[DORSEY FIRED, Joe Brady Interim OC]

2 minutes ago, Bruffalo said:

The playcalling decisions were just as questionable as the scheme, maybe more so.  It felt like Dorsey was picking them at random instead of trying to establish a gameflow. 

I dunno - we left a lot of meat on the bone. I'll have to see the A22 first. Bottom line is poor execution in on the players until the same things that are being poorly executed become habit - that's on coaching.

[DORSEY FIRED, Joe Brady Interim OC]

Those of you expecting a wildly different offense in terms of scheme are going to be disappointed. He's going to run the exact same scheme Dorsey was running - you can't just scrap everything and teach a new system mid-year. This move had to be made though before McDermott lost the entire locker room. Despite what the players say post-game/during the week there has been no confidence in what we are doing for a couple weeks now. Stef looked unamused and unengaged throughout the night last night. I'll wait for the A22 to drop before making any comments about the game plan/scheme, but there were multiple times again last night that Josh looked to the opposite side of the field than what I thought he should. Picking man match-ups is one thing, but vs zone play the concept side - thought this was an Allen mistake thing, but I do wonder if this move means it was being coached that way... All in all though - the players didn't play hard for their OC and the same issues that have been occurring over the past however many weeks showed up yet again. Hopefully a different voice in the room ignites these players going forward.

["The Best NFL Offense that Can't Score Points" - Video Breakdown]

9 hours ago, Yobogoya! said:

 

Pretty sure that segment was to show the contrast between the vanilla zone runs the Bills typically implement and some of the inserts, fold blocks and motions that those teams which have SUCCESSFUL run games are using much more often than we are.

 

I personally loved that part, because it showed the subtle yet very important differences between our run game and teams that are using the same concepts to far greater effect. 

We run split zone and outside zone just like those teams do too, and guess what, they run inside zone just like we do. I’ll do a full breakdown of our run schemes sometime this week.

["The Best NFL Offense that Can't Score Points" - Video Breakdown]

My favorite part was when he said we need to stop running zone schemes and instead copy schemes from teams who can actually run and then showed three clips of the Dolphins, 9ers, and Lions running zone schemes 😏.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

6 hours ago, stevewin said:

@Hoofhearted - so, given what you see, where do you stand on the Fire/Kill/Shoot into the Sun opinions of Dorsey (and McD for that matter)

Schematically McDermott is one of the top defensive minds in the game. There’s clear intent to put our players in the best position based on their skill sets to make plays. He’s also done a phenomenal job of building a culture in our organization. I think that’s easy to gloss over because it can’t be quantified but it’s what separates good teams from great teams. What he’s done is special.

 

Dorsey does a lot of really good schematic stuff too. I think he gets to tunnel visioned at times with what he wants to do. I also think he could do a better job with his utilization of personnel, but when I turn on the film I don’t sit back and think “this guy doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing”.

 

Im also curious to see how they handle and work through this adversity. It’ll be very telling since this is really the first time since we started rolling that things haven’t gone our way for an extended period of time.

 

So long winded response to say I think if we got rid of McDermott it’d be a mistake and the jury is still out on Dorsey.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

9 hours ago, HappyDays said:

 

What do you think causes this? I imagine that reading if it's man or zone is usually pretty simple, especially for Josh Allen who's been in the league for 6 years now. Did Lou Anarumo disguise that snap well? Did Allen just misread the coverage, or maybe had the play wrong in his head? Curious what your opinion is on this.

 

It can be simple depends on if they’re disguising. I’d have to go back and look at what specifically the defense did in that situation, but I’d guess he liked the matchups Diggs and Kincaid pulled even though the concept was better to the other side vs the coverage. It was a third down situation so that’s why I lean towards that.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

5 hours ago, 34-78-83 said:

I think the reason nobody dared play man against us back then is because Josh would readily take off and end up with 50-100 yards rushing on those outings, gashing them for huge chunks. In my opinion, and for the rest of this season, that threat has to return enough (kinda like in the Tampa game) so that they have to once again respect it. Next year maybe we can replace that with a more versatile #2 WR (one that is better than the #2 Corner covering him)

That’s exactly right. My hope is they bring it back for the playoffs at least to some degree. It puts so much stress on a defense.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

3 minutes ago, Straight Hucklebuck said:

It would be schematic shift from both the way Daboll and Dorsey have employed Davis to shorten his split to the OT (and then possibly have someone - probably Sherfield?) play the X. 

