GunnerBill

Exactly right. Don't sell out to stop gimmick plays. Let them have those. Stop the bread and butter.

First drive was all Josh. 2nd drive was all Joe Brady. Exceptional play calling. 14 zip.

Should have been a flag on Campbell

Well Ed has already had 3 plays this week better than anything last week.

How many times is Romo gonna say "ex-wrestler"

Wow double corner blitz

Great drive Josh. He is just so freaking good.

Should be DPI on a second look

Wow. Shakir should catch that.

That's a GREAT throw.

Just got home in time.... phew... not caught up with earlier games other than Fins loss. Letsssss goooooo Buffffaaaaalllloooooo!

It will be a DLineman, yep.

Haven't seen the game but part of the answer to why San Fran always do well against McVay is that McVay is basically running Shanahan's plays. Nobody understands that offense as well as Kyle Shanahan and he understands how to stop it too.

Yep. That's the point. Nobody is saying other plays were bound to work. But as soon as they went sneak and timeout the game was lost. There were other plays you could have called that might not have worked but wouldn't have ended the game by not working.

Haven't watched last night's game yet, but it was pretty clear to me that was the adjustment to make. The people screaming about blitzing and man coverage scream about that every week. I call it the Madden effect. In real football desperately throwing blitzes around as a last resort rarely works. My overall take is Sunday was a combination. It was certainly a coaching failure on defense but it was the case we were just out executed too. Timing up the blitzes better so that Stafford can't fake you out every time, that's execution. Players have to be better there. They have to recognise early in the game it is what he is trying to do and they have to hold their nerve to go late. And Taron Johnson just got got. He was outplayed, dominated, and well beaten. Could scheme have helped, possibly, but Taron just lost his 1v1 matchup convincingly and when one of your better players does that, you are in for a tough day. Taylor Rapp particularly struggled as well. I thought the Rams, who obviously know him well, did a good job of getting his eyes in the wrong place and then exposing him. The touchdown run to the outside was an example but there were others where they fooled him and then he was late to his gap. But the coaching is a wider concern, because this is twice now for Babich (Sunday and Baltimore) where when they have struggled early he has mad bad panicky adjustments and been unable to stem the bleeding. His more man and blitz adjustment just resulted in getting us even more shredded. It made conceptually no sense to me. Stafford wanted to work in the short and intermediate spaces and you are opening those gaps up wider by bringing the players who should be there to pressure. It made the windows for those throws from Stafford as big as anything and he shredded them. I think McVay and Monken have both set him traps and he has fallen into them. Young coordinator, still learning, but (and I know I am about the only person on this entire forum who misses him) there is zero chance Leslie Frazier makes those mistakes IMO.

Fans always = aggression with disruption. I don't think that is true. Confusion is what = disruption. The Bills didn't confuse Stafford enough and part of that was making it way too easy with their blitzes. They shoulda played more coverage but tightened it up. That was their best chance of turning the tide IMO.

The way Stafford figured it out was with cadence. He kept getting the Bills to show their hand on the fake snap. And that is cos the Bills are not exceptional blitzers. It isn't their defense. They should have played their defense and not go dragged into playing the game McVay wanted them to play which is exactly what happened. Nah they blitzed too often. They blitzed badly. And Stafford caught them with cadence so he knew when they were coming. They got dragged into the Rams game rather than sticking with what the Bills do.

Doing them when you are in the lead is not the same as basically it being your only call on D because you can't get a stop. They blitzed too much on Sunday. That was the mistake.

So yea I agree on the secondary. I don't see the Rams as a team that terrify me over the top. Kupp and Nacua are not those type of players. So I'd have tried to flood short and intermdiate zones and clog it all up. Just put more guys into shorter spaces for Stafford to diagnose and disect. On the blitzes... they did try some 6 man pressures. The issue is just the Bills are not a blitzing team. Once you are relying on asking your players to do something that isn't their stock in trade to make a difference you are grabbing at desperation already IMO.

Dunno reckon I could play 1T as well as Daquan.

I just philosophically disagree with this. You have to play defense to best frustrate the opposing offense and on Sunday that wad not to keep sending blitzes. We coulda blitzed Stafford from Sunday evening to now and it still wouldn't have disrupted him. You have to do something to affect him. Throwing pressure that he can diagnose and neutralise is not it.

I've said above. Id have played more coverage, pushed my DBs up 5 yards and tried to flood the short zones Stafford was exposing. Blitzing repeatedly when your blitzes are not working is one of the surest ways to get beat in the NFL.

Stafford tore up their man looks even worse. When they blitzed and playes man they were significantly worse than when playing zone defense.

They tried more man to man and bitzing for pressure and the defense was obviously worse when they did. Haven't listened to Joe this week but see my post above. That correlates with what I saw.

So for all the people saying the Bills stayed in zone all day.... their season averages in man coverage ticked up after this game by a percentage point, which matches what I saw on the all 22. The Bills played a fair amount of man coverage looks and they sent 5 (and sometimes 6) defenders more than I have seen them do in any other game this season. When the Bills defense gets shredded everyone immediately jumps to "argghhh it's the soft zone." Well on Sunday they absolutely did not sit in soft zone all day. They played very little cover 2, their two main coverages were cover 1 (with man outside) and cover 3 zone. The problem was the Rams guys were better than our guys. They won upfront and they won their matchups in the passing game - particularly Nacua on Taron Johnson. So when the Bills best defensive guy loses his matchup pretty convincingly it is going to impact what they can do on the rest of the defense. None of which is to say I don't think this was on scheme or defensive playcalling. I do think some of it was but for pretty much the opposite reason of everyone in this thread. I think the Bills blitzed way too much. From mid 2nd quarter they were sending a ton of run blitzes then when Stafford used play action he had 1 on 1s all over the field he liked. Added to that as has been said earlier, Stafford used cadence brilliantly all game to get the Bills out of their disguise, to reveal the blitzers pre-snap. Personally I'd have tried to play more cover 2 but creep that secondary shell up a bit closer to the line, because I wasn't worried about the Rams beating us deep, but I'd have mixed in 3 and 4 man rush, try and confuse Stafford with people sinking into zones rather than with people rushing. I think flooding the zones would have been more effective against the offense they were running rather than sending pressure and leaving even bigger holes behind them for the short passing game to work in.