Shaw66

Exactly. And the reason to be optimistic is that because the margin between how good the Chiefs (and a few other teams) are and how good the Bills are is so small only marginal improvement is necessary to be the best. So, for example, would you rather be, today, the Bills or the Browns? Would you rather be, today, the Bills or the Colts? Small improvement is all that's necessary. McBeane aren't limiting their objectives to small improvements only - they'll go big every time it makes sense, like going after Miller. But all they need is small improvement to be the best team in the league, small compared to how much improvement everyone else has to achieve to be the best. Think about the improvement that is reasonable to expect: Player improvement: Allen, Cook, Kincaid, Torrence, Bernard, Milano back, Benford, Rapp. And, yes, the receiving corps will improve. Coaching will improve. McDermott improves every season, because he demands it of himself. Brady is likely to improve (altho Dorsey didn't seem to). Through film study, the offenses and defenses will be adjusted, everything will be worked on much will improve. The whole point of McDermott's process is to create year-after-year improvement in all aspects of how the team functions. If I own the second or third or fourth best team in the league, I like where I am, because I know that my team has a better chance to become the best than 25 or 28 other teams. I'm going to keep building on what I have.

Wow. (1) The defense is one of the best in the league. (2) It typically takes more than a year to recover fully from a torn ACL. 2024 is when we find out what Miller has. (3) The two biggest holes were at linebacker, both caused by injury, both players will be back, in their prime. The Bills actually have no holes, at least until there are some free agent departures. They just have positions they'd like to get better at. Safety, wide receiver. Pretty much every team is always looking for another corner back, and better linemen. There are at least 20, probably 25 owners who would trade their entire organization for the Bills' organization. Who's happy with what they have? Chiefs, 49ers, Ravens, probably the Bengals, maybe the Rams, maybe Jags. Eagles, Seahawks, Steelers, Cowboys, Dolphins, and pretty much everyone else would trade and have an immediate upgrade at GM, Head coach, and quarterback.

Beast - I agree. I'm happy with the Bills and what they're doing. I think they will continue to get better The simple fact is that, like the Patriots before them, the Chiefs are the best team in the league right now and as they reminded us last week, they ALWAYS are the favorite in big games. Chiefs showed last night that they're beatable. They're great finishers, but they can be beaten. I don't know what the outcome would have been, but I agree with others that with Milano and Bernard in the lineup for the Divisional round last month, the Bills might have been in Las Vegas last night. The Bills have been the league's best hope to beat the Chiefs for the past four years. And for all the people who think McDermott isn't the guy, I just don't get it. There are only a few coaches in the league who consistently win a lot of games and have teams that look like they could be champions. McDermott, McVay, Shanahan. I'm not anointing the guy in Detroit until he does it for a few years. I'm much happier to bet on a coach and a GM who have gotten the Bills consistently close than any guys who may have potential but haven't done it yet. (McDermott had potential but hadn't done it when he arrived in Buffalo, and he's shown he can win.) McDermott is closer to being a Super Bowl winner than any other coach or coordinator in the league who's never won one. I'm sure McDermott is thinking that he's close and he's going to do it. Give him a team that's relatively healthy in January (with his top 10 players on the field - Miller, Milano, Bernard, Oliver, Allen, Diggs, Cook, Kincaid, at least four out of five Oline, something like that), and he'll tell you today he's ready to win it all. Two Bills learned a lot last night: McDermott and Allen. McDermott learned again that the most important key to stopping Mahomes is the pass rush. He wanted Miller to harass Mahomes, but he didn't have the real Miller last month. Allen watched Mahomes and saw what real poise on the field looks like. He saw the value of superior decision making, play after play. You know that Allen was watching and thinking, "I can do that." I think next season we will see the best version of Allen. He was nearly there this January; he now knows what it feels like, and he's seen Mahomes do it. It's all coming.

