HappyDays

It's a great post Kirby, the quoted part is the only part I slightly disagree with. I am not one that thought the Bills should take the most pro ready WR in the draft. You have to use your top draft pick for with next five seasons in mind, not just the upcoming season. I really liked Keon Coleman in the context of that philosophy and I still do. I'm seeing what I wanted to so far - a WR that's open even when he's covered. His drop deep down the sideline was tragic but even there you can see the skills that make him such a good WR prospect for Josh Allen to have, he just needs to lock in the ball next time and not get greedy thinking about the endzone. His two back shoulder catches along the sideline in tight man coverage should be a staple of our offense, especially if defenses are going to dare us to throw the ball outside. But it's going to take him time to fully develop his skillset and learn the nuances of the position. Coleman was never a ready from day one prospect. So while I'm fine with taking somewhat of a project with their first pick, obviously I'm not satisfied with how they handled the room overall, and really that starts with how they've handled it since 2021. They've shown a shocking lack of urgency which continued this offseason. My biggest disappointment actually is Curtis Samuel. I know some think the Bills haven't figured out the right way to use him, but personally I think he just hasn't been as good as they hoped. Maybe it's the turf toe. He hasn't looked as explosive as promised and he isn't separating. It almost reminds me of Deonte Harty but with a much larger contract. Hopefully it is just a lingering injury holding him back.

https://www.nfl.com/news/raiders-wr-davante-adams-hopes-to-be-traded-to-jets-but-is-open-to-other-destinations?icampaign=npl-ros-adv&affiliateId=21181&affiliateCustomId=126006X1587360X5626499116678d14825974cb1c65988d&clickId=4868365682

Texans 30 Bills 21 Trying something different this week. I've predicted a win in every game but even the wins I predicted I was way off on what the game script would look like. So, hopefully my feelings about this game will turn out similarly wrong. I worry that Joe Mixon is the exact type of RB that will give us issues. I worry that we have no one that can get pressure on CJ Stroud. I worry Baltimore laid out the blueprint for how to slow down our offense and if I'm being honest even 21 points seems optimistic. I worry that Bass vs Fairbairn is as wide a talent gap as anything else in this game. Call it an overreaction but I'm not going to shake the Ravens beatdown until the Bills show me it was a one time fluke.

Yeah I hope the rumor is true for the same reason as you. Cooper to me is the ideal scenario, very affordable and no cap implications beyond this year. Hopkins would be a good addition too. I want it to be true that Beane is turning over every stone to add a legit outside WR.

Tua was close to bust status before McDaniel took over. Personally I still think he's a very limited QB and they have a poor OL. McDaniel turned all of that into an elite offense, and I don't blame him for Tua falling apart every winter. But being just a great offensive mind isn't enough in the NFL. Andy Reid made a great DC hire which turned the Chiefs into a dynasty. McDaniel hasn't gotten it right yet. Also I think Chris Grier is one of the worst GMs in the league. Reminds me of Doug Whaley, loves making a splash move but has no clue how to build a team.

Part of me always feels like the Bills are just used as bait in these situations to drive up the price for a team like the Jets. Nothing ever leaks out of One Bills Drive to the national media under the current regime so I want to believe this is true but deep down I don't.

McDaniel's problem is he can't get the defense right. To be a head coach in this league you have to get both sides of the ball figured out, and their defense has been abysmal at times. And look at the Bills dominance in the division from Miami's perspective. Every time they have a big game against us they fall apart, or the one time they beat us it ultimately didn't matter in the final standings. At this point he is just an elite offensive mind not a great head coach. This year he got hit by bad circumstances more than his own failures, but even still we were blowing out his team before Tua's concussion and at a certain point there are no excuses you just have to find a way to overcome your division rival.

Joe Buscaglia's take, for Athletic subscribers: He surprisingly doesn't grade any of the OL too badly. He feels that the OL problems were a result of confusion and poor preparation more than individual blocking losses. The biggest player problem he identifies on offense is WR separation. He points the finger at Hollins, MVS, and Samuel as the worst culprits. Mentions Coleman too but says Coleman has at least done a good job of making catches without getting great separation, whereas the others have been almost non-factors as pass catchers. So his take on offense is somewhat different from Joe Marino's. He thinks the OL issues are entirely fixable with practice and preparation, but the WR separation is a real problem with no immediate solution other than giving Shakir and Kincaid the bulk of targets moving forward.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41567922/sources-jets-saints-high-davante-adams-trade-wish-list I don't really expect us to be a player in this, I'm just glad the Chiefs aren't expected to be in on it either. If he gets traded to the Jets so be it. That is a really stupid move for them to make and it will only make their inevitable offseason blowup that much more entertaining.

