Shaw66

I try to respond to people who post about the Rockpile Review, but I was away from the computer all day yesterday and didn't get a good chance to read what everyone has said. I still haven't read all the posts, but I intend. In general, I don't think the sky is falling. It could be, but I doubt it. I saw a couple of comments about elite talent. I agree with whoever said the Bills have done fine in the elite talent talent, getting White, Allen, Edmunds, Oliver, and Diggs with first round picks since McBeane arrived. Poyer, Hyde, Norman, Brown, Beasley are all just a notch below. Milano, of course. More troubling to me, also picking up on something someone said, is that what's winning this season is tough, hard-nosed hitting, and the Bills look much more like a finesse team. San Francisco and Tennessee and the Chiefs (at least the Bills) are pushing people around. The 40ers receivers catch the ball and actually seem to be looking for people to hit. At its core, football is about hitting, and if you can't stand your ground and give as good as you get, you're going to blown off the field. Back to personnel, where Beane's work seems to have been less than stellar is on the lines. I think we all now can see what Star does for the defensive line. He was the only true one-technique guy they had. Phillips is a tweener and may not be able to contribute either at the one or the three. Without Star and another tough guy in the middle, the offenses are free to attack anyplace along the line, and I think that's when teams begin to be able to out-scheme the Bills. It's a long season. Yesterday I was recalling how in the Kelly years, the Bills often would have difficult games, including losses. It's a tough league and it's very unusual to be consistently dominant. The objective is to be good in November and December and to make the playoffs, and the Bills are still well-positioned to do that. Good teams win some games against good opponents (Rams, Raiders), lose some (Chiefs, Titans), and win the games they should win (Jets, Dolphins). A win against the Jets is critical. Getting to 5-2 as October ends positions the Bills nicely for the second half of the season. On top of that, as I noted last week, McDermott's teams always seem to need a reset at midseason, and we seem to be at that point again. Finally, I've said all along that 2021 was the target season, and I still think that's the case. Allen will be a mature NFL starter, and the Bills will once again have added some talent at some positions (ideally along the lines). The sky isn't falling.

Tua must be looking awfully good in practice. Really hard to imagine that he is ready, but the coaches see something. Gailey wont fo away from Fitz without good reason. This may be the end for Fitz. I'd be pretty discouraged if I were he. Maybe Gailey convinces him to come back next year to mentor Tua from the bench. Love it if he would replace Barkley.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, that's true this morning. Plus Star. The defensive line last season could stand it's ground. Not this season.

