Ayjent

The Offensive scheme was a problem and continues to be a problem. I'm not arguing that there are not execution problems that are more pronounced than they were, but they sat Miller for Ducasse and the OLine has been much worse since doing so. The Defense was on the good side of the bounces for the 5-2 run, but there were certainly questions about how good they were against the pass. What is really stark though is how bad they've been against the run the past three weeks, especially on the line. And it is really hard not to make a connection between moving Dareus and the decline, and I'm not saying it is Dareus's play necessarily that they are missing, but more so that this move was not well received by the Defensive players who are not playing well or cohesively. I tend to think there is something under the surface going on that we just don't know that has cause this team to nose dive. I don't think players just automatically go from playing well to playing like garbage without something changing significantly in the locker room.

Good coaching is a lot like good players, they usually show you something good right away and are usually pretty consistent. Not always, but a good deal of the time this is the case. Coaching matters a lot in the NFL, especially in the middle of the season when the better coached teams start to make a noticeable leap when they have a good assessment of what their team does well and what deficiencies need to be masked/addressed. Frankly, I don't see that with this coaching staff and it really bothers me that the staff and FO put such an emphasis on guys of a certain ethos and character and this is how they are responding to adversity. To me, there is a difference between guys happy to be on a roster that are looking for an opportunity versus talented guys that are also high character guys. Ideally you'd like both, but you don't jettison talent just because you don't think that they'll buy in, maybe you need to prove something to have them buy in, especially after being sold a lemon with Rex.

Are players like Dareus really a cancer in the locker room? Seems to me that there may be something to losing the locker room when Dareus was traded, and possibly this miscalculation by the FO and coaching staff may have a part in this team nose diving. By some accounts Dareus was well liked by his peers, and maybe just maybe the FO and coaching staff have been in scramble mode (trading for Benjamin, benching Tyrod despite awful OL play in front of him). To me, teams just don't go south like that unless there is something more going on beneath the surface. Maybe it was that trading Dareus fractured the locker room when people started speaking more freely about how they felt about him when he was gone, or how some players viewed the Front Office and coaching staff. It could have simply been a breaking point where many issues that were bubbling came to a head followed by a bad outing and then the bottom falls out. I don't agree with coaching that puts scheme above all else, because you are always going to have to adjust not only to your talent, but also to how teams attack your schemes. Inflexibility in scheme is problematic for both of those reasons, because its an easy cop out to point to talent when things don't work, when in fact the scheme is flawed as well. And to be honest any scheme that doesn't work as well as another with the players you have is flawed.

You have to wonder if the trade of Dareus didnt lose the locker room, and the Front Office and Staff have been scrambling ever since (trading for Benjamin, benching Taylor). I would think not, but Im sure we will know more as time goes on.

Nice start to his career: 2 INTs in the first 5 minutes.

Sustained success in football is about coaching first and foremost. Getting big plays that win games is talent on the field, but over time those things equal out for and against you if talent is equal. This offense went from a strength to a struggling mess with effectively the same line except for RG, same QB, same TEs and same RB - the difference coaching and WRs. Tyrod has his deficiencies for sure, but he has proven that he can be effective if put in the right situations. The line has proven that they can block well if given the right blocking schemes. The running back is on the downside of a HOF career but still very effective and dangerous. If you can't see Dennison as the biggest issue, then you are looking to rationalize the offensive woes of the team because of your dislike for a particular player or group of players. The zone blocking schemes are garbage and the playcalling is cowardly. It's Jauron Ball 2.0.

If they don't fire Dennison and a lot of his staff, McDermott is going to have a rough go at winning consistently. Dennison is one of those guys that gets a job in the NFL, because he's had one before and happened to have a ton of talent on the team that he was part of so his deficiencies were not completely exposed or costly. That's called moderate success in the NFL, but he has shown time and again that he is a below average offensive coordinator. The contrast with the past two seasons where you had OCs that were pretty good and at least adaptive to the talent they had. You get the impression with this staff that form (the scheme) is more important than the function (the production of the players), and when you couple it with cowardly playcalling when the team gets behind the sticks (usually as the product of a ****ty play call earlier in the drive) you get the 2017 Buffalo Bills Offense. I think we all saw the problem with the Offense, but the way the Defense has imploded is even more concerning at this point.

This is the kind of coaching that you find too frequently in the NFL and it sucks. Translation for the coachspeak impaired = We're happy not turning it over and punting.

That was succinct, true and a nice sarcastic touch at the end - love it. The only thing Whaley was good at was acquiring veteran defensive talent from other teams. His offensive moves were so/so with some questionable Free Agency pickups (Percy Harvin, overpaying for Clay) and questionable drafting on Offense. There isn't a starter he drafted currently on the Offense (not counting 2017) (Miller and O'Leary are the only players left on the Roster that he even drafted on Offense). He wasn't a great GM and I don't know what the roles were of others in the Bills FO were in limiting him, but in my opinion that is also a fault to let those limitations be put on you and work within them if that was actually the case as others have suggested who defend him.