I think yours is a pretty good description. It's always a question of whether the Bills can match the opponent's offense, or be as stout as the opponent's defense. Which means, in both cases, they're dictating to the Bills. And that probably derives from McDermott's philosophy of being good at all phases (which necessarily means you aren't great, or dominant, at one). And that philosophy - being good at everything, is a good regular season philosophy. In the playoffs, you need to be able to dictate. I keep coming back to one event - signing Miller - that signifies that the Bills understand this distinction. They signed Miller for the playoffs. The Bills wanted to dictate to the offense by having a dominant threat on the edge. That's a playoff strategy. Hasn't worked yet.

This is all strictly my opinion, but I think there unquestionably are strategy changes necessary for the team to be as successful in the playoffs as they have been in the regular season. Absolutely. I think winning at this level is all about how the team functions, and very little about the talent. Look at today's game. 49ers on offense are better than the Chiefs. Yes, there's Mahomes vs. Purdy, but Kittle, McCaffrey, Samuel is a big talent differential over the Chiefs skill players. In my mind, it doesn't matter. Even with that differential, the Niners aren't and shouldn't be the prohibitive favorites. It's all about how one team plays against the other team. Although there are games where one player does something that flat out wins the game for his team, in most games talent doesn't determine the outcome. I think that's true because the draft and the salary cap make it impossible to aggregate enough talent simply to overwhelm the opponent. Total talent on teams is, more or less, evenly matched. That tells me that strategies are what it's all about. Training strategies, so that players are able to implement varied game plans from week to week, in the playoffs as well as the regular season. Offensive and defensive strategies - that is, the game plans. Play designs, which also are strategies. It's not that the players don't matter, but even with players, what drives the success of the team are strategies about the kind of players you want, how to get that kind of player, the proper mix of age and youth, all kinds of stuff like that. Teams succeed by having and implementing strategies at all levels of the operation, and the winners have (1) very good on-field strategies (who and how do we attack?) and (2) very good off-field strategies about how to accumulate and train players. So, what does tell me about the Bills? They have to do some things differently. Obviously true, because the things they've done haven't won a Super Bowl. That's not just luck. So, yes, strategy changes are necessary. One could argue, I suppose that all that's necessary is better luck in the execution of strategies for acquiring players, so that the roster is better, but as I said, talent usually isn't determinative. Sure, the Bills could have different players, but the players have been good enough to win more in the playoffs. Adjusting strategies is something that McDermott and most good coaches do. This time of year they evaluate in depth how well strategies have worked, how successful coaches have been in adjusting strategies, etc., and they make changes based on that evaluation. They change coaches, or they keep coaches and give them specific areas where they need to improve. McDermott's performance gets evaluated too, so that he can change and improve his strategies. And, of course, the Pegulas have to decide whether they think McDermott is capable of leading and implementing change. If they think all McDermott is doing is the same thing every season and just trying harder, they believe that's the right strategy. They have decide whether they need to make a change at that level in order to have someone who will install the strategies that will actually win in the playoffs.

I enjoy the Xs and Os and find it interesting, but like all the other data that produces a list of which teams are best and worst in the data category, I'm skeptical. Absolutely, the offensive coordinator of every team must understand the benefits of condensed formations and know when to use them, and I do think that Shanahan tends to be ahead of the rest of league in developing offensive wrinkles (Shanahan, McVay, LaFLeur, and Reid are the guys who seem to lead the way regularly). But like every other data category, it's something that the offensive coordinator has to consider and determine the extent to which that approach is something for their team. Actually understanding the true significance of the tight formations is very difficult, if not impossible. You can take ANY data, turnovers, sacks given up by your left tackle, number of times you threw to running back, completions over the deep middle, anything, and it always will form an array from 1 to 32, with one team on the top and one team on the bottom. People tend to look at those arrays, and when they find a successful team at the top, they tend to think (quite naturally) that whatever this category is must be important to success. It just ain't necessarily so. Notice, for example, that the Bills and the Ravens are near the bottom of this list of tight formations. Why might that be so? I don't know, but one possible explanation leaps out at me: If I have a QB who is great at getting running yards out of passing formations, so great that his running is a clear positive addition to the offense, I want the defense spread, not tightly packed. Brock Purdy was 23rd in rushing yards among QBs. If you have a QB who's too slow to get you chunk yardage by running the ball (Purdy), and if all you want him to do is distribute the ball quickly, you have less interest in spreading the offense. Now, I will say that I don't think Dorsey was very creative as the Bills offensive coordinator, and it's quite possible that he didn't understand all the benefit you get out of tight formations, or he was slow to implement it. I don't know. There's also been some discussion about what's made the Chiefs so effective is the fact that to counter the best modern defenses, the Chiefs have been putting 4 receivers on on side of center and 1 on the other, and it's THAT approach that has been the big change. That works for the Chiefs whether their formation is wide or tight (and the Chiefs have been doing more tight formations). Finally, when you have three All-Pro skill position players, each of whom could legitimately demand a double team on every play, the left guard could line up facing backward on every play and the offense would still be pretty good.