The Bills lost to the Chiefs on a raw, rainy Monday night in Orchard Park, 26-17. The Bills are now 4-2, a game ahead of the Dolphins in the AFC East, and they look like they’re headed to the middle of the NFL pack. We tend to want to make definitive statements about teams – “they’re good,” “they’re bad,” “they’re building” – but the most that can be said today about the Bills is that they are evolving. It’s survival of the fittest in the NFL, and if the Chiefs game is any indication, the Bills need to adapt. What happened in the NFL in the early part of the 2020 NFL season is now clear: Several teams, including the Bills, were able to throw the ball all over the field, any time they wanted, wherever they wanted. It was exciting, but we should have realized it wasn’t going to last. Teams adjusted. The adjustment was to play coverage; keep one or two safeties back, flood the defensive backfield with defenders. Defenses said “you will NOT beat us with that passing game. You may beat us some other way, but not throwing the ball like that.” The Raiders did it to the Chiefs last week, the Titans did it to the Bills, everyone’s doing it to the Cowboys. The Bills did it to the Chiefs, and the Chiefs did it to the Bills. Each said to other, “Find a different way to win.” If you can’t win throwing, all that’s left is running. Running means controlling the line of scrimmage. The Chiefs totally controlled the line of scrimmage against the Bills. The Chiefs found a way to win. The Bills need to adapt. There’s not much to say about the game that wasn’t obvious to anyone who saw it, but I’ll give you my take aways. 1. The front four was dominated by the Chiefs all night. The game film could be used as a training film for offensive linemen. It truly was a clinic. It wasn’t simply that the Chiefs over-powered the Bills; they out-finessed the Bills. They knew exactly how the Bills defense attacked the run, and they took advantage of the Bills strategy. Chiefs linemen consistently took the correct angles to create running lanes, and there was nothing the Bills could do about it. Every upcoming opponent will see it on film. The Bills have to adapt, quickly, or they will get run over. 2. Edmunds made some poor decisions in the middle, often getting caught in the wash, choosing bad angles, but it’s tough to blame much on him. He led the team in tackles, primarily because it would have been hard not to – running backs were coming at him all night. 3. Singletary and Moss would have gone for over 200 yards running behind the Chiefs’ offensive line; unfortunately, they had to run behind the Bills line. It was tough yardage all night. It’s easy to tell when the Bills running game isn’t working – they resort to running Josh Allen. When Allen gets designed runs, it means Brian Daboll has run out of answers. Allen led the team in rushing, not because he had a couple of 30-yard scrambles, but because he took the pounding that running backs ordinarily are asked to take. That’s not a formula for success. 4. Despite the numbers, Allen wasn’t bad passing. Yes, he missed badly on a couple of throws early in the game. (Troy Aikman was classic. He blamed the early misses on the reeemergence of Allen inaccuracy, but as soon as Mahomes, the golden boy, missed badly, it was because of the weather.) After the early misses, Allen had bad drops by Brown and Kroft, and then he got going. He threw two spectacular deep balls to Diggs, one that almost drew a penalty and one that did. His touchdown pass to Diggs was a pinpoint throw after a good scramble out of the pocket. In fact, Allen worked well in the pocket all night, avoiding the rush and finding the right targets His inteception was a desperation throw with the clock running out. The Bills still have their franchise quarterback. 5. The Bills didn’t play with the poise that Sean McDermott expects of his team. The successive unnecessary roughness penalties from White and Poyer were surprising, two veterans trying to fire up their team with physical play, two veterans out of control. Diggs taking a penalty after dawdling back to the line of scrimmage late in the game was ominous; the first sign this season of the Diggs who frustrated the Vikings. 6. And yet, with all that went wrong, with all that was so disappointing, the Bills were in this football game from start to finish. They were the lovable losers of the Dick Jauron era. The Bills scored first. The Bills escaped the first half down only three (and would have been tied, but for Bass’s bad misfire on the last play). They held the Chiefs to a field goal in the second half when a TD would have ended the game. They answered immediately with a six-play 75-yard drive to get back within 6. That was not a garbage-time score; that was the time of the game when Andy Reid asked his team to win the game with a stop; instead, the Bills blew away the Chiefs for the score. Then the Bills forced a fumble, and for thirty seconds, until we saw the replay, it seemed like the Bills would steal the win, despite the Chiefs’ dominance. The fumble was overturned, the Chiefs marched downfield one more time and kicked the field goal to end it. The Bills must adapt. On the fly. 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.

Well, it's just semantics. He wasn't "on" all day. His throws weren't always as accurate as they've been. Some of his throws simply had too much pace - one got to Diggs faster than Diggs expected, and the high ball to Knox also had some pace that may have surprised him. Yes, Allen made some good throws - a lot of them, actually, but when I say he was "off" all day, what I mean is that he wasn't sharp.

I agree. Allen was off all day. He didn't show the precision and command we had seen earlier. As for Roberts, it's constantly amazing to me that some guys just have it and others don't. You'd think that after years of practice by a world-class athlete, that catch would be routine. Even the best don't make that catch every time, but when that happens to the best, it's a surprise. When it happens to Roberts, it's just another ball going off his hands. Brown would have made a difference throughout the game; he would have made a BIG difference on that play.

Didn't see the Falcons news, but I can imagine. Someone suggested that the NFL will add a week at the end of the season and use that to clean up whatever they have to. I'd guess that that week already is deep into the planning stages. There are going to be Saturday games, Thursday night doubleheaders. They'll juggle and juggle to get every game on TV.

Well, the offense wasn't good. Eliminate the drops and pre-snap penalties, and the Bills still couldn't throw beyond 10 yards and couldn't run at all.

I agree absolutely, and I don't blame them at all. When your job is to grow and protect the enormous revenue stream they manage, their decisions are going to be driven by the money, period. The stain, as you say, must be avoided at all costs. So, for example, the NFL completely dissed Kaepernick until this year, when his message threatened to impact the revenue stream. All about the money. Do they try to make the schedule fair? Sure, for plenty of obvious reasons. But you know they're telling the owners that the schedule can't be perfect, and they're telling the owners this year not to complain about anything, because the league is fighting to preserve, - ready? - the money for this year and beyond.