 

I've never seen much of our coordinators choosing to put Gabe anywhere but outside. Even in a 4 wide arrangement. 

The condensed sets have been around since Daboll took over. That's not out of the ordinary - the Curl/Arrow concept that they kept having success with is a common concept as well. It's nothing abnormal. They just haven't ever done it a ton like they did against the Bucs.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

2 minutes ago, Straight Hucklebuck said:

Tampa certainly looks like an outlier. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/D/DaviGa01/gamelog/

 

Gabe's played 56 games has a total of 267 career targets. 

 

That's 4.77 targets per game. Career catch rate is 55.8%. 

 

9 catches on 12 targets. The 12 targets is the second most in his regular season career and he's only had 10 or more targets 4 times in his career. 

 

The 9 receptions is the most in his career (6 was he previous high). 

 

 

So with this Coaching Staff I'm not surprised that we see something that works, and then it disappears the next game and you'll only get "game flow" and trying to mix it up as reasons why from Dorsey. 

 

 

Without going through all of Cinci's A22 film and figuring out how they play condensed sets I don't have an answer for you either, unfortunately. I was really encouraged by how we used Gabe in that TB game though.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

1 minute ago, EmotionallyUnstable said:

Thank you @HoofHearted for sharing your insight.

 

question for you and for all:

 

You believe that we’ve seen more man this season because teams have become savvy to our conversion routes that allow for skill players to run to green grass. Man coverage effectively nullifies that. 
 

So if this is the case, are we not recognizing man coverage pre-snap and getting into man beaters?

 

Is Allen unable to make these kinds of checks?

 

Is this why we’ve seen split field reads of man beaters vs conversions or two man route combinations? 
 

If the conversion philosophy is designed so that we are to have the advantage regardless of physical traits, when teams are taking that away with man coverage, we should be heavily utilizing means to scheme guys the ball in space. 

This mostly - but we have to win those match-ups. Outside of Diggs (and possibly Shakir going forward?) we struggle to win those matchups. We've got to scheme them open vs man. Also Josh has to recognize it. He missed one this past game where he read the zone side against man coverage and our man beater backside (I believe it was Shakir on a slant under a rub route) was wide open.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

2 minutes ago, Straight Hucklebuck said:

1. We're in agreement that there is a general lack of size and speed across the full roster of Bills receivers. And Orlovsky has said the lasting image of the Bills offense is a static 2 x 2 shotgun. Against the Bengals we ran 12% play action. Since we're not going to utilize motion, and there is no real running threat in our RPO because Allen doesn't/isn't allowed to keep the ball, what is another lever in the quick passing game to buy a half second of hesitation inside? 

I mean there's only so man ways an offense can line up. 2x1, 2x2, 3x1, 4x1, or some version of an over set. In general most teams sit in a 2x2 as it puts the most stress on a defense because the entire field is a threat because there are concepts being run on both sides. The shifts and motions are a double edged sword - when we use them we use them effectively to scheme guys open. Not sure we'd get the same results if we did them all the time because teams would prepare for them. On the other hand using shifts and motions force defenses to talk and CoS shifts/motions force teams to shift or bump at one of the three levels in their defense (this is what I'd like to see more of).

 

On RPO's Allen is the run threat in the first place. We've primarily run these from a Dart concept this season, but we've also used inside zone and mid-zone to RPO off of as well. IMO they're at their most effective when using some type of gap scheme and determining which gap scheme to use would depend on what the backers are keying. Your back is the run threat in those situations, but again, the way to nullify the RPO is by playing man coverage.

 

One thing I mentioned in the OP was I'd like to see them use Gabe like they did in the Bucs game - in condensed sets running, essentially, spot routes off of linebacker drops. We got in condensed and marched down the field multiple times on the Bucs just running Curl/Arrow and Gabe just worked over top the backer drop and curled inside him for a quick and easy 8 yards. He doesn't need to be overly twitchy to win those match-ups - just have to be able to work off of a backer. Condensed sets also force most teams into zone coverage/zone concepts on that side of the ball.

