Shaw66

I so wanted the OP to be true, and VOILA!!! Great call.

Steve - This is great. Thanks. Yes, a ton of orange in the stadium. It was like the Steelers had changed colors. But all those orange people weren't very loud very long. Didn't see Bruce. Also right about the visitor side. I sit on the Bills side, and I could see a LOT of empty seats, so I knew people had fled for the clubs. And most importantly, it WAS fun to see a game where all those things that the other teams usually does to the Bills were now being done by the Bills to the other team. I agree he's still developing and I haven't given up hope. But he isn't special yet, and his running doesn't make him special. It adds something, but it's a one dimensional addition. Rodgers scrambles and he's a threat to throw it to any eligible receiver anywhere downfield. That's special. Tyrod scrambles, and if the defense is paying attention he's a threat to gain no more than 15 yards. He needs to be special with his arm. He could become that, but he has to get better in the pocket to be that guy.

Here's why I'm worried: Good pass receiving hands is something that I don't think can be taught very effectively to athletes at this age. It can be taught to six year olds, and if you drill them from six to 12, they'll have good hands forever. (Same, by the way, with a baseball swing. Kid plays little league on up, by the time he gets to high school it's very difficult to change his swing.) So here's Zay Jones. Played four years of college football, and caught a ton of passes. Played in high school no doubt. He's a developed pass receiver. A guy with great hands, like Sammy, catches that TD throw on Sunday. A guy with just good hands catches the throw that he missed over the middle a little later. It shouldn't have anything to do with being a rookie. He's been catching all kinds of footballs his entire life, and now he fails to catch three balls in two games in the NFL. Maybe it's just jitters, but it's easy for just jitters to turn in a phobia that he can't get over. Or maybe he just has bad hands. How many games like this are you going to watch before you say he's a problem? I'd say about 2 more games. If he doesn't start actually catching balls he should in the next couple of games, I'm really worries.

Hope so. I haven't given up, but I AM worrying.

I don't disagree. They still need a QB or more out of Taylor. But don't confuse "playmakers" with "stars." The Belichick method makes a guy like Edelman a playmaker, and you can get an Edelman for a lot less than a Watkins. And when your playmakers are good players but not stars, you get to backfill other positions with playmakers who aren't stars, because you have the cap room. QB is the exception. Pretty much gotta have a special QB.

That's an excellent way to put it. All things being equal, you'd rather have the better athlete doing the executing, but you can go pretty far on execution alone. That's why I said what I said about Brown. I don't think he's the athlete you want in the middle, but the Bills are getting a lot out of him because he executes.

