HappyDays

Okay you've presumably watched every defensive snap this year. Do you honestly feel like you have watched a championship defense? I sure haven't. I've watched what looks like a championship offense, not quite as explosive as I'd like but plenty of elements to succeed at a high level and able to turn it on whenever they really need to. The defense on the other hand looks regularly confused and out of position. They've been bad situationally on 3rd downs and in the red zone. If you're happy with what you've seen feel free to say so.

He had been itching to make that play for a while. A couple drives earlier he had a play where he very clearly pre-determined that he was going to run but got corralled for a sack instead. Did he learn from his mistake? Hell no, he said I dare you to take me down twice and proceeded to make them look like fools. That's my QB.

To be above average in red zone conversion rate and 3rd down conversion rate. Currently we rank 21st (63.64%) and 25th (42.00%) respectively in those metrics. Given the level of experience in the defensive coaching staff and the quantity of investments, I think it's reasonable to expect something like 50% and 35% respectively. Especially if our defense is designed to be bend don't break and intentionally allow rushing yards to defend against the big play. In a vacuum I'm fine with that philosophy but it needs to be complemented by strong situational defense. The timely turnovers are the one saving grace, I'll give them that.

They can't beat Texans or Rams with Lamar out on top of all the other injuries. I know their schedule gets easier but 1-5 is quite the hole to dig out of. They can only afford maybe 2 losses in their last 11 games and there's no guarantee some of these injured players will come back the same.

Yes I've been in favor of that idea. Score 35+ per game and just steamroll the competition. Make the defense practically irrelevant. The investments made over the past couple offseasons however tell you the team was expecting a different path to victory so I'd like to see those investments start to produce the desired result.

We've given up a TD on 63.64% of red zone trips which ranks 21st. We need to be top 10 at worst in that metric for that philosophy to work.

My take is that I'd feel better about the trade if we had gotten a good player with that 3rd rounder, and not DeWayne Carter who is very likely to be a total bust at this point. My other take is that I think both teams got the players they would have taken if they had stayed at their original pick. So mostly I just can't bring myself to care. Coleman makes our team better and Worthy makes their team better. They also each fit what their respective offenses want to do. I think Worthy has already pretty much hit his ceiling and Coleman still has room to grow, and I'm a sucker for high ceiling players so I'd still take Coleman right now if it were up to me. But there's not an ironclad argument for either player. It's week 5 of year 2 of their 10+ year NFL careers. Everyone needs to chill out and see where it goes.

Babich's problem isn't predictability. His problem is intent, or lack thereof. He seems to think that if you just call a wide variety of plays out of the same look, that is enough to get the opponent off balance. "Oh ho ho, last time we had six guys at the line we sent all six, but THIS time we're only sending four! Good luck Spenc- ah he just scrambled right through the vacated gap for 15 yards." You can't just call plays to call plays. Every play, especially on money downs, you need to anticipate what the opposing OC likes to call in those situations, what the opposing QB likes to do in those situations, and beat them to the punch. So when for example you face a backup caliber QB that likes to throw to his first read or use his legs, you account for it in your play call. You don't blitz while playing off coverage on his best WR as if to signal with a big neon sign "THROW THE BALL HERE." You don't drop both LBs out of the A gaps and leave a wide open lane up the middle for him to plod through. Multiplicity is great and I'm happy the Bills are throwing more pressure looks to make up for coverage issues popping up on the back end, but having a larger playbook doesn't automatically win you games. You still have to call the appropriate plays at appropriate times. The goal of calling the defense is to confuse the opponent and goad them into mistakes. Lately it's more common that we're confusing ourselves.

Coleman was good in this game to my eyes. Showed solid separation and strong hands. In fact he got his matchup CB Isaac Yiadom benched after beating him on a handful of plays in the 1st half. Coleman has become the primary WR in this offense and the snap counts prove it - he got 73% of snaps against the Saints, the next closest was Shakir at 53%. It's tough to tell how well he's performing at times because the Bills offense has to be dragged kicking and screaming into throwing the ball downfield outside the numbers. It's just not our identity right now. Palmer is a legit disappointment so far. Shockingly, Samuel and Moore each had a higher snap percentage than Palmer. He played effectively the same number of snaps as Shavers. Maybe it was game plan related but we signed him to be one of our 2 primary outside WRs and instead his role has been declining week over week.

There is also a part of me that wonders if blaming Babich for the defense is like blaming Klay Kubiak if the 49ers offense struggles. I get that McDermott is trying to play the role of pure head coach but it's his specialty and it's his philosophy driving that side of the ball so he has to take ultimate accountability.

Yeah week 1 I almost want to just flush because every single player other than Oliver put out a career-worst type of performance. But I said at the time it is on Babich to have his guys prepared and he didn't. I criticized some of Leslie Frazier's predictable scheme and play calling against playoff opponents, but he had his guys playing like synchronized swimmers. The all-22 on some of those regular season performances was beautiful to watch back. Watching this defense back you frequently see a couple defenders frantically waving their arms or pointing all over the place as the ball is being snapped. Entire gaps are abandoned. After pass completions you see coverage defenders looking around like they were expecting help that never came. We went from Swan Lake to the Truffle Shuffle. It's very frustrating and I don't have any confidence that Babich can fix it.