Bingo! The pressure up the middle is missing. I think Kyle is outplaying Marcel by a large margin, and to this point of the season Marcel is just another guy in the rotation and unless something drastic changes I don't see that changing. This is a team playing well, and the excuse of not being motivated by the team's direction is not really valid. I also think the philosophy of the D is to stop the run consistently and keep guys in coverage in the passing game. Nothing complicated, but its not going to generate much in the way of sacks unless you have guys that are just unblockable freaks of nature.

This game showed what a team win is. The Offense and defense were clutch once they went down 7 - a great drive by the Offense followed by a forced turnover. That's how you end a game. You knew the D was going to have a game where they had some struggles. However, they continue to be pretty good against the run and that forces teams to pass. Winston happened to have a good game and the Bucs have big, talented targets in Evans, Brate, and Howard and a very skilled veteran in Jackson. The safeties and LBs struggled in coverage, and the depth in the secondary is a concern. The slate of QBs is daunting in the next few weeks, but the Bills D is opportunistic and they tend to make teams rely on the passing game to move the ball. I'd like to see their 3rd and long defense be a bit better, but they aren't getting much push up the middle in the pass rush on those downs and I think that is key to this Defense being effective in those situations. It's why people are rightly dogging Marcel - a talented guy that doesn't seem to have his head or heart in the right place to be a dominant DT. He's not necessarily playing bad, but he isn't noticeably better than anyone in the rotation. The offense under Taylor has typically struggled in these situations and the Defense hasn't been reliable to get a stop or turnover in those situations for many, many years. And rarely have both aligned at the same time. They also bailed out the bad playcalling/execution of the first half that cost them 3 points. I've always been a supporter of Tyrod. He's better than half of the starters in the league in my opinion, although he has his limitations and I think people want Aaron Rodgers or some one of that caliber. I get it, but don't think that magically drafting a top 10 QB solves that problem. Moreover, Tyrod absolutely needs to be here until they are sure they have a better option waiting to take over that is on the roster at the same time. Hitting reset with an unknown commodity has been a folly of this organization for much of the drought as well. I didn't think Fitz was anything more than a really good backup that you'd like to come in on a good team. Yes he has enough ability to be a starter, but he is a low tier starter. However, the way Nix/Whaley handled the QB position that offseason was atrocious in every way imaginable (e.g., picking EJ, signing a very fragile Kolb, and the embarrassment of the prank call) - Shaw I believe we've had many conversations about this in the past, but is something I don't ever want to see this franchise do again - let go of a guy without a decent replacement in the system waiting to take over (it's kind of like quitting a job without having another one lined up before you do).

This offense is the product of a bad OC - yes the talent at WR and TE isn't good, but running stretch zone plays, not utilizing play action and benching good players is on the OC. They had good coaching with the same talent up front the past two years and they could run the ball. Don't oversell yourself on how good the WRs were the past two years - they were better than these guys now, sure - but not exactly a group that instilled fear.

I'll blame the QB when the QB deserves blame, but the run game and pass game are subpar in this offense and the difference from the past two years to this year is the OC. The run game is crap with Dennison, it's inconsistent and unreliable. The formations are tells, and there isn't much room for error - one bad down is usually a death knell for a drive. I've seen this show before and yes there are talent deficiencies, but playing the downs for the first down marker rather than for bigger yards usually ends up in bad offense. Good offense attacks on all three downs and puts defenses on their heels. Running on second down and long is just a prelude to a punt. If you have a good defense, then be aggressive - that's how you turn games into blowouts, instead of playing needlessly close. Tyrod hasn't really ever shown an ability to elevate his game to bring home games when the Bills need a final score to win and that pass to end the game was terrible. I get why people are down on him, but he is a decent QB that won't usually hurt a team with stupid mistakes. A lot of teams have much worse behind center and he's the best QB the Bills have had since Bledsoe, and this team with a semi-competent Defensive scheme the past two years would've been good enough to make the playoffs or in the hunt til the bitter end.

Yep and they even started Dawkins and Ducasse today to try to run that zone scheme more. That stretch zone run play is a drive killing play that is a tell from the formation and the tackle's first step. I don't watch game film all week and I know it. If I know it, I'm sure other DCs and defensive players who watch film know it. If you run for negative yards and don't even try to push the ball down the field in the first two downs very often, then you get a lot of Colton Schmidt. The WRs aren't helping, but the gameplan and personnel decisions today on the line were terrible coaching. I'm a gator fan and watching Nussmeier on Saturday and Denison on Sunday is like getting a root canal and then your Wisdom teeth taken out every weekend.