The Rockpile Review by Shaw66 Now, Thats What Im Talkin About! Bills Beat Broncos Well, well, well what have we here? That looked like a real, honest-to-goodness football team at New Era Field, and for the first time in a long time Im not talking about the visitors. The Bills handled the Broncos Sunday in workmanlike fashion, 26-16. Most of the rest of the football world might have called it a boring game, and its true, the Bills are playing a boring brand of football. But isnt it GREAT!!? Sean McDermott hasnt said it in so many words, but Ive come to suspect that hes a devotee of Bill Belichick methods. McDermott admits he studies regularly, and he has a library full of notebooks to prove it. He must have spent some time studying Belichick, because Belichick is the best and thats what McDermott wants to be. The evidence is in how his Bills team plays. Do your job already has become a cliché, but isnt it obvious thats what the Bills are about? Learn you job and do your job; everything else will take care of itself. If the coaches do their jobs studying the upcoming opponent, preparing the game plan and communicating the plan to the players, and if the players do what theyve been taught, good things happen. Do your job has been on display since the start of the season, and the Broncos game was the latest and best example. The Broncos are not without their flaws (most notably their quarterback), but they are a good team. They have a good, maybe excellent, maybe even great, defense. They have a solid offensive line, good running backs, dangerous receivers. The Broncos are a good team. And the Bills just went to work against them. Every quarter, every down, do your job. The Bills didnt make a lot of spectacular plays; they just made a lot of good plays because they did their jobs. The Bills style of play helps explain why Sammy Watkins is in Los Angeles. We all love the spectacular play, the kind of plays Sammy makes. McDermott and his GM believe it isnt necessary to make those plays to win games, and they certainly dont want to base the long-term fortunes of the team on those kind of plays; when youre built to win by getting explosive plays from explosive players, what happens when you lose the players to retirement, free agency or injury? McDermott and his GM seem to believe its a better, more sustainable strategy, to have good coaches and good players doing their jobs, every day, every week, every year. Like Bill Belichick. Here are some guys did their jobs against the Broncos, and some other thoughts about the game: 1. EJ Gaines and TreDavious White. Being an NFL cornerback is one of the toughest and loneliest jobs in the game, especially on days when youre matched up against guys like Emmanuel Sanders and Demaryius Thomas. Those guys can play. White and Gaines didnt, couldnt, stop them, but they contained them. They gave up some completions, but they didnt give up a lot of yards after the catch. They were always around the ball and they made good, sure tackles. They gave up 170 yards passing to the two studs, but they kept both of them out of the end zone. It was a workmanlike job by each of them. White had his rookie moments, once when he seemed to take the wrong drop into his zone and allowed a 20 yard completion, and once where Sanders beat him long and White recovered to make the tackle and force the incompletion when the Bills challenged the ruling. On both plays it appeared that White misunderstood his assignment. To his credit, he kept at it, doing his job, making plays. In particular, the recovery on the deep ball to Sanders was a great athletic effort that gave his coach a chance to get the call reversed. 2. LeSean McCoy. CMon, Shady, have the common decency respect either the flag or your teammates by not stretching during the national anthem. Still, talk about a man who does his job! Play after play he pounded into the Denver defensive front, looking for any opportunity to make a play. Some backs would have quit by the fourth quarter, but not McCoy. On the final drive, after Von Miller gave the Bills a second chance, Shady converted two critical third downs, first with several nifty moves to get 7 yards on a third and 6 reception, and then with pure determination getting 2+ yards on third and 2. If Shady werent Shady, the Bills would have punted, Millers blunder would have been forgotten, and the Broncos would have had the ball with six minutes left, down 7. Instead, the Bills got the field goal, and the next time the Broncos had the ball, they were down 10 with three minutes left. That drive, and Shadys plays, ended the game. 3. Stephen Hauschka. You think maybe its a good thing to have a guy who can hit long-range threes like Steph Curry? Goodness. And by the way, watch him when he kicks those long ones. He looks like a guy whos just doing his job. 4. Preston Brown. The