AKC

It’s great to see the personnel flexibility of the Jauron staff after having two very rigid coaching regimes who relied IMO far, far too much on individual players versus the overall team concept. Seeing Miami face 3 new DLinemen on just their second offensive series shows just how much we truly will rely on fresh faces on the Defensive side of the ball. Also using 3 DE’s in pass packages makes too much sense- it’s good to see some logic to the process versus rigid discipline to something worked out some musty coach’s office. It also appeared that Villarial got spelled for a series in the 3rd by Duke Preston simply to rest CV. A lot of the success McGahee is having on the ground is the willingness of our receivers to hit someone downfield. With the exception of Peerless Price everyone else seems to be onboard, and not to take anything away from the good work Josh Reed is doing but surprisingly the most aggressive blocker may just be Roscoe Parrish. Jason Peters is impressive with his development. In our second series he takes his DT assignment up the field on a McGahee run that with a little help from the balance of the team gets McGahee 5 yards- but Peters isn’t done. He releases off the DT and gets upfield to eliminate a LB and the result is a McGahee gain of 11. While Peters didn’t do it alone, he was the primary reason McGahee picked up the extra yards. It was fun watching Robert Royal, while mismatched as any TE is against Jason Taylor, continually showing off a nasty attitude against JT. Royal was tasked a surprising number of times with handling JT by himself. The one play where JT makes a play past him, Taylor is very lucky he didn’t draw a 15 yarder for yanking Gandy's facemask on his way by. Kevin Everett is also plenty of field reps without being very involved in the passing game. Based upon his resume and some flashes in pre-season, we won’t have to wait until the end of this season to see him have a VERY big game offensively. His blocking skills are sufficient for the situations he’s being put in- he’s not being asked to handle a Jason Taylor and mostly he’s handling upfield blocks in the running game, but he is definitely contributing to our offense in the unbalanced 2 TE line set that we’re suing with regularity. A little patience and with the right defensive overload you can bet some quick TE passes will come out of that set. McCargo right now is learning a tough lesson at the NFL level- his higher center of gravity makes it impossible to play the same way he did in college, where he could simply lean and use his arms to create space. NFL Linemen are too big and athletic to get away with that. He’s learning that he has to use his weight and leverage to get a pop on the other side, and his upside if he can learn this effectively will be substantial. He should easily become a bigger threat than Kyle Williams in the long term- Williams has the advantage now because he is built for and can play low, and that translates into immediate impact along the DLine. On the long term though the taller athlete offers the greater promise as a pass rushing threat, something this defense is built to reward. Speaking of Kyle Williams, with about 10 minutes left in the 2nd quarter he stunts all the way down the line around Tripplett and Kelsay. He’s chipped by the RB who pulls his helmet right off but he continues full speed up to big Vernon Carey, a guy outweighing him by maybe 60 pounds, and gets right into Carey’s face. Out west here we call those Quijones. He also follows it up with a good awareness leap on a passing play when he realizes he won’t get to the passer in time. There’s clearly been an emphasis on this in this Defense, and it’s paid off both games so far. Schobel is hands down the best linemen we have at reacting to the QB’s set and throw, but every single one of our linemen are looking on almost every passing down to interfere with passing lanes using their hands. This is also true of the extra guys we’re bringing- I never noticed the emphasis on this in the Tampa 2 but clearly our coaching staff has made “going up” a priority for our pass rushers. One area of concern so far this year has been our short yardage/goal line run D. The one number who’d always be in my goal line package is 95 simply because of his ability to play low. He’s at the NT spot for the 3rd and 1 stuff we get on the Fish as the 3rd quarter ends. McGahee may not look on film as quick as he’s actually playing. On the play I mentioned above with Taylor grabbing Royal’s face mask, the run stuff actually only happens because Royal is blocking for McGahee and he assumes McGahee is already off his shoulder. Problem is Anthony Thomas is now in the game and he’s lead-footed in comparison. The change of pace between the backs is a big plus for us, but I’m thinking Thomas shouldn’t be called for running plays off the tackles with any frequency. It’s one of those times when, contrary to the team concept on defense, we’ve got to consider who is in the backfield behind #7. Reyes has kind of an awkward running style but what he does well is line up and catch his target well in space, not a typical skill for big interior OLinemen. Our defensive philosophy for the season seems to be: We’ll give some big plays on the ground, but we’ll make you pay the hard way if you try to challenge us in the air. To beat us you have to consistently get first downs out of your running game.

It'll be a very interesting ride. We're going to give up too many of the Maroney runs this season but we'll also be making a lot of QBs VERY uncomfortable. And the AFC East looks like a very wide-open race. A win next week would go far in establishing us as credible threat to taking our division.

