Shaw66

When Edmunds "missed his gap" more often than he does now, I think he was committing to where he thought he should go, and the running back had options. That is, if the backer fills gap 1, the running back had opportunities at gap 2. I'm not sure the Bills are creating gap 1, let alone gap 2. One problem with McDermott's we're-going-to-play-every-style philosophy is that the team doesn't concentrate on one style and has trouble getting really good at. I know the Bills run zone blocking schemes some of the time - they want to be able to threaten that style, as well as others, but they've never seemed to be as effective at it as teams that are primarily zone blocking. One of the things that make zone schemes so effective is the cut back behind the zone when the defense over-reacts. Shady was good at the cutback. Singletary and Moss aren't as shifty as Shady and have always seemed to have less success on the cutback. Interesting comment about the blocking abilities of the wideouts. The extreme is to be committed to the run like the Ravens, and then your style dictates getting some mobile, big tight ends on the field for blocking and the short passing game. Those guys they play at TE are bruisers. Bills are at the other extreme - Diggs, Beas and Smoke are not road graders by any stretch of the imagination. Whatever, the Bills need better answers in the run game than they've shown in recent weeks.

I understood very little about the nuances of the running game, but the problems the Bills have running certainly seem to be in the line and not with the backs. Singletary and Moss are good enough to get yardage the way most decent backs do - with good change of direction to take advantage of creases, seams, holes, whatever. It just doesn't seem that the opportunities are there. The offensive line seems talented enough, even though they tend to the finesse side of things rather than the power side. They rarely get really good push off the line. That suggests to me that the Bills need better schemes. We all understand play action - have a good running game, which makes the defensive front seven vulnerable to the run fake, slows down the pass rush and leaves holes in the zone. Seems to me that there should be a way to scheme the reverse. That is, if you're a pass-heavy team, the dline and linebackers are going to be thinking pass first. Traditionally, that means run delays and draws, plays that get the defenders to take a first step intending to rush the passer, giving your finesse linemen better angles to create the seams. Screen passes, too. The Bills haven't been a good screen team, and that would seem to be one opportunity (although defenses are more sophisticated playing the screens than they used to be. It just seems there should be something they can do to get things going. Will be interesting to see if Freeman is active for the Chiefs.

It was interesting ro see that Hughes credited McKenzie for playing QB on the scout team as the Bill's practiced last week. McKenzie is the only guy the Bill's have with speed and quickness like Lamar. Smart coaching.

Here's an interesting piece of pointless trivia: If you go to the games, you know they list fantasy football stats and other modern, pseudo-analytic stuff on the video display from time to time. One of the lists they show is the top five fastest runs during the game. Late in the game, the fastest run on the field was Andre Roberts. Second was Taron Johnson. Third was Huntley. Fourth was Josh Allen. Fifth was Josh. Earlier in the second half it had been Roberts, Allen, Allen, Lamar, Lamar. Interesting that the Bills defense contained Lamar so well that he never had a chance to turn on the after-burners.

Davis wasn't ready for prime time.

Thanks for this. Last night I tried to write the review, and I realized I didn't know much about what actually happened. The experience was really intense, but as everyone knows, it didn't have many exciting plays. No big, clear momentum shifts. For me, the game really was all about one play. But I knew there had to be another story. This Jackson stat line you recite is the other story. The Ravens only go where Jackson goes, and we saw what happens when he gets stopped: 3 points.

Walked right in. Our entry time was 6:45. No lines at all. It was like walking into Home Depot.