I'd love to see the Bills do this but I need to know what the cap implications would be. You'd think any team would be up against the cap at this point in the season so maybe the Raiders are willing to eat some of his salary to push the trade through? Can his future cap hits be reduced with a restructure or extension?

I mean it will help for sure. But I'm not convinced getting all of our players healthy is going to solve what I consider to be more fundamental issues on that side of the ball (players and coaches included). Nor do I expect our defense to enter the playoffs fully healthy considering that's never happened before under McDermott. So I think it will take 30+ points in every game past the wildcard for us to have a real shot. And that will have to come from TDs, not FGs... Man the more I think about it the more I revert back to my offseason feelings that we are a guaranteed also-ran this season. In the past I've usually come away from losses 2-3 days later feeling better about the team and feeling like the loss didn't reveal any fundamental flaws. Like the more I talk and read about it the better I feel. This is the first time in the McDermott era I am getting the opposite feeling. The more I talk and read about this loss, the worse it makes me feel.

Also I'm not convinced we have true complementary football going... I know the Chiefs from last year are the epitome of the "small ball" philosophy. They made it work. But they had a defense that can shut teams down in an ugly game while their offense figures it out, and they had an elite kicker that is almost automatic within 55 yards. We have neither. So we have a defense that realistically needs us to score 30 points against any decent opponent to have a chance, we have a kicker that can't be trusted at all, and we have an offense that has to execute 10 plays to perfection to have a successful TD drive. It is the definition of low margin for error football. So yeah when everything goes right against a soft opponent we are going to demolish them, but the moment any adversity hits and we're dragged into a real battle we aren't remotely built for that sort of game script. Which is worrying because that is playoff football in a nutshell.

Yeah but the point is that Allen in the past would look in Hollins direction first and see one DB flat footed and the FS with his back turned and he would throw it out there 100% of the time. Whereas now he is looking to the sticks first and picking up the easy 1st down. And it's not like Allen has lost his fastball (literally). The deep pass that Coleman dropped was an absolute dime. We just aren't really trying to push the ball to that area of the field.

Wow that is stark to see on the tape. And think of all the 2nd and shorts where we are just running up the middle or an even more mind boggling QB sneak... There has to be a better balance between being risk averse and being big play averse. I hope Brady is seeing this stuff on film and they take the leash off of Allen a bit. Congrats, you successfully got him to throw zero INTs through the month of September. Time to open it back up now.

They are scheming the reads low to high now. For better or worse that's the new philosophy. They've gotten away with it until this game because of great YAC production and great 3rd down conversion percentage. In this game Baltimore shut the YAC down and we threw away too many 2nd/3rd and short opportunities with poor play calls and poor execution. Everything we've been getting away with on offense kind of snowballed on us all at once and it produced a totally nonfunctional offense except for one unicorn play. I don't know that the solution is to change the entire structure of the offense. Brady has to do a better job being ready to adjust to defenses that are dictating terms, the OL needs to be way better at handling pressure looks, and the pass catchers need to execute as well as they were in the first few weeks. With this offense's low margin for error a single drop or protection breakdown could be an immediate drive killer. If they want to change the structure of the offense they will need to add a legit outside WR.

That's the prevailing thought but is WR really a need for them? They have a #1 in Garrett Wilson (I know his chemistry with Rodgers hasn't fully developed yet, but still) and paid good money for Mike Williams. They need offensive line, offensive line, and more offensive line.

I consider that play a coaching mistake too. Reminds me of the 83 yard Breece Hall run against us last year. The defense was not aligned correctly... Ravens have heavy personnel to the right of the formation but our LBs are aligned to the left. As a result we didn't have every gap covered and the Ravens easily got to all their blocks, and all Henry had to was run forward in a straight line through wide open space. That's a coaching 101 failure. I'm kind of surprised McDermott didn't see it and call a timeout. Annoying to have to call a timeout on the 1st play, but better than letting the Ravens just get that play off when we weren't in the correct alignment.

Hopefully they don't trade him to their division rival...