He got the interview only because Rex told Jerry Jones that his father was Black.

XXV

Old Coot's thread about Analysys of Defenses is where the other videos were linked. Jan 30.

Not a lot to add here, especially because it's true that this all keeps evolving. However, I'll add one item. There was a thread, maybe last week, about how Fangio created the defense that everyone runs now that's so effective at stopping the deep balls, essentially splitting the field down the middle and running two independent zones or man concepts on either side. The thread linked to some good analysis of those points. On of the videos was about Reid countered by running a lot of formations that put four receivers, instead of three line up in one of the two halves. That is, Fangio's defense works well when the receivers are split 3-2 to one side or the other, but it can be attacked by splitting the receivers 4-1. (Note that the receivers include the tight ends and the backs, some of whom may be lined up in the backfield, but who by virtue of where they are lined up are still poised to attack one side of the field or the other.) So, worked pretty well for Reid (and worked very well against the Bills). And then Reid started using 4-1 condensed formations, with a cluster of receivers just off the end of the line to one side or another. And other teams, including the Bills, have been copying that approach. The point is, those videos about Fangio and Reid demonstrate the power of the condensed formation, on running plays to the edge where three or four receivers are clustered as well as on passing plays.

I see a lot of posters expressing a similar sentiment. I don't understand it. There are pretty much teams winning Super Bowls by simply outscoring their opponents. In December and January football, scoring drops because everyone knows the style of each team's offense, and everyone has access to film of defenses succeeding against the offenses. When I think of the Bills' late season games, it's the defense, not the offense, that has let the team in the fourth quarter. @warrior9 posted recently that in four of the Bills' six regular season losses, the last time the Josh Allen touched the ball, the Bills had the lead or were tied. That means, of course, that the defense lost the game at the end (except the Jets game, which was a special teams TD. What does that mean? It means that generally, the offense is good enough to win games. And, in fact, that's what KC had this season - an offense that is good enough to win games. What KC had and the Bills didn't was a defense that shut down teams in the fourth quarter. Just look at the offensive and defensive regular season stats. The Bills are top 10 in offense and defense, both yards and points. That's good enough to win championships. What don't the Bills do? They don't finish games. And when they don't finish games, which side of the ball is the problem? The defense. What was the problem against KC this season? The Bills didn't get to Mahomes, at all. What's the solution? Among other things, it's better pass rush. Well, Beane signed his answer to the get-Mahomes problem two years ago: Von Miller. The Bills didn't have the Von Miller they hoped for in the playoffs this season. (In the Super Bowl against the Bengals, he had 2 sacks, 3 qb hits, and one pass defended. When the Bills beat the Chiefs in the 2022 regular season, Miller had two sacks. Those numbers for the Bills would have changed the game. In fact, the score of the 2022 game was 24-20 - same as this year's divisional round game, except Miller wasn't the same Miller and the Bills gave up one more TD.) On top of that, there was a tremendous drop off in talent from the Bills' starting linebackers to the people they put on the field at linebacker against the Chiefs. Medical technology will, we hope, solve the linebacker problem, and there's a good chance we'll see prime Miller in 2024. But the safeties are on their way out the door, corner back is looking a little iffy (whither White?, Elam's last chance (more or less), and not much behind Douglas and Benford). And the Bills need an impact player on the line (Oliver isn't quite it, Miller isn't every down, Jones may be gone, Rousseau hasn't emerged, and the others are placeholders). Bills need help on offense, sure. But it's the defense that needs something that looks like a minor overhaul. And it's the defense that has let them down in January.

