AKC

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.

In reviewing the first half that's the single thing that kept coming to me- how much stronger he is than Trey Teague. He gets up out of his stance pretty quickly and only had two really awkward footwork issues, one of them mentioned by you. I have to say that on my first viewing of the game in real time I also thought Villarial looked flat, and the early runs over his back that went nowhere pay credence to this. I 'm feeling a little different through after watching the tape and noting his perfectly adequate play in pass pro- it gives me more confidence that he'll be back as an asset to the offense as we move towards the regular season. We were playing against one of the elite DLines in the league- with KJenkins back maybe THE elite DLine. Villarial fought well with his arms and kept his assignment out of the backfield on passing downs. I'll look for his legs to catch up with the rest of his game and for him to once again be a solid run blocker for us in 2006.

The inside receiver on Pepper's side takes an outlet route sitting in the flat with a DB off his shoulder; the downfield route taken by the outside wideout is also covered. The sweet spot should be on the opposite side where they've got a DE dropping to cover the short zone and we've got two receivers above him.

Peter's took most of the media blame for it but watching the Holcomb sack, it’s hard for me to pin the fault on Peters. It’s a zone blitz that’s coming at a balanced 4 WR set, leaving us 6 blockers. Our FB is on the right side of the play but when a Panther LB and DB break inside to overload our line Shelton jumps the inside while Peters does what he’s surely supposed to do in getting a shoulder in the DE and passing him up- over the top- where the FB should be to take the second shot at him. Villarial gets in front of the blitzing LB while Shelton chooses a guy 45 pounds lighter and stops the DB. The reality is that if Shelton does what the play is almost surely designed to do by getting in front of Peppers who’s already been chipped effectively, Peter's ends up properly keeping the second blitzer out of the backfield and Holcomb is given the time necessary to exploit the passing zone behind the Carolina DE who’s dropped on the right of their line. It looks like we have exactly the right set and spacing to protect against this blitz, yet Shelton's error blows the whole thing up and allows the media to leave the impression Peters did something wrong. Sign me up. I had exactly the same reaction to his pathetic feign at helping Losman out after the good hustle JP'd shown to get some room to throw, and staying on the lateral route to avoid contact instead of coming up to earn the football proves this guy is the same punk who has always been barely tough enough to play flag football.

I guess I could have linked that Ezekial article in my post ;-) The single biggest criticism I'd level at TDonahoe was our lack (or in many cases absence) of depth at far too many positions, which has led us to this point in time where the "new" regime finds itself with little credible talent at the second level of our depth chart.

I'm a fan of our current MLB and as hard as he works in coverage (granted without the best skills to play behind himself) I think he might be a major asset in the D scheme change. Working quick and hard gives the highest payout in a cover 2- to me that's pretty much London's Nom de Plume.

Just grabbing a tape at random watch the second defensive play of our 2005 season. This play exemplifies Posey's problems playing at this level- It's a second and 8 run to the Strong Side and the Texan's #4 TE- a scrub named Matt Murphy who isn't on a roster this season although he's been in the league the past 4 years- moves deliberately up into Posey's line and actually knocks Posey off his vertical balance, removing Posey from the play completely. This is the guy's career- if he's untouched he can make plays; if he's challenged he's gone. You might live with that in your weakside backer but you just can't accept it from your SS or MLB in a 4-3.

It's absolutely laughable that he would be seriously considered for playing as a stand-up lineman when his greatest weakness if his absolute concession to anyone who made solid contact on him. Get him CLOSER to the action and he'll somehow become more productive? No- This guys success in the 3-4 was based solely on the space given the outside linebackers in the scheme and the good work of other guys on his side of the ball. Traffic is this guy's absolute Achilles heel and the thought of puttiing him in the middle of the road should be funny- but somehow I'm not laughing. I'm guessing some minimum salary guy like Jason Hall puts up a much better show as an edge guy and makes the Posey salary expendable.

Plus the front office didn't hide the demotion in Spring- Posey

Let's watch that Jack ;-)

I'd frame it out this way- Aaron Schobel tied Jason Taylor for 5th in the league in sacks last season. Willis McGahee has yet to even match Travis Henry's 2003 season in rushing yards. Aaron, playing in a well-rewarded position for racking up sacks, is easily considered a top 10 player at his position and it's not unlikely that a lot of GM's would rank him among the elite 5, where he finished last season. It's hard for me to imagine ranking Willis among the 10 best running backs in the game, and even then the money for a #10 RB is less to a pretty large degree in FAgency versus a top 10 sack artist.