You get into habits when you go to a lot of Bills games. How you dress and eat, where you park, where you sit, how you interact with fans, where you get information during the game, information like down and distance, stats, roster numbers. The games are different, but there’s a routine. Saturday night the Bills beat the Ravens 17-3 to advance to the AFC Championship game. For me, all the habits were out the window. I hadn’t been to a football game for a year, and I had fallen out of my routine. Everything about the experience was unique. There was COVID-19, of course. We had to be in Buffalo by Thursday morning to swabbed. Lot 4, 10 a.m., drive through. The streets were empty. There were just a few dozen people, directing traffic through the empty lot to stations where nurses did their thing and we were gone. Then there were two days in a hotel room, waiting for Doordash to arrive from one restaurant or another, and a lot of TV watching. Everything about game day was different. First, we had to wait all day, because it wasn’t the usual 1 p.m. start, or even 4. I checked my phone about four times. Is it charged? Are the tickets on it? Are my COVID test results on it? What should we wear? We bought club seats for the game, in part because they’re covered and there’s radiant heat. Do we need all those layers? I don’t know. We never parked in Lot 6 before. Some things don’t change. The fans in the lots were fired up. They hadn’t forgotten what it’s like to be at a Bills game. They were happy, loud, energized. No lines to get into the stadium. Even the stadium name is different, Bills Stadium. Everything about it said that this is a new era. The temperature was in the mid-30s, the wind was blowing. The flags atop the stadium were flapping and waving and sometimes standing straight out, whipped mercilessly by the wind. Sometimes during the game, the officials’ pant legs flapped violently. The streamers at the top of the goal posts were blown in all different directions. Then there was the characteristic sign of a bad wind day – the goal posts were moving, swaying here and there. Those radiant heaters in the club seats are nice. I took off my parka. By late in the first quarter, as the wind blew through the club seat area, I put it back on. Radiant heat is no match for Buffalo wind chill. It was cold, damn it. The fans were ready. There was a lot of excitement. We weren’t side by side, but we knew we were in a crowd. They were excited. Some of us had learned during the week that the empty benches and the empty seat backs beside you make a lot of noise if you pound on them hard enough. If you struck the seat back with force on a scale of 1 to 5, it made noise on a scale of 1 to 20 – if you really whacked it, it was like pounding a drum. On some plays, with thousands pounding, it sounded like a nonstop thunderstorm. And then there was the game. One of the strangest games I’ve seen. Nothing happened. It was all anxiety. Can we stop Jackson? Can we stop Jackson? Come on, stop Jackson. The Bills stopped Jackson, but it always felt like he was about to explode. The great Justin Tucker, Mr. Automatic, couldn’t make a field goal. Can the Bills move the ball? Can they score? No, they can’t run the ball at all. In fact, they didn’t even try. Can Allen throw it? Well, not like Josh Allen, he can’t. If there is skill involved in throwing in the Buffalo wind, and I believe there is, it’s a skill Josh hasn’t developed yet. Still, when he was throwing in rhythm and relatively short, there were completions to be had. Stefon Diggs catches everything he touches. Gabriel Davis, for some reason, was hobbled, and he couldn’t catch the tough balls – was it the wind? The cold? His injury? Four targets, no catches. This was two tough, tough teams screaming “NO!!! YOU CANNOT!!!” all night long. There were no gimmicks, no trick plays, no jet sweeps. Both teams knew that this was a head-to-head slugfest where gimmicks could be disastrous. There had been 11 possessions by the two teams in the first half, back and forth, trading punts, missed field goals. Nothing much happened. Then, in the third quarter the Bills had the ball only once, and the Ravens had the ball only once. The Bills put together a solid drive to open the third quarter and got to the red zone. Fortunately, Brian Daboll had a play for the goal line. On second and goal from the three, Allen threw quickly to Diggs on the left sideline, and Diggs found his way into the end zone through two blockers and what looked like four tacklers. 10-3, Bills. The Ravens responded with a drive of their own. Slow, methodical, relentless. They were on their way to tie the game again, to continue the grim battle of wills. And then it was over. One play, and it was over. On third and goal from the nine, Lamar Jackson stood in the pocket and threw into the heart of the Bills’ zone defense, looking for his tight end. There is one immutable truth about quarterbacking in the NFL, and that is if you want to be great, you have to be a great passer from the pocket. You can be the best running quarterback, you can scramble beautifully, but if you want to be great, you have to be able to run the game from the pocket. Lamar Jackson’s coaches have designed an offense to take advantage of his extraordinary ability to run with the football, and as a result, he hasn’t been forced to learn excellence in the pocket. And so it was that, standing in the pocket, looking over the field, Jackson failed to see Taron Johnson in his shallow zone a yard deep in the end zone, watching Jackson and waiting. Jackson threw, Johnson took a step to his left, directly in front of Jackson’s intended receiver, and intercepted the pass. Relieved that the scoring threat had ended, I wanted Johnson to take a touchback and not risk being tackled at the two or the five. From his place in the end zone, Johnson saw a lot of running room to the right, so after regaining his balance, he took off, evading one tackler and cutting to his right. Suddenly, to the absolute astonishment of the 6,700 Bills fans who had been feeling the way Bills fans feel when the game could be slipping away, Johnson was free and heading upfield. There was no one there, no one except Tre’Davious White, who had broken upfield as soon as he saw Johnson catch the ball. Johnson had one man to beat, Lamar Jackson, the fastest man on the field and probably the only man who might catch him. Johnson veered toward the sideline, and now White was in position to provide the screen that Johnson needed. 101 yards for the touchdown. The entire Bills defense mashed Johnson against the stadium wall in celebration. A joyous riot broke out in the stands. We couldn’t stop yelling, laughing, high-fiving (well, COVID air-high-fives), smiling at each other behind our masks, hugging. I wasn’t at the Comeback Game, but this must have been how it felt. This couldn’t possibly have happened, and yet it did. It was 17-3, and the game was over. The Ravens made a couple of big mistakes in the fourth quarter (a snap over Jackson’s head that resulted in a concussion that ended his night, and a running into the kicker penalty that left the Bills’ offense in victory formation). The Ravens turned the ball over on downs deep in their own territory; the Bills offense couldn’t move the ball and Bass missed the field goal. It didn’t matter. The Bills defense was not going to allow the Ravens to score 14 points in less than a quarter. After the game, for the first time, it occurred to me that the Bills would be playing in the AFC Championship game. For more than a decade, the AFC Championship game has been an unimaginable dream. Through three quarters of intense football on Saturday night there had been no time to contemplate such a prospect. And then the game ended, and the reality sank in. The Bills are going to the AFC Championship game, one win away from the Super Bowl. Everything about Saturday was unique. GO BILLS!!! The Rockpile Review is written to share the passion we have for the Buffalo Bills. That passion was born in the Rockpile; its parents were everyday people of western New York who translated their dedication to a full day’s hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