Plant I haven't read any of the replies, but this captures exactly how I've been feeling. The roster transition is by design. This is where the process sinks or swims. They knew two years ago the roster would be turning over, and they've planned for this. You explained it well. Thanks.

The drops mantra is the latest bogus issue to infect fans' thinking. Chiefs led the league in drops with 44. Bills were 8th with 30. Just about the whole league was at 20 or above. How many fans are on the Chiefs website this week complaining about drops. Drops doesn't correlate with making the Super Bowl. Chiefs were on the top of the list, Niners were on the bottom with 9! They were a real outlier.

No. Some fans are in win now mode, but the Bills aren't. The Bills are just building, always building. They have one of the best QBs in the history of the game. They have to win, but they don't have win now, except to satisfy the fans. There is no window that is closing.

The Bills need to restock the defense.

Well, I agree a #1 ceiling would be nice, but if Diggs returns to form, not necessary. I've become convinced that the stud #1 isn't necessary and is, in fact, a distraction. Both the Niners and the Chiefs do it without a stud #1. Lions, Eagles, do it with very good receivers but without Chase, Jefferson, Lamb, or one of a handful of others. Two studs, the Miami and Cinci model, isn't sustainable for cap reasons. Hill is a unique combination of a good route runner and world-class speed; give him just Diggs speed, and Hill would still be a very good receiver. What seems to be working now against the defenses that smother the deep ball is having multiple talented route runners on the field. Good one on one guys, for sure, but not necessarily stud burners. They have to know how to run the routes and read the options correctly. If you have a QB who can read the options, then you're good. That's what the Chiefs and the Niners do. I can't even name the Chiefs wideouts, but every one of them will hurt you at some point in the game. And that's why Shakir has been successful. A tad small, so far as I'm concerned, but a good, smart route runner who makes himself available to catch the ball often enough that he's a factor.

Whenever I think wonder what Brady is going to do with the passing game, I always seem to come back to Kincaid. I mean, the Bills need quality play from their wideouts, and I think they will get it. I think Diggs will return to form. I think the Bills will get a better receiver (not a better blocker) than Davis to be the #2. It's said over and over here, but the Bills really could use a Robert Woods-type #2 - decent size, speed, route running, hands, blocker - an all-round good football player. I think Shakir will continue to produce, but his size limits him a bit. I think Kincaid is key. His physical tools are great, but what I really like is his intelligence. He seemed to do a really good job running routes the way they needed to be run. He had a good sense of how to get open. Still, he had to spend a lot of his rookie season just figuring out the pro game, the offense, and life in the league. It's the same issue that all rookies have, like Cook, for example. I think we're going to find that with his off-season workouts and then with his training camp work with Josh, Kincaid's going to jump into the status of being a true threat. (And, as an aside, I think we can look for O'Cyrus to improve, too, which is a very nice thought.) It should be obvious to Brady that he has a special talent in Kincaid, and I'm sure Brady's already working on how to make him a 1000-yard receiver. I watched the video someone posted about why Kelce is so good, about 15 minutes. It was very easy to see Kincaid doing what Kelce does. KIncaid seems to have the same feel for the game. Several months ago some people here educated me about why "smooth" is a real thing that matters. Kincaid is no doubt smooth, and I think one of things that makes Kelce so good is that he's smooth, too. He's bigger all around than Kincaid, so Kelce doesn't have the quickness, but they are similar in that they both seem to do things effortlessly. Kelce can run almost any kind of route; he cuts and changes directions really well, and whatever his body's been doing, when the ball arrives he's ready for it. It's interesting me that the Chiefs even throw him the ball on those wide quick screens, because he can make the catch and make the quick cuts. I see all the same things in Kincaid. I'm not worried about the receiving corps. Why? (1) I think Diggs was injured in the second half of the season, and will be back to the normal Diggs in August. (2) Kincaid will become a true feature receiver. (3) Shakir will continue to be a problem. (4) The Bills will find a solid utility #2, maybe a decent free agent, maybe a 1st or second round pick who contributes as a rookie. Whether that crew catches more deep balls (more than zero) over the middle, I don't know. What is expect is that the passing game will be better. Because of Kincaid, a major overhaul in the receiving room will not be necessary.

