HappyDays

Here's a video breakdown he did today showing some of our issues. Goes for about 25 minutes.

Top 5 grades: 1) Edmunds (A-) 2) Hyde (A-) 3) Hughes (A-) 4) Poyer (A-) 5) Milano (B+) Bottom 5 grades (worst to 5th worst): 1) Boettger (C-) 2) Sweeney (C) 3) Williams (C) 4) Davis (C+) 5) Beasley (C+) In case you were wondering, Dawkins and Ford each got a C+ and Morse got a B-.

Are you serious with this? He gets hit from behind by the blind side rusher within 3 seconds. Why would he think to throw a check down 2 seconds after the snap? It's an impossible situation. An offense can't live and die on short routes and check downs. But our offensive line can't hold up long enough for deep routes to develop.

As a point of reference a 60 PFF grade is considered average. Ford received a 68.3 overall; 61.7 pass blocking, 82.3 run blocking. Don't try to make sense of it. PFF's grading system is completely arbitrary.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something any team could have had him for less than the vet minimum by claiming him on waivers. But maybe if you sign a player halfway through the season the vet minimum drops by 50%?

I don't know why we didn't claim him. I thought if anything we would be too late in the waiver order to have a chance. Sweeney is not an NFL player and Fells would have only counted $500K against the cap. Even when Knox is back Fells would have been a better #2 TE.

No, the one I linked to is a video all-22 review. I changed the topic name to make it clearer.

I don't know what happened to all the pre-snap motion fron last year. The pass rush is teeing off every game. Give them something to think about. The McKenzie jet sweeps were a staple of our offense the past two years. What happened to that?

This is worth a full watch if you have 50 minutes to spare. A few takeaways: 1) There are 3 or 4 times where Allen could hit Diggs with a quick throw but inexplicably moves onto the next read. Considering the chemistry they had last year this feels like an easy fix. 2) Beasley probably should not have played in this game. His injury held him back too much to be a consistent factor on the field. 3) Boettger and Ford were pushed into Allen's lap a bunch of times. We saw the return of some sloppy mechanics from Allen in this game, and much like the Steelers game I think it is because he was anticipating pressure from the interior. Allen still needs to be held accountable for those few mistakes when they happen. But when the offensive line gives him a pocket he is still the passer we saw last year. 4) The guards have gotten the lion's share of the blame in this game but Dawkins and Williams didn't fare much better. A lot of pressures were just one-on-one matchups where one of the o-linemen, take your pick, lost the battle in under 3 seconds. This was by far the biggest problem in the game IMO. Morse appears to be the only one that comes away mostly blameless. 5) Ford has rightly been called out for poor footwork and technique. We can now also call him out for his poor football IQ. On several plays he blocked the wrong guy or didn't pick up a stunt he was responsible for. This led to several free rushers. 6) The video doesn't specifically mention this but Sweeney is a complete non-factor in the passing game. He is not athletic enough to block or run routes. On one play he is pushed so far out of his route by the LB that he eliminates a would-be open passing window to Diggs. He is a borderline TE3, personally I don't think he belongs on an NFL roster. 7) The final 3rd down where Williams is late off the snap is one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. There is a full half second where it looks like someone pushed the pause button on him. Everyone else is moving and he just remains in his stance. This was the most critical 3rd down of the game and he totally blew it.

Maybe but why would they flip Dawkins to RT just to put Brown at LT? Brown was better at RT in preseason and Dawkins has played LT most of his career here. I assumed if Brown was getting put at LT it would be to move Dawkins to guard and keep Williams in the spot he is better at. Or maybe they have lost faith in Dawkins entirely while he recovers from covid. It is a weird move to consider but that guy has legit inside info.

If his inside info is right again, we may see Spencer Brown at LT sooner than we think. I would guess when everyone is healthy the line will be Brown - Dawkins - Morse - Feliciano - Williams.

It has. I just posted this in another thread: That level of efficiency is not sustainable but that is an eye popping stat. Knox is our best red zone target and our best check down option. He has become a complete weapon. Hopefully the injury doesn't linger for the whole season.

Yeah he didn't give the offensive line enough attention. He briefly mentioned that it didn't play particularly well in this game but most of us have identified it as the #1 problem against the Jaguars. I listen to Simms break down every game every week and the things he talks about in this breakdown he has been talking about all season. He has been saying since the first Dolphins game that the Bills offense is not clicking, that we're riding Josh Allen too hard, that we lack game changing skill players. So I think he saw this game as the culmination of everything he's been talking about and decided to focus on that. All of the offense's flaws this year came to a head yesterday. He doesn't just mean game changing WRs, he means game changing talent including RB and TE. I don't know if I would quite put Knox at that level yet but he was getting there before the injury. This statistic is telling: It is likely that when Knox comes back our offense won't have any complete duds like we did against the Jaguars. But I think we can all agree something about this offense has been off all year, even when Knox was playing. It has not been performing at the same level as last year despite returning almost the same exact roster. I don't know if Simms is right that adding Beckham would get us back there. I do think it's worth exploring.