Hey, Gunner, I'm sorry for your loss. It's never easy, but these are particularly difficult times. Her connection to you through the Bills will help over time. I know the Bills connections has eased the loss of my father, which happened more than 40 years ago. Sometime you should tell your story. Sounds interesting.

Hey Rockee - Great stuff you wrote. Maybe I'll respond more fully sometime. For now, I'll say this: Is it normal? For those who get it, yes. For those who don't, no. The good news is that as you get older, it doesn't eat you up in quite the same way. Three days ago I drove 400 miles to be in Buffalo to go to the game tonight. The prospect of the game is always in the background, but the truth is that I haven't been thinking about it much at all. I'll be completely wired in a few hours, but right now it isn't occupying my thoughts any more than the 400-mile drive I'll do tomorrow. There also are some great (?) things that happen along the way. I live in Connecticut, and my kids grew up Bills fans. In fact, the kid who lived next door to us became a Bills fan. His daughter is three months old, and she has a Bills shirt. Her ancestors came to Connecticut 300 years ago, and she's already a Bills fan. How cool is that?

Yes, it's regimented, but in some ways it's an example of the way people SHOULD behave during the pandemic, instead of the way we ARE behaving. Everything is really well organized, you can call the Bills with any questions. I had my test at the stadium this morning - no lines. In fact, I was 15 minutes early, no problem. Come on in. Zip, zip, zip and you're done. On the other hand, it's a measure of what can be accomplished when you spend money on it. The whole operation seems over-staffed, because the Bills and the NFL want it all to go right. The country is having trouble rolling out the vaccine and getting it into people's arms, and I just don't see that it has to be that difficult to do. If the Bills can test 6,000 people in two mornings without breaking a sweat, ten similar operations around Buffalo should be able to vaccinate 30,000 people a day. Do that all over the country, and we'll be running out of vaccine, not worrying about it going bad in freezers somewhere.

thanks!

How did you get a gate time? I was told I wouldn't receive any instructions at all until tomorrow.

I thought their offense was an embarrassment, and this dismissal is well-deserved.

DSB That's a nice and useful preview. I like it a lot. Good job. Thanks. These are good points, especially that the game is on Allen's shoulders. The fact is that one might say the Bills aren't as good as other teams with their top 21 on the field; it's just that Allen makes a huge difference. On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of game where the Bills running game surprises and puts up 150 yards. We'll see.