Hey, Thurm, thanks for this. I knew this stuff was out there, but I don't do much stat diving and never have played around on NextGenStats. That's excellent. And I agree about all of what you say. I remember when the Tyrod discussion was going on, I thought Tyrod's numbers weren't good but weren't exactly a crisis. What Tyrod's numbers suggested (if I recall it correctly) was that if he were going to be average in the middle of the field, he'd have one more completion per game. That's 20 yards per completion and it's material, but still not a crisis. It doesn't matter all that much where he gets 20 yards per game, but it would be important to the team's performance if somehow the team got 20 yards more per game. And, of course, teams weren't fearful that Tyrod was going to hurt them deep over the middle, nothing like what they think about Josh, so Tyrod should have been able to get more completions in that area. The unfortunate reality for Tyrod is that he never grew much as QB beyond what he was when he started for the Bills. Some guys progress, some don't. I really think this is the kind of data that is important to coaches, not because of the yardage not gained by going 0-15 (as I noted, at a 40% completion rate, that's only 120 yards or so on the season), but because the coaches then can pull up those plays and study and understand something that the defense is doing. That is, the data allows them to ask why this happened and give them further perspective on their offense. For example, when they understand why Josh went 0-15, they actually may not be interested in how to get his completion percentage up in the deep middle; they may ask themselves, "if the defenses are doing this to us when we try to go there, what have they left open that we can attack?" Thus, the coaches may actually use the 0-15 to adjust route trees and to improve the numbers in OTHER areas of the field. As they begin hurting defenses because the defenses are overloaded in the middle, the defenses will adjust and THEN Josh's numbers over the middle may start to improve. The point is, as someone pointed out, these 15 throws are 1% of the total offense. Improving the results on these 15 throws is less important than improving the offense's results generally. These numbers may provide an insight into how to do that, regardless of whether Josh's performance on these 15 throws improves.

This is one of those deep dives into stats that I think is pretty meaningless. What are we, or the Bills, supposed to do with this data? Redesign the offense to make sure they complete some deep passes over the middle? To what end? Think about it: First, remember that all teams have gone to defenses to stop deep throws, and against the Bills they double down on those efforts, because Allen can so deadly. When teams have two deep safeties, throwing down the middle is the last place you want to go, because both safeties have a chance to make a play. The sidelines deep offer better opportunities. I would guess that deep middle throws are prone to higher interception rates. Second, if the Bills were reasonably successful on the 15 deep balls they threw in the middle, that's like 40%. So that's six more completions on the season, and if each was for 30 yards, that's 180 yards, or on average 10 yards per game. Now, I'm just as interested as the next guy in getting 10 yards more per game, but how much time should Bills invest in deep middle throws to get those ten yards? Third, has anyone looked at the stats? I haven't, but I'm sure some other team had an abysmal record on deep left throws, and some other team did on deep right throws. These throws are a sliver of the offensive attempts in a game - one or two plays out of fifty, and that smaller of a sample size is always going to generate interesting - but not meaningful - outliers. I would expect that the Bills have seen this data, and I expect that they are studying it, like everything else, to see whether anything meaningful is behind. But as I said, if there were something meaningful and if it were corrected, at best it's going to have incidental impact on production. Yes, of course, the team should improve in every area, but this hardly should be a focal point. Fans wanted to get rid of Tyrod Taylor when he had bad numbers throwing into the middle middle. Should we now move on from Josh Allen because he has bad numbers in the deep middle? Slicing and dicing data into smaller and smaller pieces rarely leads to any useful knowledge.

It's always worth it to listen to Shady. Man, he's smart, and he understands a lot, and he's funny. He was talking about great running backs. One of the things that I like about the Bills is that they have perhaps the greatest stable of running backs in the history of the NFL. I mean, the Bears have Gale Sayers and Payton, and they probably have had a few others. But the Bills had Gilchrist, Simpson, Cribbs, Thomas, and Shady. Fred Jackson playing for almost any other franchise would have been in their top five, all-time, but not in Buffalo. I never really understood how good Shady was until he came to Buffalo. The guy was a magician.