wheels need to be turning in Brandon Beanes head, wondering what hes going to do about the fact that his middle linebacker is not Luke Keuchly. Browns a solid player, a do-your-job kind of guy, but the persistent rumors are true: pass defense isnt his thing. It looked to me like his drops are late and therefore not deep enough. He isnt disruptive in the passing game. Nice player, and he does a lot of good things, but Im guessing the Bills will be looking for an upgrade. How about Brown getting held on the Charless touchdown run? He was tackled from behind. That was about the worst bad call of the day, along with the ruling that the Sanders catch wasnt a catch. The other calls, the pass interference, the hit out of bounds, the roughing the passer? Each was marginal, but the players know that if they do those things, theres a risk theyll get called. It happened, move on, do your job. 5. Zay Jones. Anyone else starting to worry that Jones doesnt have the hands to be a reliable pizza delivery guy, let alone an NFL wideout? Sorry about that sausage and double cheese pie, maam. Let me help you with those paper towels. Andre Holmes was the guy whos supposed to have the bad hands, and Zays making Holmes look like genuine threat. It takes a while for most rookie receivers to work their way into productive roles in NFL lineups, and maybe Zay just needs time, but Im starting to worry. 6. Tyrod Taylor. To throw a bone to the Tyrod-detractors, Tyrod looked indecisive in the pocket on several plays. It didnt give me a good feeling. Still, I will not argue with 20-26 for 213 yards, 2 TDs and no INTs. Dare I say it? He did his job. You say you want 28 completions and 300 yards? I hear you, but its pretty clear that isnt Taylors job. Throw to OLeary wasnt bad, was it? Finding Matthews on the same drive was pretty. Touchdown to Clay was excellent play design and execution. Scrambling, going down to a knee, getting up and scrambling for a first down was okay, too. Its okay if the Bills keep Peterman on the bench for another week, dontcha think? 7. Sean McDermott. Maybe this offense will grow into a more diversified attack and start putting up more yards and more points, but its pretty clear that at least for now, this is run-first, run-the-clock offense that is going to take what it can get and count on the defense to keep games close and win it in the end. That last drive, the only drive that started in the fourth quarter, proves the point. About 15 plays total 4 passes, and all of them ultra-safe. McDermott was perfectly happy to run the ball, run the clock and when necessary send his defense on the field. He was rewarded when his offense held the ball and got the field goal. Last week, so long as he was within one touchdown, he didnt believe it was necessary to open up his offense. Its conservative, to say the least, but its hard to argue with his results so far. Fake punt? No problem, do your job. 8. The crowd. The parking lots I saw were full, as usual, and once again they were pretty quiet before the game and, surprisingly, even after the game. A lot of the raucous rowdiness is gone, and I miss it. But in the stadium on Sunday, the crowd was back into it. A lot of noise on most of the Denver offensive plays. Better yet, there were a couple of those special moments, moments that havent happened much in the past several years, when the place is rocking, the noise is LOUD and persistent and then, somehow, a few seconds before the snap, it clicks up to another level. The noise doesnt go up gradually; it just steps up to a level that seconds before didnt seem possible, a level that feels like the beams and girders must be shaking. Really cool, and its gotta be the heads of the visitors. 9. The heat was brutal. After one play late in the game-clinching drive, Richie was standing still, about five yards beyond the line of scrimmage. He looked like he was ready to fall over and cause a 5,1 quake. Finally he walked back to the huddle. A couple minutes later, at the two minute warning, both Hughes and Williams raised their hands and walked to sidelines, begging for a blow. Thats one reason McDermott kept using his timeouts at the end of the game. His best players were spent. 10. The lines. It was a war, for all four lines. The Bills offensive line struggled to get anything in the running game and did a decent job giving Tyrod some space to work in. The Broncos offensive line struggled similarly, because the Bills front was aggressive all day long. Every yard was hard earned. One big difference was QB mobility when his line got Siemian in trouble, bad things happened to him. The Bills might be able to stay in the game with any team in the league. Well find out next week in Atlanta. 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 days hard work and simple pleasures into love for a pro football team.