Doesn't that mean that Willis said out loud what dozens and dozens of other players have had the good sense to clamp up on? For my money I thought McGahee looked like he might have a very big year, and except for the handicap we have at FB he has the support to pull it off (a better run blocking line, a much better change-up back to give him a blow). NE has (IMO wisely) used the draft to build maybe the league's best run stopping rotation in their D interior. I won't judge WM on his final stats againt the Pat's D. Next week might be more telling, with the far longer in the tooth Keith Traylor hoping to find 4 quarters in the tank. I also couldn't care that he's obviously a moron, because for the most part that usually doesn't affect play at his position. I do have a problem with the fact that he DID allow his idiocy to affect the biggest play of the game yesterday; while I didn't like the 4th down play call, his lack of awareness may truly be the reason we didn't make it. He did a slight foot shuffle on the way to the line on that play and with him assuming it was a 3rd down and looking for the bigger play he may very well have sacrificed the short yardage gain and the game in the overall.

And didn't even credit the Big Man? Sounds dangerous to me ;-)

I guess my best stuff was a little racy for the reporter, but they did allow this regarding SoCal Sports Bar behavior: "Bills, Bears, Green Bay, Cleveland and Pittsburgh fans usually are ordering a beer or Bloody Mary as soon as the bar offers it, in most cases about 9:15-9:30 a.m.," Graves said. "On the other hand, Miami, New England, Jets or most other Eastern start fans get heavy into the neutered coffees or sodas until the game is well under way."

Soon enough we'll get to the same game, I want to launch this Bill's Bar the first half of the 2006 season.

I've also left a message for Aaron Merz's family, although they're up north 90 minutes. If you can think of any other families in the area we should reach out to them-

My understading is they've lived in Los Angeles since Terrance was born.

Apparently our new OLineman is on top of the world having been issued his old #79. I pointed out that the number had been kind to a previous Bill's lineman ;-) His Parents and Godparents are joining our group of Bill's fans for the opener in Santa Monica at 3110 Santa Monica Blvd (Busbys). They'll be among other Bill's player's family members watching the game with us. PM me for more info-

I see no reason at this point to doubt Marv's plan. He feels that Pennington, Merz and Butler's upsides are better than those of the the guys drafted by the former regime. Considering the success the former regime had with starting OLinemen, we might want to assume Marv has a better idea of how to go about things?

There was plenty of the 2 TE set and it was effective on mutliple occasions. The one thing that hurts is that Royal really isn't a "get the ball" kind of TE and he was effectively covered with a CB, and it didn't even look like a big CB. He doesn't look to have very good ball control skills either. Everett looked way more fluid as a receiver. We ran from that set I think 3 times outside, and one of them was a good gainer. There will be easier teams to run around than Cleveland's OLBs and we'll probably be very pleased if we see the set in favor of the 2 back.

With "Awful Backfield Blocking" being your clue? Many who didn't even watch a game and yet stepped right up to offer blowhard commentary would have missed that!

Reyes is game- although he isn't the most "stylish" runner, he still works to keep himself in plays. Maybe I'm just surprised to see any "hustle" from that spot ;-) He plays well with Fowler- who continues to impress me. Fowler works well to either side and has improved his line calls since the first game, probably the biggest reason for our improved pass pro. I can promise you Crennel wasn't holding back his good pass rushers because it's Preseason.

I did a run through to the end of the 3rd (and I was actually keying on TE play) and then went back to review mostly the first half. I didn't pick Rickard up in the offense, but it didn't mean I wasn't hoping to see somone else after rewatching the first 3 series- focused on Shelton- to verify what I thought I saw the first run-through. Unfortunately it was even worse than I first thought.