Yeah and more specifically it is built to play with a lead. An underrated problem the past two games is that the offense has stalled out after early success. When we have an opportunity to force the opponent into chase mode, we aren't delivering. I don't mean that as an excuse for the defense but our offense is too good to have a sequence where 4 out of 5 consecutive drives end with no points, especially against a bottom tier defense like New Orleans. And when you let an inferior opponent hang around for too long they can continue to use their whole playbook and eventually cracks will start to show in the defense.

It's no coincidence that our run defense looked great against NJ, then Milano got injured and we suddenly became a league-worst run defense. The DTs getting washed out of the play is responsible for some of the short yardage conversions, and I can live with that, but the chunk yardage runs are primarily happening because the 2nd and 3rd levels are out of position IMO. Given the level of experience at those position groups that's the more disappointing problem.

Couldn't agree more. Against the Saints Williams got 84% of snaps and Thompson got 16%... That needs to be flipped. I thought I saw Thompson getting more run later in the game though so hopefully that means the coaching staff is going to make the switch permanently.

I don't really pin this on the DTs. Dorian Williams is totally lost on this play. And having watched much of the defense back on all-22 he was lost for the entire game. So many big plays can be directly attributed to his errors. It's his 3rd year and the light hasn't come on, I think we can safely say he is never going to live up to his athletic upside.

Really sucks for the Ravens because this was supposed to be their all in year. In 2026 the following players become FAs: Mark Andrews, DeAndre Hopkins, Tyler Linderbaum, Kyle Van Noy, Patrick Ricard, Odafe Oweh, Travis Jones, Daniel Faalele, Isaiah Likely... I mean these are all starters. They have $53M in cap space but they're going to have some tough choices to make.

I don't know, they really could fall out of the playoffs entirely at this point. Especially if Lamar is banged up they could easily lose their next 2 games to Houston and LA Rams, and 1-5 just feels too far behind to catch up.

Madubuike officially out for the year: The way Harbaugh talks about it in the 2nd video makes me wonder if it is a possible career ending injury. Shades of Micah Hyde.

Here's 3 plays where Kamara gets around Bosa on the edge. Doesn't look like any of them are his fault, at least the first 2: 1st one is zone read, Bosa is the conflict defender and is going to be wrong no matter what. Looks to me like Dorian Williams does his usual bit of biting on all of the eye candy and pulls himself way out of the play. 2nd play is identical. This time it is Bernard biting on the eye candy although at least he didn't wash himself totally out of the play like Williams did on the 1st play. 3rd play I'm not sure if Williams or Bosa are wrong. Bosa crashes inside but Williams takes the same gap (notice that he ends up practically stepping on Bosa's feet) which leaves nobody outside to string Kamara to the sideline. Gap responsibility again is what killed us in the run game. Babich needs to get it figured out. It's more excusable in week 1 but we're through the first quarter of the season now and still seeing the same issues. These are not plays where their blockers beat our defenders 1v1, we are just out of position and making it way too easy for them.

I've criticized Van Demark a few times, so I feel obligated to point out that his overall game apparently was much better than it seemed live. He lost a couple pass protection reps but apparently was excellent as a run defender: PFF reinforces this - they gave Van Demark the 2nd highest grade on offense for this game. Overall rating of 79.0, 68.6 in pass blocking and 82.0 in run blocking.

We didn't bring him here to play contain, we brought him here to rush the passer which he's done. Babich needs to be aware of his skill set and stop leaving him on an island. It was shocking the number of outside runs where Bosa was the only player in the way of Kamara picking up chunk yardage. That is just not putting him in any kind of position to succeed. Yeah Van Demark missed his block. But you don't call that play unless you know the RT can execute the pull. Again this comes down to coaching putting their players in a position to succeed. And even if it was Spencer Brown I still would have hated that play call. That series featured three straight plays where neither Allen or Cook touched the ball. That's a gift to the opponent. Sanders popped a bit today as well. Nothing that shows up on the stat sheet but he had a couple quick wins that impacted the play. He is definitely still figuring it out and is behind Walker in his development, but I'm glad they're letting him get the reps now and not pulling him for like Jordan Phillips. When Oliver comes back healthy I get pretty excited about what that group could look like. Hopefully Hoecht gives us some legit pass rush ability because that spot opposite of Bosa has been practically non-existent through 4 weeks.

Games like this kind of bore me. Just horrid defense on both sides.

Yeah it was the game for Dallas because it ensured their putrid defense would give up a TD quick enough for their offense to have a chance. But they may have left too much time themselves. We'll see.

Dallas made Russell Wilson look like an all-pro and this is the best Jordan Love can do?

In the first 3 games we gave up TDs on 71.43% of red zone trips which ranks 27th in the NFL... Then today we gave up 2 TDs on 4 RZ trips but one of those stops only happened because Rattler threw a horrible ball on 3rd down. That's not exactly "clamping it." Bend don't break doesn't work when they, you know, break. The defensive metrics look okay, like yards per play we are 15th, yards per game we are 10th. But situationally it has been a bad defense. All the metrics don't really matter when you are bad on 3rd downs and in the red zone. Because those plays are what decide drives and game scripts.