You want to be my co-author?😃

I'm not surprised by this at all. Guy was trikes me as smart, which is valuable, and accurate, also valuable. Beyond that, I couldn't get too excited about him. Not at all a good sign that guys on the team don't see enough promise to keep their mouths shut.

Then I will go straight to the posters' Hall of Fame!

The thread that will not die. I feel like Roman Castavet.

Yes. Another box Freeman can check. It isn't a move to remake the running game. It's just a move to have a player available if he might add something.

Fair enough, but I think you're applying the wrong standard. The right question to ask is who might give give you something for a few plays? Yeldon gives me the least mistakes. Williams gives me the best all round big play potential. Wade gives me explosive play potential. Freeman gives me experience and the best power running potential. As I said, you’re not going to get a really good back, and McD wants options.

I like this signing. 1. Bills didn't sign him, I don't think, for the Ravens. It's too hard to get him up to speed in this offense in one day. A receiver, maybe, but not a running back. You've got too many things that can go wrong: blitz pickups, mesh point on option plays, mesh point generally, messed up screen passes. Yes, a veteran knows about those things, but they still don't happen automatically. 2. Moss goes down, the Bills need to add SOMEONE to the roster, and few teams are going to have really good choices off their practice squads. I'm not a Yeldon fan - he'll do his jobs, but he doesn't execute anything - speed back, power back, pass receiver, anything at a level that can be explosive. Williams does promise some explosiveness, but his inexperience is a challenge. Still, at least he's practiced with the team. He may not have real time experience, but he's like to do his job fine. So picking up someone who may be at the end of his career isn't a horrible move - you need someone. 3. There's no reason to expect the Bills got Kareem Hunt or something. Anyone who's certifiably good is on a roster somewhere. Don't jump all over me, but signing Freeman and expecting him to be able to contribute makes some sense, in the same way signing Frank Gore makes some sense. He's a guy who has done this at a high level in this league, he isn't completely aged out, even if his talents have declined a bit. And, again, like Williams, he still might give you something. He might be a better and effective power back in short yardage. He knows what he's looking at running behind zone blocking schemes. Solid move by Beane. These signings don't come out of the blue. They result from McD telling Beane where he thinks he might need help, because the PS is thin. It's McD saying "give me another option, if I have to call on someone," and Beane delivering.

Good points, but I dont think Ben is having much trouble getting the ball downfield. He's made a lot of good deeper throws when I've seen him. But maybe you're right.

I have stayed out of this thread and just popped in to see what people are talking about. It seems to me there are one points to be made here and only one. I would guess the only point that matters is the what you're saying here, Hap.. Does anyone really think that the Bills coaches watched film of the game on Saturday night and said, "Milano made the wrong reads, took the wrong angles, and was late to the ball all game long"? It is much more likely that most of the time he was doing exactly what he was supposed to do as well as he could, but for a variety of reasons he was in positions on the field where he couldn't quite execute. As you say, Hap, some of it probably was the Colts having found some weaknesses in the coverage schemes. Some of it probably was that the Bills coaches thought that the defensive scheme could do the job and were wrong - they misjudged the effectiveness of parts of the Colts offense and didn't prepare for it. It's just really hard to believe that overnight MIlano became a bad player. He's smart, fast, quick to the ball, and diagnoses plays and situations well. That's who he is. Everyone has good games and bad games, to be sure, but Milano is not a problem - we've seen what he can do over and over. I had the same thought over the past few days about QBs, and it was reaffirmed last night. We all love Allen and how great he is, but the fact is that the coaches find ways to get receivers open consistently. Allen just has to find them and do what he does best, which is to deliver the ball. Allen is not asked to throw into a lot of tight windows. Last night Big Ben looked horrible. I kept asking myself why he was making such bad decisions, throwing into coverage, throwing INTs and all. Well, Ben didn't get stupid over night. We've seen him for too many years to think that Ben doesn't know when a guy is open and when he isn't. Ben was throwing into tight coverage because his coaches aren't running a scheme that gets guys open. Some of it's talent of the receivers, but more of it is scheme. There's nothing wrong with Milano.

That's all well and good, but the problem is in the playoffs the refs let a lot more go. That plays into the Ravens hands. Bills will need to be ready for a more physical game, and they will need strategies that will beat the physicality and get people open.