Lol. They stunk, and I'm not sure wtf they are thinking with that line they put together today up front. It's like they are more concerned with running a particular style of offensive scheme rather than one that works. The O this year is like Rex coaching the D last 2 years - its bad coaching and the wrong personnel.

If they continue to run that garbage stretch run play with this line they are going to continue to kill drives with it. Not saying that the line played well, but they've got to stop running that play. Its easy to recognize it before and after the snap, and I believe they only tried a deep throw once. The receivers are practice squad quality and It wasn't a very good game for Tyrod.

He's talented, but he never really played in a pro style passing game at Clemson. That move in the draft by the Bills FO was such a bad move, and a lot of us knew it at the time. That following Drafting EJ after passing up so many decent QBs in the prior years. I swear those two drafts had me so disappointed with the FO. You can say great hindsight, but I was very pissed after both of those drafts, knowing that they were dumb moves. Not so much that they picked Watkins, but to move up in that very deep WR draft for a WR that was primarily a screen WR surrendering a 1st and 4th. Truly baffling when they already had a decent group of WRs and had drafted 3 WRs in the past two years, had an established #1 with Stevie and traded the Bucs a 6th for Mike Williams. All of that draft capital spent on the WRs and never really materialized into anything formidable. The injuries have plagued Sammy, but he has never really established himself as a bonafide #1 option in the passing game because he just isn't as good as every one thought he would be. The injuries keep some mystique as to whether he could still show that he is an elite player, but I think it's a low percentage chance that he does

While the Bills could certainly use Watkins talent and familiarity. Let's not make any excuses for Watkins. Kupp and Woods are also new guys to the Rams. Yes those two had more time, but I think the bottom line is that he may just be a pretty good receiver but not even close to elite, and that's why his production is inconsistent.

Actually Atlanta has always received a ton of favorable calls since Matt Ryan has been their QB. I watch the Bucs games a lot too, and it always seems that the Falcons get an extra set of downs at least once in the redzone at some point in the game due to a highly questionable PI or illegal contact that had nothing to do with the play. I think if you look up the stats they are one of the top teams in 1st downs by penalty over the past several years. EDIT: Sorry that is the Pats that has been in the top 10 of penalties by first down the past few years (usually it is top 5). Atlanta is middle of the road.

Yes. It truly makes you wonder how much it is ego vs. intelligence with these coaches. I'm not saying that they are morons, but there are plenty of guys who are OCs in the NFL that just do things that is accepted as what you do vs. actually pushing the envelope and being innovative and adaptive.

The Offense and the running game didn't make the Bills 7-9, 8-8. It was a terrible Defensive Scheme that couldn't stop teams that should shoulder most of that blame. Now they've addressed the D, and the O takes a major step back, because the Bills can't put a complete competent staff or personnel together at the same time. This Offense hasn't changed except at the WR position - but I would argue that Woods and Matthews are a push with Matthews probably being a tad better receiver, a tad worse blocker. Sammy wasn't suiting up half the time anyhow. The Offense could move the ball and was effective the past two years - the difference this year - the OC. Trying to recreate an offense to emulate some ideal Offensive style without the personnel to run it seems like an exercise in futility and wastes what looks like a pretty good D IMO.

Not many QBs would've been successful out there today with that game plan. Taylor didn't do much, but he was far from the main reason the offense sucked today. The blame goes in this order - - Dennison - terrible play calling and bad play design, nothing creative and nothing to test Carolina's weaknesses. I knew what they were going to run 90% of the time because it is garbage, below average play calling that telegraphs what they are doing by formation and leaves so little room for error in execution on third down that it takes great platmaking to move the chains. If you are going to commit to keeping a D honest, and be predictable by formation you better utilize play action and bootlegs more than what they did today. - Offensive line - they got owned at the point of attack against the run and were inconsistent on passing downs. Part of this goes to predictability of the call and formation, but you can own the game if you are still successful when they know it's coming and can't stop it. They did next to nothing to move the LOS or create running lanes. - Tyrod - he's got to throw past the chains on third down unless it is so wide open that you can throw it short. That's my biggest complaint. Too frequent were passes thrown to short even on earlier downs. So I get the criticism, I do. However, very few QBs would've succeeded in impressing anyone with that game plan, play calling, not so great line play and lack of a run game. - Beane - personnel really hurt the Bills today and will all season...the lack of RB depth and lack of receiving talent is going to impact the ability to run and pass, especially if the OC isn't going to be creative.

It was a horrible offensive game plan and really bad play calling. They had absolutely nothing going on the ground and I can respect keeping the D honest, but you've got to at least run play action and call a cab downtown occasionally if you are going go that route.

That's on the OC as well. It's not like Taylor was given any chance to get momentum throwing when they stubbornly stuck with bad running calls all game.

Dennis on isn't a good OC. Same old story with Bills - flip flopping between good D and good O but never at the same time.