There are promising improvements on offense for the 2006 version of the Buffalo Bills. The OLine is an improved unit. The greatest concern remains that while Chris Villarial is playing with the best upper body fundamentals of any of our starting 5, his lower carriage is not up to snuff even now in the 3rd pre-season game. If ChrisV is simply a decent pass blocker and not an overall plus in the running game, his spot on the line is in danger. If he isn’t making plays with his legs by the time we line up against NE in the opener, I’ll be surprised if he’s still holding his spot by week 4. And considering our schedule, that might prove to be too late for this team. While it was tough to watch Royal really getting worked by McGinnest and their 1st round pick Wimbley a few plays, he is sticking his head in there and has more upside than Mark Campbell offered. An argument also could be made that for the first time in years our #2 TE might actually be that high on someone else's depth chart. It’s easy to argue our WR corps is improved by moving an aging 2nd tier “star” and inserting a guy who may very soon actually fit that bill. The RAC game they're promoting is also reminiscent of some of our best Offensive years. Lionel Gates move up the depth chart appears to improve our RB depth, although it’s always wise to exercise some caution predicting running back contributions based on their productivity in the Pre-season. Thomas at #3 rounds out a versatile group. Unfortunately, one of our biggest Achilles heels of the past few seasons still remains a major handicap. This team continues to stink in pass blocking by our backfield. Willis McGahee is unwilling to use his body to take on rushers and Damien Shelton has never had a good ratio of opportunities to effective blocks. The Losman to Price TD pass is nearly done in by an absolutely pathetic failure on McGahee’s part to acknowledge and engage the outside rush. He also takes a chop block penalty for trying to save his body by laying down instead of simply confronting a blitzer. Shelton continues to be the same guy who occasionally makes a standup and impactive block in the run game while on many downs simply glancing off assignments and missing hitting his target squarely. In the pass game Shelton has always IMO been a dicey prospect to pick and and handle a blocking spot, once again for the same reason he sometimes stutters in the run game- he simply does not square up on his target like the better FBs who play this game do with regularity. The Cleveland game is a perfect example of the difference between Damian Shelton and a good blocking FB- his first 3 run blocking opportunities in the game are all whiffs. Each play offers him a clear assignment and the best he does is get a glancing check on the opponents arm in two of the plays, missing the opponent completely in the third. This is just astronomically poor run blocking- I’ll bet Sam Gash didn’t go 3 straight running plays in his career- from Pop Warner and Preseason to the biggest games of his life- where he failed to make solid contact on an assignment, yet Shelton does it with regularity. A good FB looks for something to hit on ever play, ours seems to be looking for something else. Once again we enter a season where big plays will surely be given up by the poor quality of our starting RBs pass blocking. I also sometimes during this preseason have looked at Shelton looked as if he’s the least enthusiastic of the guys on his unit. That’s a tough rap to hang on a player and I hate to do it, but I continued disappointment in DShelton’s contributions has led to that conclusion. On STs, it seems like one event likely to happen sooner rather than later is for RParrish to end up in the EZ on a Punt Return; that is if the team keeps from getting him killed returning kicks. There is clearly too high a risk factor to have a KR as small as he is taking on guys with a 50 yard full head of steam. Whitner’s short holdout looks as if it will put him a few games back- and that’s too bad. He looks like a very good athlete and he simply needs time in the starting D to begin to get the instinct to take better angles at this level. It’s almost as if you see him learning play by play right now, and that is very promising if it turns out to be true. Our DTs have had good coaching on getting their hands up on pass rushes, but in our interior I wonder how much different that’ll make? We are starting a rotation where only one guy is over 6-2, and that’s our DT with the shortest wingspan. This could be a challenge during the season.

The big story for me was the solid play of Miami's defensive interior. It might be aged but that's still a lot of meat in the middle of their DLine and at least at this time of the year they're playing very effectively.

He's getting every opportunity possible to stick the roster- I'm not sure going down on those two weak tackles is going to work in his favor.

Competition doesn't promise "equal" competition. The team added more speed at WR in the off-season, hurting KHolcomb's chances. An injury hurt Nall's chances. The QB "competition" has been weighted in JP Losman's favor from the very beginning, and rightfully so. He's the guy with the toolbox full of toys. Make no mistake- it is a competition. Something along the lines of the Bears/Pats in Super Bowl XX.

Can we umbrella this to include all public forums other than Starbucks ;-)

The one image burnsihed in my mind after last night is MFowler trying to run down the fumble recovery ;-)

I'm not questioning his tool bag, but it seemed evident to me that he wasn't in shape to pull the load he was asked to pull last week. Nothing a good month of wind sprints can't cure ;-)

I'm going to cross the fingers for the next 4 weeks and hope I see some improvement in his lower body movement. It'll be impossible to continue supporting him if he's still stationary at that point.

Unfortunatey that has a lot to do with how effective our offense is at putting up first downs. I'm hardly confident that we're ready to open the season stringing together a lot of 20+ First Down Sundays. If our O matures as the season goes on and is able to reach those numbers, the type of opportunistic defense we want to play should be kind to the guys on the interior. If on the other hand we're averaging barely 16 First Downs a game as we did in 2005, you can bet the injury list between our DTs and LBs will very likely be substantial with the primary culprit being playing fatigued. So to answer your question- if we play better on the offesnive side of the ball than we are expected to, the current makeup could be all we need for the season. If the O falters you should expect to see those names like Jefferson finishing games in losing causes. In other words, seeing Jefferson getting reps in our D this year will mean we aren't much fun to watch Sundays.