Yes, $$$. That's why a primary objective is to play all the games. They lose a lot of money if they lose a game. And they lose money if they don't reschedule to the best times.

Well, I think you're looking at this wrong way. I mean, what you say is true, but you misperceive what is important to the league. The primary objective is not to be fair to the teams. There are two primary objectives: Keep everyone healthy, and play all the games with as little disruption to the schedule as possible. There is punishment for teams that have positive tests. Every season some teams have good schedules, some teams have lousy schedules. It's inevitable. This season, it's necessary to adjust the schedule, so who has a good schedule and who has a bad schedule is changing in the middle of the season. It's unprecedented, but trying to preserve someone's sense of fairness in the schedule is NOT very high on the League's agenda. Bottom line: Everyone plays 16 games, and the teams with best records make the playoffs. Want to go to the playoffs? Then win the games the League gives you to play.

Smash mouth is a winning formula.

I agree with this. One big question in this game, in the other rescheduled games, is how each team will handle it. I agree that the situation was easier for the Titans to handle well, because they had that anticipation, and they had something to prove. But that doesn't explain why the Bills seemed to have lost focus so badly. The penalties, Allen's second interception, the dropped passes. I didn't expect those problems.

All the whining about the refs is misplaced. On the broadcast they explained that theLJ is supposed to leave the line of scrimmage on a passing play. That's his job. On the replay they have to have CLEAR EVIDENCE that the call was wrong. As much as it may have looked like he was over the line, it was impossible to tell exactly where the line was or whether some part of his body was on the line. Just couldn't tell. (Just like the phantom INT against the Rams. Call on the field was INT, and there was no evidence that the ball wasn't intercepted. It was pretty obvious what happened, but not evidence.) Williams was just stupid and wrong on the procedure penalty. I thought on o lineman moved when Epenesa jumped. I too, have my doubts about the PI calls, but the point someone else made is the key point - officiating was not among the top ten reasons the Bills lost.

