the Bills are in the bottom half of the NFL in points scored. An uptempo offensive attack only makes sense when you have more play-makers than the other team and the Bills do have a couple of standouts in CJ Spiller and Stevie Johnson. The problem is that Hackett doesn’t seem to know how to utilize them. CJ famously averaged 6.0 yards per carry last year. This year he’s averaging 3.5. Stevie has gone over 1,000 receiving yards each of the past three seasons but at his current pace, Stevie’s thousand-yard streak won’t extend to four. While Hackett’s ability to run a NFL offense is perhaps our biggest offensive question mark, our QB is another. EJ Manuel is a good kid who looks poised in the pocket and engaged on the sidelines. But his arm has been wildly inconsistent. At times, he looks like a future All-Pro. Other times, he looks painfully like the rookie that he is. Neither Hackett nor EJ have been helped by our offensive line. There just isn't a lot of push in short-yardage situations and the holes for CJ have been limited. Is Colin Brown that much worse than Andy Levitre? Or is Hackett that much worse than Chan Gailey at designing and calling effective running plays? I suspect it’s a combination of both. One of my bigger disappointments has been at WR. We brought three rookies – Brooks, Goodwin, Rogers – into camp that seemed to instantly upgrade our weak corps of receivers. Better yet, during the preseason both TJ Graham and Marcus Easley appeared ready to up their games. The good news is that four games into the regular season, Brooks is precisely who we thought he was: a polished route-runner with NFL talent. But outside of Stevie and Brooks, Bills wideouts have been remarkably unproductive, accounting for a mere five receptions for 45 yards. This again begs the question: are the players under-performing or is the OC running the wrong plays? While Pettine is doing some exciting things with this Bills defense, I’m still waiting for Nate Hackett to make me confident in his offensive scheme and preparations. He's still green and still learning - as is EJ - so I'm hoping to see a more productive offense during the remainder of the schedule. But this is only the hope of a diehard fan, not a dispassionate expectation. P.S. Can a mod please change the title. Thanks!

A little harsh, Zonabb. I think Zac was merely pointing out that Flacco's performance was adversely influenced by Gradkowski's poor play. "Correlation" isn't just a technical mathematical term. In fact, it was a word in regular English long before the math geeks took it over. Zac used it to point out that poor protection by an offensive lineman often goes hand-in-hand with poor QB productivity. It's a fair, if obvious, observation and a correct use of the word.

I personally didn't have any problems with the final series. But the series before that bugged me. I think we burned up only about a minute of the clock without making a real attempt to get the first down. Good teams play to win. If we get a drive going that possession, we win the game - even if we don't score. Instead we call predictable, conservative plays that go nowhere and then give the ball back to the Ravens with something like 2:40 left.

There have been a lot of comments over the years here at TBD that FAs will not choose Buffalo because it's a cold-weather, small-market town without much to offer a young millionaire. With those criticisms in mind, I think it's interesting that the former Bill, Dwan Edwards, chooses to keep his family and home in Buffalo: Edwards rented a house in Charlotte for his family last season but decided in the offseason that with two school-age children and a third about to start school, Buffalo made more sense this year. He's renting a townhouse in Charlotte formerly occupied by former Panthers and Bills guard Geoff Hangartner and seeing the family when he can. "I signed a four-year deal up there, so I assumed I was going to be there a little longer than two years," Edwards said. "We had a house in Baltimore that we sold, and we really like upstate New York. People are nice, and the kids love their school. They also love to snowboard. It's a great place for me and my family." http://www.panthers.com/news/article-2/Edwards-seeks-success-in-return-home/63a642ea-a51f-4e56-95e5-923b09b11a1e?two-bills-drive

The inside hand-off out of a shotgun, which doesn't create the space CJ thrives in.

More than Left Guard?

Is the Panther offense really as impotent as it looked against the Seahawks?

Happy Panther... Thanks for the post. This is great stuff. I hope it's a hard-fought, well-played game.

Freddy is a team captain for a reason.

Brady did a lot of dunk and dink. With someone as accurate and composed as Brady, that can be hard to stop. But until the final drive, Brady was barely completing 50% of his passes. Even without Byrd and Gilmore in the game. I was encouraged.