But that strategy worked... Two 3 and outs as soon as we changed it up. That needed to be the plan coming into the game IMO. So what if he got a lot yardage on one play three drives in? He got an 87 yard TD on the first snap the way that we played it. I said it in the score prediction thread - the one way the Bills lose is if they let Derrick Henry take over the game. He took over the game from the first snap and they never looked back. The book on Lamar Jackson is force him to drop back and throw outside the numbers. When we did that we didn't dominate them by any means but we forced a few mistakes and we got them off the field. Maybe none of it would have mattered anyways because the offense was so awful. I guess I give a little more grace to Brady (other than the trick play) because the Ravens threw some things at us that we hadn't seen yet. It is still early in the season and the OL should gain more chemistry and be more prepared to deal with exotic pressure looks as time goes on. I take it as hopefully a learning experience for Brady where he'll develop some counters to that style of defense, which we'll need against the Chiefs. But for the defense I find myself giving the coaches very little grace, even with the personnel issues. We came into the game knowing exactly what the Ravens wanted to do and we made it easy for them. 5.57 yards before contact per rush... And the Ravens are known to have issues up front. So that is primarily a scheme issue, not a personnel issue IMO.

I think the idea is that you just have to take your chances and not let the Ravens dictate the game. Even given the personnel issues, if they're going to dominate you, at least let it be on your terms. I mean the only time our defense ever really won reps in this game was when Lamar had the ball. He almost threw a terrible INT that got saved by Agholor. His fumble was a huge momentum shift that gave us life. The first play of the 2nd half we blitzed him and he foolishly drifted back and ended up taking an intentional grounding penalty which killed the drive. Yeah you are going to get burned by him sometimes, but that's better than letting Derrick Henry get a full head of steam before you even get a hand on him all night long. You've said it yourself, the Ravens don't have outside WRs. Our game plan didn't even try to punish them for it. Our whole defensive philosophy is to invite the opponent to pick up cheap yards but don't give up any big plays and hunker down in the red zone. That plan doesn't work when the opponent is rushing with the type of efficiency the Ravens were. Eventually you have to just force the issue, and if you go down swinging so be it.

Joe breaks down losses better than anyone else in the Bills media sphere. I highly recommend listening to the entire episode. Here are my notes: -Joe was blown away (in a bad way) by our plan on defense. He points out that the Ravens ran the ball out of heavy personnel 82% of the time. The Bills responded by giving them light boxes on 41.2% of rushing plays... Heavy boxes on only 8.8% of rushing plays... Derrick Henry was getting 5.57 yards before contact, and the Ravens as a whole were gaining 8.0 YPC, but we never adjusted. And this was coming off a week where the Ravens rushed for over 270 yards against Dallas so it's not like their offensive game plan was a big shocker. Our defensive game plan gave the Ravens the exact game script they wanted. -Joe says the Ravens also took advantage of our defensive line tendencies. We run a penetration style defense and the Ravens repeatedly invited Ed Oliver to get up field before wham blocking him out of the play. Again Joe blames defensive coaching for never adjusting to get away from our tendencies, which made things too easy on the Ravens. -Overall on defense he says he wishes some of the players at all levels played better, but he mostly blames the coaches for putting the players into positions where they couldn't be successful. He says Derrick Henry is obviously a great player, but that any RB could have ripped off his two biggest runs where we didn't even lay a finger on him. We needed to force the Ravens to run their offense through the passing game, and instead we gave them easy opportunities to run against light or neutral boxes and they gashed us all night long because of it. -On offense Joe doesn't have as much to say. His big takeaway is that the failures on offense were less about pass catchers uncovering, and more about complete breakdowns in the protection scheme. He points out the Ravens only blitzed 25% of the time, but the threat of the blitz forced us to max protect so frequently that we were sometimes sending 2-3 pass catchers into 5-6 coverage players. The OL did an awful job of passing rushers off which led to too many jailbreaks before routes could develop. So those are his takeaways. Less on the players, more on coaching. On defense we were stubborn and decided to just "do what we do" instead of adjusting our style for the opponent. On offense Brady did not have his players ready to deal with any of the Ravens pressure looks and he never found any answers. We got out coached in pretty much every facet of the game and it showed up on the scoreboard. One positive takeaway - all of these issues are solvable. Failure to execute is a tough problem to figure out in the middle of a season, but failure to gameplan and adjust is entirely fixable if the coaches hold themselves accountable.

Our weakness is WRs that can make catches downfield and outside the numbers. Coleman is not ready for that sort of role right now.