The reason these narratives are so goofy is that they focus on the wrong things. The truth, that the media doesn't want to talk about, is that (1) football is complicated and (2) coaching is by far the most important aspect of the game. The media doesn't want to focus on that because people aren't interested in complicated and they aren't interested in coaching. They're interested in plays that are fun to watch, and so the narrative they tend to believe is the narrative about special players. Other than quarterbacks, special players just aren't that important. The Bills didn't unload Sammy because they didn't believe he's a special player. They unloaded him because the new regime in Buffalo knows that it isn't worth spending a lot of money on special players who aren't quarterbacks. The media doesn't promote the idea that football is complicated. One aspect of the game being complicated is that the early season games are unpredictable. ALL the teams are still trying to master their systems, and with new coaches and systems it's even harder. So every season we get these weird unpredictable results and the fans are perplexed - they can't reconcile results. Well, just wait until November. By then it will be clear which teams have an edge and which don't, and the edge will NOT be because this team has a particular non-quarteback and the other team doesn't. The edge is that the best teams have better systems and better coaches, so the players perform better as a TEAM. So, yes, Sammy can have some early season success and yes Matthews can struggle. That isn't what it's about. Let's see which team is playing the best football in November.

Forget CTE. His victims should sue the University of Miami. Nice kid goes off to college and two years later he's a hoodlum.

That may be true about Taylor, but I'm not sure. FIrst, the amount of time he has to make that decision is a split second, so you're asking a lot. Second, these guys are coached to execute the play as drawn up. Since at best he's seen Zay take only a few steps, Tyrod maybe just threw it assuming Zay knew his assignment, would recognize that his cut was too sharp and correct it. Zay could just be a bust, but it's much more likely that what we saw was a rookie who isn't ready for the NFL yet. Most rookie receivers, including even some high first-round receivers, take a a half year to a year to get accustomed to the game. Moulds didn't start for a half year. Beane wanted Boldin playing, not Zay. SO you get a rookie, second game of the season, on the road. Everything is big and new to him. Plus he and Taylor haven't developed the communication of more experienced players. Zay's post=game reaction gives it away. He KNEW what to do, but in the moment he choked. A third-year guy catches it all day, every day. Matthews catches it all day, every day. No, I can't agree. It's just as easy to say to that if your defense gives up 9 points you don't deserve to lose the game. You deserve to win any game in which you make enough plays to win. Zay Jones makes the play he's supposed to make, the Bills definitely would have deserved the win.

Do you know each player's assignment on the play. How do you know who's at fault from watching the play?

Jones didn't track the pass until the absolute last second, and then made an extremely bad play on the ball. The result was a half-stutter-step and twisting jump straight up. If he had just run it thru the pass drops right over his shoulder. Not to pick on the man, but Watkins makes that catch ten out of ten times and it looks easy every time. Run a quick out and, yes, you expect the ball right on the hands. But with a forty yard pass, I think most league receivers aren't surprised if they have to tweak the end of the route a few feet. And we're talking about the smallest of adjustment here. After all, Jones ran a too-shallow route, had no idea where the pass was until the last possible second, totally misplayed the ball - and yet still it grazes his hand. It was a rookie mistake, no more. This is right on the money. Thanks. The other way you know that Jones screwed up and Taylor didn't is that NO ONE from the team, particularly Taylor, is saying Taylor put the ball in the wrong place. Jones ran the wrong route or, at the very least, made a terrible adjustment to the ball. As he played it, it was a REALLY difficult catch, but his job is to make it an easy catch before the ball arrives. He didn't do his job.

Thanks for these write ups. They're interesting. Not sure I agree with you on some of these, like stepping up into the pocket to hit Clay. That pocket was collapsing, and you're assuming that he'd already seen Clay and knew he'd be open beyond the safeties. If he didn't see him at the exact right time, he wouldn't have had time to step up. And on the last play, McDermott sort of admitted by implication that Jones screwed up - either ran the route incorrectly or failed to adjust to the ball. The implication was that Taylor threw it properly.

McDermott was asked about how he dealt with Jones after the game, who apparently was crying in the locker room. He told him, and apparently other players did, that the game wasn't decided on the last play and he'll make plenty of plays in his career. So far as I've seen, nobody was trying to make him feel better by saying Taylor should have thrown it better. So it sounds like Taylor put the ball where it was supposed to be and Jones didn't run the route correctly, then failed to adjust to the throw when it was in the air. In The Rockpile Review I put it on Taylor, but it sounds like it was Jones.