So I agree running the ball more is not a solution. To an outside observer they see 47 pass attempts to 9 RB runs in a game that ended 9-6 and it seems ridiculous on the face of it. Usually you see that kind of disparity when a team is getting blown out all game. It's just hard to run a successful offense when we are that one dimensional.

Starts at 34:40, if I linked this right it should start right at that point. It goes on for about 8 minutes. To summarize his thoughts: 1) The Bills offense hasn't really been clicking all year, the stats that say otherwise are misleading. 2) 47 pass attempts to only 9 rushing attempts from the RBs is game mismanagement in a tight defensive struggle. Since we don't run the ball at all we're too easy to game plan against. He thinks we should at least attempt to run the ball more to give defenses something else to think about. The co-host points out our 3 highest pass attempt games this year are also our 3 losses and all of them stayed within one score pretty much the entire way through. 3) Allen tried to do too much to overcome the offensive struggles all on his own. We could have won something like 15-9 if he didn't revert to old tendencies. 4) Diggs is the only true game changer on offense (other than Allen) and defenses have figured out how to stop him from taking over the game. He doesn't mention it in this video but he has advocated for the Bills signing Odell Beckham Jr to add another game changing type of talent.

His only hero ball play was the 2nd interception. He was trying to throw the ball away to avoid taking a sack and didn't see the LB standing there. Really dumb play but if he hadn't thrown it, it would have been a sack and a punt. Not really a game changer. The 1st interception was not hero ball. He simply misread the coverage and didn't see the underneath defender in position to jump the ball. Every QB has a few interceptions like that every season. I don't buy the narrative that Allen reverted to rookie year Allen in this game. He had one really bad throw. The other mistakes were normal QB mistakes.

Yep this is a bigger problem than people want to admit. Not just in the run game. As pass catchers they are pathetic because they can't accelerate fast enough to take advantage of open space. We're running the New England offense which used to kill people with swing passes to James White. Instead of White we have 2 RBs with their feet stuck in the mud. I believe a dynamic RB would cover up some of the pass protection issues and attack the schemes we're seeing where they are weak. Beane needed to make it a priority in the offseason but didn't. Hopefully he won't make the same mistake again next year.

I don't think that's right. I'm pretty sure Diggs is getting bracketed because he is the only offensive player defenses are worried about going off on them. I like Sanders, he is an upgrade on John Brown, but he is not at the talent level of Beckham. Defenses actually have to game plan to take away Beckham. Trying to defend him and Diggs together would be a nightmare. Also I think we can get him relatively cheap and with a chip on his shoulder. The pass protection is going to be an issue this year no matter what, that doesn't mean we stop trying to add talent.

Take some attention off Diggs, who is currently our only game changing skill player on offense. Most elite offenses have more than one elite weapon. The Bills offense is stuck right now. Throwing talent at the problem is worth a try.

Off topic, but this isn't just a Bills thing. Analytics has taken the league by storm and I see a lot of teams going too far in the aggressive direction. Teams go for it on 4th down more than they should, pass up easy FGs, etc. And if you look at the scoreboard at the end it is still one score separating the winner from the loser in most games. If you're playing the Chiefs or the Rams, sure maybe you need to play more aggressive. Against a team like the Jaguars we can afford to be conservative and play the FG/field position game. If our offense isn't clicking it makes no sense to have a TD or bust mindset.

Yep I think failing to upgrade the RB room was our biggest failure in the offseason. The o-line has been bad but Beane didn't really do anything wrong. He brought back the same o-line that was capable of pass blocking last year, but Dawkins and Williams and Feliciano have inexplicably regressed. He also added two OTs in the draft one of whom looks like a knockout pick. Meanwhile with RBs we decided to run it back with the same below average RBs we had last year. I believe a quick passing game to a dynamic RB would cover up a lot of our pass protection issues right now. I wish we had tried to add one.

So who is the MVP favorite right now? Henry is out for the season. Stafford just singlehandedly lost a game. Murray sat out with an injury and his team still blew out a division rival. Dak played terrible today in a loss. Brady's last game ended on a game sealing pick. I guess going off of recency bias the MVP right now is Lamar Jackson.

You combed through broadcast footage and took screenshots to prove that the Bills have RBs running check down routes? Thank you for your service.

That would have been the play if he was given another half a second. But literally a tenth of a second after that still, when the game clock still reads 4:04, there is a DT in his face and he has to roll out of the pocket. These DTs by the way are backup caliber pass rushers and one of them is getting to Allen 3 seconds after the snap with a vanilla 4-man pressure. I think all-22 reviews of the game will show a lot of similar plays. And people wonder why Allen looked rattled in the 2nd half.