The Bills lost to the Tennessee Titans on Tuesday night – yes, Tuesday night – by a score of 42-16. In some respects, the game wasn’t as lopsided as the score, and in other respects it was. Sean McDermott’s Buffalo Bills seem to have some of these games, games where all of the progress of the previous weeks vanishes, games where you wonder how this team will ever win another game. There probably is some explanation, and the explanation probably has something to do with how McDermott’s process works. I understand. I trust the process. That doesn’t make it any easier emotionally as Bills fan to go through another mid-season blowout. It’s distressing every time it happens. The story of the Bills’ loss to the Titans is filled with all of the usual reasons for the collapse: Turnovers, penalties, game planning, injuries, rookie mistakes. Everything went wrong and still, to the Bills’ credit, they kept fighting and weren’t all that far from a win. Huh? 42-16 and they weren’t far from the win? I mean it. Beneath all of the bad things that contributed to the loss was a good football team. The Bills ran more plays than the Titans, gained more yards than the Titans, and were more efficient on third down. Early in the game, things looked good for the Bills. After the early turnover and Titans’ touchdown, the Bills showed they could take a punch. They came back with a beautiful drive of their own, converting multiple long third down challenges to get into the end zone. It looked like they were imposing their will on the game. Instead, the Titans kept punching, and the Bills just couldn’t match them. The Bills often seemed like they were ready to break out and take over the game, but the Titans defense never let them. The Titans defense was textbook bend-don’t-break. They forced the Bills to dink and dunk all the way up the field, to play errorless football for long drives if they wanted to score. Sometimes the Bills made it to paydirt, but often some mistake killed the drive. For their part, the Bills defense forced the Titans into the same game. The Titans just didn’t make the mistakes the Bills did. And the Bills couldn’t stop the Titans. After the Bills went three and out from their own ten and got, effectively, an 80-yard punt from Bojo, the Titans did what the Bills couldn’t – march 90 yards for the TD. (Bojo, of course, also contributed to the loss, badly outkicking his coverage earlier in the game, giving up a 40-yard return that led to a score.) Fundamentally, the Titans shut down the Bills mid- and long-range passing game. They kept “everything in front of them,” as the saying goes, and forced the Bills to succeed in the short passing game and the running game. And, in fact, they did succeed, pretty well, in the short passing game. Allen completed 63% of his passes and would have completed a half dozen more with a little more help from his receivers. Diggs, Davis and Knox all missed catchable balls, and Roberts could have bailed Allen out on his first interception. That’s not to say that Allen was sharp; he wasn’t, but he wasn’t so bad that with a little bit better execution the result couldn’t have been different. The running game is what killed the Bills. Whatever it was the Titans were doing in the defensive backfield, it was designed to stop the Bills’ downfield passing game. The only way to do that is by committing players to defend downfield, and that commitment is an invitation to run the ball. The Bills couldn’t do it. Without an effective running game, the Bills were forced into a short passing game, which they did pretty well, but not well enough. Look at those keys to the loss: Turnovers: It may be too simplistic to say the Bills lost because of the turnovers, but it’s true. Three turnovers, three touchdowns, three missed scoring opportunities. The first put the Bills in an immediate hole. The second ended a productive drive that could have made the game 21-17 in the middle of the third quarter. Instead, the Bills quickly were down 28-10, and the situation was desperate. Roberts’ fumble just was the beginning of the Titans’ celebration. The Bills may still have lost, but the game would have been completely different without the turnovers. Penalties: The Bills looked like their heads were not in the game. Presnap penalties; one per game is not good, but you can live with it. Multiple presnap penalties is unacceptable. Two pass interference penalties on Norman. Frankly, I liked what I saw from Norman. I wasn’t at all sure about the first PI, and CBS didn’t replay the second one, but they weren’t killers. Roughing the passer on third down, on the other hand, was a four-point mistake at a critical time. Game planning: Brian Daboll, what happened to your passing game? The Bills were unprepared to be shut down like that. They didn’t have answers to get the ball deep, and they didn’t have answers on the line of scrimmage to get the running game going. The game was close until late in the third quarter, but already by then the Bills were passing on two plays for every one run. There had to be opportunities to run, but Daboll couldn’t find them or hadn’t prepared his team for them. Injuries: The Bills pass defense is not the same without Milano and White. Taron Johnson was exposed, I suspect because he wasn’t getting the help he usually could expect from the linebackers and safeties, because they were trying to help the corners deal with the wideouts. It was a mess back there. And Brown’s absence probably explains some of the problem with the passing game. Roberts and McKenzie, for whatever reasons, aren’t credible deep threats. The Titans focused on stopping Diggs, and no one else was able to run free anywhere in the middle of the defense. Eventually, the Bills got around to finding Beasley short, but that wasn’t going to change the outcome. That was taking what the Titans were happy to give. Rookie mistakes: This category is reserved for Josh Allen (although Epenesa gets honorable mention for getting drawn offside. Pure lack of focus.) Allen actually played pretty well, including an absolutely beautiful run for a first down, but his second interception, probably the play that decided the game, was a classic rookie mistake. CBS didn’t show enough replays, but it looked like Davis may actually have been open up the sideline. In other words, the decision to throw to Davis may not have been bad, but Allen never should fail to see the defender underneath. He has to see that guy and adjust the throw – or not throw it at all. That was the point in the game where everything changed, the point where the kid pulls his team back into the game or puts his team in a big hole. Allen was a rookie on that play. A couple of comments about the Titans. It’s hard not to be impressed with Mike Vrabel. His team always is full of fight, and always is well prepared. I hate saying it, but he clearly learned from the master, and his teams will continue to be competitive in the NFL. I’ve always liked Tannehill. He’s smart, he’s athletic, and he can throw. He did an excellent job against the Bills – not spectacular, but effective all night long. Derrick Henry. I’ve noticed this and said this before: in terms of running style, Derrick Henry looks more like Jim Brown than any runner I’ve seen. He runs straight up. He has relentless power, always moving forward, always challenging the defense to get him to the ground. He has the speed to get to the edge. He’s a big-time threat. The Bills stopped Henry from beating them, but it was their commitment to stopping Henry that allowed Tannehill and others to get outside the tackles for easy gains or pass completions. The Titans commitment to the run gave them the run-pass balance that the Bills lacked. It’s a long season. It’s a process. For some reason, the process includes a mid-season meltdown or two. In the past, McDermott somehow has been able to get everything back on track, to continue to improve the team and how it competes. He’s faced with that problem again. The Chiefs are waiting, and they are hungry. 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.