I agree. If you can't run, you should pass. Can't hurt. But the point I was responding to is that this is the third offensive coordinator who seems to be keeping the ball out of Tyrod's hands, unless he's running with it. So the question is why would THREE OCs in a row do that? Why wouldn't at least one of them done what seems so obvious, which is if you can't run, pass. What I'm saying is that there aren't many explanations for that, other than they've decided that Tyrod passing is so hopeless that you're still better off running McCoy into a brick wall and hoping something will break. I think, by the way, that Happy Days is probably right about what happened in the last game. I'd guess, as he did, that so long as the Bills were within one score, they were going to stick to their game plan. Run the ball, run the ball, pass as a change of pace, but when you pass it, throw to your running backs. The last possession was the only time they opened up the passing game, and even that was pretty conservative. But even that brings me back to the same conclusion. We're now into the third season when Tyrod has performed pretty well on called on to pass more. Up until now, even though he's passed pretty well when he throws over 30 times in a game, coaches don't let him throw more. Why? Well maybe all three OCs are over-committed to the run. Roman was, and Happy's link to the reports about Dennison suggest that he may be over-committed, too. Lynn also was pretty run-oriented. So maybe it's just three conservative OCs in a row. But it's also possible that all three decided they can't trust Tyrod in the pocket. I don't know the answer, but we all agree that it's well past time to let Tyrod air it out and see what he can do. This isn't a bad week to do it. Von Miller is going to eat Mills alive, so why not take advantage of aggressiveness by calling a lot of passes and letting Tyrod scramble. If those great DBs are going to play man to man, fine, Tyrod can have a 100-yard rushing day off his scrambles. If they're going to play zone, fine, let's see if Tyrod can pick it apart while outside the pocket. One thing seems likely - if the Bills are going to insist on running, the Broncos are going to load up, stop the run and dare the Bills to pass. Why not come out throwing and, for once, let the pass set up the run? I'm not sure pass-first is in Dennison's DNA.

I understand and it seems logical, so the question is why do coaches stubbornly keep running? Why not at least give Taylor a shot at carrying the team with his arm? The only reason would seem to be that theyre quite confident he cant do it.

I understand and it seems logical, so the question is why do coaches stubbornly keep running? Why not at least give Taylor a shot at carrying the team with his arm? The only reason would seem to be that theyre quite confident he cant do it.

What you say makes a sense except we are now into the third season of coaches not putting the ball in Taylor's hands when when running game falters. Yes you can cite a game here or there but most teams are prepared to abandon the run when necessary; Bills aren't. Maybe it will be different in the coming weeks. If Taylor doesnt start throwing it more I don't see how you can conclude anything else.

Good point. Hard to argue with this. If Taylor looked like Aaron Rodgers in practice, they'd have him throwing more.

I don't understand the offense. Seems to me there has to be some way to get the ball more consistently to the wideouts. Doesn't even have to be deep. Just get it to them. They did on the final drive. There can be only two reasons why it isn't happening: (1) The plays aren't in the offense or aren't being called or (2) Tyrod isn't throwing to them. I don't know what the problem is, but the Bills are going nowhere if it doesn't get fixed.

Nonsense. So much nonsense. Does anyone actually believe that MCDermott is doing his very best to win games? Does anyone actually believe that McDermott is starting the guy he thinks is the second best QB on the team? Come on. They're looking for the best talent, they're playing the best talent, they're playing the offense they think will work best for the long-term. The Bills have lost one game. They're quarterback is 17th in passer rating in the league. And you're convinced that an untested rookie who was drafted in the fifth round and had a mediocre preseason is clearly a better QB. Why not try benching McCoy and starting someone else? How about benching McCoy and Jones? How about benching Wood and putting in some sub? Ridiculous.

McDermott said everyone starts with a clean slate. He doesn't care about the history. I'm with him. If I were a head coach, I'd do everything I could to get a player of Dareus's caliber to stick with my program. And I don't see how you can call Dareus a non-factor on a day when the Bills more or less completely stopped a good running game and collapsed the pocket around Newton all day long. Just because you don't see Dareus doesn't mean he wasn't a factor.

I want what you want, but the fact that we didn't get it yesterday doesn't mean that Tyrod was the problem.

That might be true.

What a bunch of whiners you guys are. Did you watch the game? Did you know the Bills' power running attack? This is a running team, and they couldn't run at all. The only person who made plays on offense was Tyrod. The offensive line stunk. Absolutely stunk. That might be coaching, that might be talent. One thing is certain - blocking is NOT Tyrod's job. Tyrod completed a high percentage. He threw no INTs. He did largely what he was asked to do, and all you guys can do is whine about him.