Good points. I don't really know, but I think the college coaches are the victims of all the scouting services and the showcase circuit. That is, they rely on this whole establishment that identifies, grooms, and showcases high school talent, and they don't, really can't, run a nationwide scouting operation that is turning over every stone. In turn, the people who run that infrastructure are like the sports media in that they listen to each other, and they form this sort of group think that is closed to new ideas. Spencer Brown is another example. Both Josh and Brown came out of these tiny high schools playing in remote areas, and they were pretty much ignored. Once a kid falls outside that system, the big-time coaches aren't likely to find them. They end up at JuCo or small-time schools, not because they aren't good enough, but because the bigger schools, the schools that might actually develop them, aren't looking at them. Someone called the coach at Northern Iowa and told him he should look at Brown, who was on no one's radar. The coach was on a road trip and realized he could drop by Brown's town on his way home. But for that, Brown might have been communications major at some school that didn't even have a football team. Not every overlooked kid sends emails to 1000 coaches looking for a scholarship. So, the kid starts to show something in JuCo or at Northern Iowa. It was before the transfer portal, so getting a kid to transfer and sit out a year wasn't very attractive to the kids, and the coaches aren't anxious to take a flyer on a guy who's just lighting it up in a second-rate conference; most big-time schools already have their guys, they're invested in their guys. Why do those scouting services ignore them? Well, sometimes they're just lazy. But the reality is that very few guys come out of those environments and make it anywhere. They're local phenoms, but when they get into serious competition, they can't compete. Yes, there could be a world class athlete playing in one of those tiny high school leagues, but much more often the kid is burning up the conference because the competition is so bad. I'll give you an example from my personal life. Yesterday I watched my grandson play freshman basketball. He had 30-something points. Last week he had 37. Is he a phenom? Should the college scouts be flocking to see him? Well, no. He also plays on the JV team, kids are one year older, and there he looks like an ordinary player. If I call a scout and say you should look at my grandson, he'll ask where he can see the kid play in real competition. Bottom line, kids still get missed. I love Mayfield. A rare combination of guts and a great, competitive attitude. He just doesn't have the body. Doesn't have the arm, the height, the legs. Close, but not enough.

Great stuff! Thanks. Yeah, those guys are obviously talented. I didn't mean to imply you can put just anybody out there. What I was saying is that you don't necessarily need the super studs that so many fans salivate over. You need guys who can run these option routes intelligently and in sync with the QB. That takes speed, hands, brains, but it doesn't mean you necessarily have to be all world. In fact, I think Diggs is one of those guys. Diggs isn't Lamb, but in a well run offense, Diggs is a real headache.

This time of year, many of us, myself included are trying to convince ourselves that next season will be better. Last year at this time, I was saying the season would depend on whether Dorsey emerged as a quality, creative coordinator. We know how that went. Well, it's a year later, and to a great extent the 2024 season will depend on whether Brady emerges as a quality, creative coordinator. And whether the defense gets better.

Well, Carson Wentz hadn't failed yet. Lots of people were comparing the Allen pick to Wentz. Wentz had had more college success - more wins, but when he came out there were a lot of questions about whether he could do it. Wentz went #2. On the other hand, there was JaMarcus Russell. And I think Darnold was the second best guy of the four. I think Darnold might very well have succeeded in the McDermott environment. I think the Jets quickly started asking Darnold to be the savior, while the Bills were pleading with Allen to STOP thinking of himself as the savior.

Thanks. That is really good. And, in fact, when Beane tells the story of the decision to go after Allen, it clearly was an example of what you say. They spent a lot of time on projectability. Allen had had college success, in the sense that he had succeeded at a lot of things that are important, like leadership and playmaking ability. But where they really succeeded, and the Browns, Jets, Broncos, and Giants all failed, was in evaluating his projectability. They learned about the guy, who he was, how competitive he was, how much his teammates liked him, etc. They decided he had all the attributes he needed, which meant that he projected as a star. It was great scouting and drafting. The Jets had more trade capital and traded up to a spot that was more or less impossible for the Bills to reach, and they took the wrong guy.