I agree. It's all about being good in November and December, and we've got a few weeks before we're there. Plus, teams are developing even more slowly this year, because of COVID. It's fun to talk about the power rankings now, but it's all just guess work.

I agree. I don't think the B ills are the #1 team in the league, but I doubt Seattle is. Defense wins championships; Seattle's defense isn't nearly good, and the Bills aren't there yet, either. I'm really interested in whether we'll see defensive improvement tonight. Nobody goes 16-0, so the best team in the league is going to have losses, and they are going to have close games. The Chiefs look really good to me.

Matt Ryan is one of those guys who makes being a GM so difficult. Ryan is essentially a top-15 quarterback. He's been very good since he came into the league. Having said that, he isn't a transcendent talent who just by his presence on the field makes his team a contender. Roethlisberger is one of those, Ryan isn't. With a guy like Ryan, if everything else falls together just right on the team, you can win a Super Bowl, but it's all got to be just right, because Ryan isn't going to win the Super Bowl by sheer force of his will. We saw that when they lost to the Patriots. However, if you get rid of Ryan looking for the perfect QB, more often than not you're going to end up with a worse QB than Ryan, and then you're going to be on the seemingly endless hunt for a true franchise guy. The Bills were on that hunt, and we know what it's like. If I'm the GM and I think my team is close, I go with Ryan and look to acquire the pieces the team needs to be competitive. It's pretty clear the team is not close, so I'm unloading Ryan anyway I can and starting the search, because every year I'm not in the search for a QB is another year when I pretty much can't compete. The next question is what do I do with Julio Jones. If I think I can get a a rookie phenom QB, like potentially Lawrence, I'm keeping Julio. If I think I'm a few years away, I'm unloading Julio, too, to capture whatever value he has to help in the building process.

Even when they play 16 games, some teams are disadvantaged by the schedule. These reschedulinga are just another advantage/disadvantage that will fall on teams. May be unfair, but it's just the breaks. Just like a bad call or a bad bounce.

I watched a lot of that game, and I was thinking generally along with the OP. The Raiders had more trouble handling the Bills offense. And the Chiefs had more trouble handling the Raiders than the Bills did. The Bills beat a good team last week.

That's a nice article, with some interesting perspective. I think there are a couple points he misses. First, this nonstop "Allen-wasn't-accurate-in-college" narrative, was and is an over-reliance on stats. I think it was clear, and the Bills and other teams figured it out, that Allen's low completion percentage wasn't because of massive mechanical limitations. He could throw the ball very accurately; he just had a lot of things that made him inconsistent. The Bills understood that once Allen got himself under control, accuracy would be less of a problem. Second, the conclusion says one of two things happened. It says either the writer and others badly misjudged the ability of ANY quarterback to have dramatic improvement in QB efficiency, or it just turns out that Allen is a freak and defied prediction. I think the truth is a combination of the two. First, as I said, accuracy (and efficiency) weren't physical or mechanical problems; Allen just had some things to learn. Second, yes, Allen IS a freak, but it isn't a surprise. Scouts who saw him in college recognized hat his was freak. People just didn't understand that what they perceived as incurable accuracy problems were in fact less significant than they thought. I hadn't read the thread before I posted. This says sort of what I said. It's a better explanation about why Allen's "inaccuracy" was more statistical than real. He just needed to understand more, learn more, get more experience. Nice for us.

That's really well said. It's a point I don't often think of, how the random individual play changes games. What McBeane are looking for is guys who execute their jobs at a consistently high level, play after play AND have the ability to make the occasional individual play that has great influence. I think that may be what Josh Norman is. That's what Oliver is. And certainly Roberts. Those guys make your team both strong and dangerous.

That's interesting. That's what I did before I posted, and it showed the Bills as seventh, not first, in kickoff returns. Thanks.

I agree with this and with eball. He didn't have big returns last season, but I thought his talent was obvious almost every time he touched the ball. He gets everything out of every return. And yes, his decision making and his hands are excellent. I'm always amazed that some of these skills aren't transferable. You'd think that what he can do on kick returns would translate somehow into important receiving skills, but he's never been anywhere where he's shown that he can contribute as a receiver.