Many in the national media were predicting a blowout. Yet we had the lead for almost the entire 4th quarter. Belicheck, Brady et al have been there together a long, long time. They've had many years to implement and refine their schemes. The FO has had many years to acquire the players to run the schemes. The Bills FO, HC, OC, DC and QB have been together for a matter of months. And yet they took the established Patriots regime down to the last 10 seconds. The defeat was hard to take but this isn't the time for finger pointing.

Wow. We had a rookie HC, OC, DC and QB in their first game and they lost to a good Pats team in a nail-biter that was decided in the final seconds and we need to fire the president? I guess the Pats should fire Belichick. This game could have gone either way. How dare Belichick - with a decade plus to establish his scheme - let a Brandon run organization be competitive with him!

Personally, I don't see CJ's poor stat line as CJ's failure as much as it's the fault of (1) Hackett, (2) the O Line. CJ didn't have a lot of space to work with.

I was happy with the defense, for the most part. The Pats did get a lot of yards but part of that is our hurry up offense allowed them to run a lot of plays. Brady only got something like 5.5 yards per pass attempt. I wasn't happy with the offense. I thought EJ looked about as good as a rookie QB should. Woods was productive. But I didn't like the running attack - lots of inside handoffs from the shotgun. This didn't seem to be creating the space CJ needs to work with.

A lot of inside handoffs from the shotgun. Not sure what this play was designed to do but it clearly wasn't working. It is only the first game but it does make you wonder if Hackett knows how to use Spiller. When a guy averages 6 yards per carry, you would think the next OC would copy some of the most successful plays from the year before. Didn't see any of that.

How can anyone not eat Buffalo Wings when the Buffalo Bills are playing?

The official Game Day Thread started at 6:30am??? Man, you guys are like kids on Xmas morning! Then again, it's not yet 7am here on the West Coast as I type this. Hope you guys in Buffalo enjoy the Ralph. Here in Seattle, I'll be watching the game with the Bills Backers at World Sports Grille (formerly Jillians). Let me salute Bills Backers everywhere!

Mike, thanks for the heads up! I bought $120 worth of stuff - including the door mat. I want everyone who enters my house to know that they're entering Bills domain despite the Seattle area address.

I'm feeling really optimistic about EJ though, of course, it's far too early to make a true determination. My guess is he will turn out to be one of the better QBs we've ever had. Sadly that doesn't actually mean a lot. While the Bills have had several good & great RBs in our history, we haven't had a lot of great QBs. I'm expecting EJ to be the best QB we've had since Kelly, though he won't be as good as Jim.

Great find (!!!) but here's a better link to the interactive website: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/interactive/2013/nfl-salaries-positions-2013-2014#buffalo-bills,buffalo-bills Interesting how all the money being spent on our defense is on the front.

It's all about probabilities. Jaws and Kiper and other so-called experts in the media study more film and talk to more coaches than we fans do. The probability of them being right about a player is therefore a little higher than ours. NFL scouting staffs study even more film, talk to even more people, and therefore have an even higher probability of predicting the success of a player. But even they are wrong a high percentage of the time. A guy with a comparatively high success rate - Bill Walsh - was famously wrong about Trent Edwards. So it is fair to say that no one knows if EJ will be successful. That's why I'm so excited to begin the season. I want to know - with my own eyes - what we have with him.

Buffalo Bills Maybe EJ Manuel follows in the footsteps of Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson and sparks a rapid revival here. The safer bet is that Buffalo needs at least one more year to get the right players in place for new coach Doug Marrone. Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nfl/news/20130905/nfl-power-rankings-season-preview-baltimore-ravens-seattle-seahawks/#ixzz2e2DJr4Hy This seems fair, though I'm personally hoping for quicker progress. If I was writing the power ranking, I'd probably pen something like, "I put Buffalo here because I had to put them somewhere. It's hard to know what to expect from this edition of the Bills with a new HC, OC, DC and QB."

He claims to have PF. PF tends to linger for months. IR seems appropriate - at least enough so that counterarguments wouldnt' get very far.

Bills 21 Pats 17 The offense and defense both play just well enough for the Bills to eke out a win at home.

I'm tempted to say that if he won't be happy playing with the Bills (and I'm still hoping the situation is salvageable), then we should just put him on IR. It's an expensive decision but sends the message, "Don't fxck with Whaley." Byrd wants to be traded and if he is, he wins. Being placed on IR takes away his chance to showcase his skills for other suitors. And if he's going to pretend like he's injured, we ought to treat him like he really is.