Any feel for the Marvin Lewis Pre-Season philosophy? Is he a guy who likes to see his starters get a lot of time? Is he looking to come away with a W? Thanks for the great work-

Last year at this time I was predicting a drop of 10 to 15 spots league-wide by our run defense based upon the players we had rostered at DT in 2005. The good news is that we didn’t end up last season high enough in run defense for a similar fall this year. Our scheme this year that asks for our DTs to get into the middle of running plays before they get a chance to develop instead of shutting down runners already hitting the LOS. One of the keys to playing the new scheme was management bringing in Larry Triplett, a guy who played all but one of his four seasons under Cover 2 Valedictorian Tony Dungy. Tripplett was one of the expendable members of the Indy interior since it’s first of all reliant upon regular rotation among DTs but also because they’re depth is so good that Corey Simon doesn’t even crack their starting roster. Let me promise you that in Buffalo Simon would be on the field from our first defensive snap if we had him on our roster. So the strategy at OBD was to bring in a guy versed in the defense to make the line calls. And Tripplett has proved to have an authoritative voice along the line in our defense doing just that. That said, while I hate to question a player after just our first Pre-season game, I have one major concern about Tripplett based upon that performance Saturday. In the first two offensive series I have some reservations making too much of our 1st team D against a Carolina Offense that came out like they’d never ended the ’05 season. Fully in synch as a unit, their short passes were coming out right on the drop step they were designed for. They doubled our interior linemen on most passing plays and gave little opportunity for the DT’s to penetrate enough to affect 3 and 5-step passes. There was an exception on the third Panther offensive play of the game when Tripplett got a single team by the Carolina RG. Tripplett showed what is attractive about his game, getting off the snap first and gaining leverage on the blocker- pushing the Guard back nearly into Delhomme’s feet on a 5-Step drop. While the ball got out it’s the type of play that DE’s make their living on- a QB with nowhere to move up standing behind his OTs protection. It was definitely Tripplett’s game highlight and would have resulted in a sideline throwaway or sack if there’d been decent downfield coverage. Shortly thereafter though as the game wore on, it sure looked like Tripplett tuckered out. By the 3rd series where Kyle Williams was showing off his gears, there was virtually no help coming from #98 on William’s side. My conclusion from watching all of his plays against Carolina is that Tripplett is not at this time in appropriate condition to face the number of snaps our team has him slated to play in 2006. McCargo in his first outing looked an awful lot like the prototypical “work in progress”; playing too high, drawing little blocking attention and having little impact on the game around him. On his few plays with promise he used his upper body strength well- and he appears to have plenty of it. McCargo has a lot of work to do to coordinate using his body and arms together effectively, and until he does he won’t be much of a rushing threat at this level. Kyle Williams on the other hand and as widely reported does play a hi-intensity game and has no problem at all playing low. His skill set is best at the nose where he can disrupt opponent running plays by putting 2-3 bodies down right in the middle of the field, allowing the speed on the balance of our defense to take out a running back trying to avoid that mess in the middle. Williams also looks as if he’ll be an asset on passing downs since he’s always moving forward, even if it’s on his hands and knees. Another day like that Friday and he’ll cement his starting role. And if it wasn’t clear to our coaching staff before the Panther game, let’s drop the stunts when Kyle is on the field; he’s a point of attack player whose skills are wasted if he’s forced to move laterally down the line or around another Bill. Tim Anderson remains hard to project out as anything more than a member of the interior rotation, and down the list. Physically he simply doesn’t have the wingspan to clear himself room to get upfield, and perhaps even worse he’s very easy for defenders to spin. One awful result for interior defenders is getting your shoulders and body turned away from the ball, and Anderson regularly gets knocked off that axis with simple arm pops. He’s just not now nor unfortunately will he ever be a coveted DT in this league. At the same time he surely should be able to contribute on this team in a rotation to keep the more dangerous guys fresh. This type of scheme needs players like Tim, maybe just not ideally at the investment we have in him. So there’re the 4 guys who the team is counting on as the primary rotation for us inside in 2006. I’d call it a better mix than the one we entered into the 2005 season even though Sam Adams and our other “starter” from the start of ’05 have moved on. There’s better depth behind them at both the LB and DB levels. There’s veteran skill to their sides. If Tripplett is in better condition that he appeared against the Panthers, this will result in an overall improvement from what we suffered last year against the run. It might not be saying much, but it appears that the overall cumulative quality of the position has been upgraded and the result should be an improvement in our ability to slow down opposing running attacks.