 

14 minutes ago, Straight Hucklebuck said:

2. Kincaid's longest catch on the year is 22 yards. So if he's catching deep passes, I've missed it. Doesn't mean he's not running them though, I haven't seen Next Gen charting on Kincaid's routes. Since Week 7, Kincaid has a 76.3% route run rate, a 21% target share, 2.15 YPRR, and a 23% first-read share. So a lot of routes that still require his YAC ability. 

We haven't targeted him a bunch downfield, but he definitely runs the entire route tree.

15 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

So I get what you're saying that there is no inherent schematic advantage there. But if you look at his 2023 splits...

 

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/A/AlleJo02/splits/2023/

 

...he is performing much better in play action.

 

-127.3 passer rating and a 1.7% sack percentage in play action

-93.3 passer rating and a 4.5% sack percentage in non play action.

 

So something is going on there. I notice that his under center passer rating is 130.7 and his shotgun passer rating is 93.8. I would guess most of our play action comes from under center. So maybe it isn't about play action at all, maybe that's just a correlative positive stat to under center passing?

 

One theory I have had is that Allen is more in rhythm and comfortable throwing the ball in play action and/or from under center. It might not be a schematic advantage at all, but is it possible that Allen for whatever reason simply peforms better when going through that mechanics cycle?

 

Would love to see those splits broken down by coverage - think that'd be very telling.

14 minutes ago, Scott7975 said:

 

Thanks. Maybe just Beasley, Brown/Emanual Sanders executed it better or defenses are just better prepared for it today. Josh seemed to execute better back then too though. At least to me.  I know we had clunkers with Daboll as well but nothing like this 5 game stretch in a row since rookie Josh.

Teams have definitely adjusted. We weren't seeing this amount of man coverage before.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

6 minutes ago, Scott7975 said:

 

Thank you for this explanation, and the write up above of course. These things are better to me than the breakdown videos of a couple plays people do.  This part is what I have been trying to explain but I am football stupid. 

 

In any case... maybe this is possibly why Josh seems to hold the ball sometimes. I think maybe he either expected the receiver elsewhere because he read the play different than the receiver and one of them is wrong, maybe even waiting for the receiver/defender to declare, or things like that (again i'm football stupid. my brain also doesn't function and I often search for words that I know but can't find haha.)  This could also be why we sometimes find multiple receivers garbling up the same area and also puts Josh in a rough spot.

 

The other thing I would like to ask is... a lot of people say this is the same offense that Daboll ran.  I dunno if it is or not but to me it does not look like the same offense. Either way, this offense might be better long term if these guys get the execution down better, but I feel at this point they should back off a bit because it isn't working for them and this season is just going to fall hard if they don't get back to some basics.

It's a little of everything with Josh as far as holding onto the ball to long. There have certainly been times him and the receiver haven't been on the same page that have forced him to hold onto it, there are also times where he just waits for them to work to a bigger window, and then there are others where he just needs to recognize the play is dead downfield and take the checkdown before it disappears on you too.

 

It's the same base system. I'm sure the terminology is all carry over as well as a lot of the pass game. What has been different is the run game. Dorsey has put his own spin on that for sure.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

5 minutes ago, GoBills808 said:

i dont know if this is correct or not, but there are certain sets we use playaction where Allen is significantly more nonchalant selling the playfake

 

is that due to him reading zone/reduced effectiveness of playaction in man or just sloppiness?

I'd imagine sloppiness. You're not going to want it to look any different regardless of coverage.

[The Rise of the Two High Shell & Its Impact on the Bills]

5 minutes ago, BarleyNY said:

thank you. Do you have a last year’s numbers?

I don't, but I'm sure they're out there somewhere.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

1 minute ago, Straight Hucklebuck said:

The only lever being presented is execute better via Allen taking your check downs more. 

 

The team seemingly doesn't want to use play action more, hurry up, Allen designed runs, modern motion concepts. That stuff comes and goes and both McDermott and Dorsey talk about always changing it up. 

 

Outside of Kincaid expanding his route tree, or Allen pushing even more targets to Diggs, what other real practical buttons does this team have to push that will increase scoring?

 

A lot of it is going to come back on Allen to make even better decisions, increase his completion percentage from 71% to 75%, not turn the ball over at all, and try to squeeze/save an extra scoring drive out per game. 

 

Throws must come out quick, and close to the LOS to mitigate an average Offensive Line and an average run game. 

 

 

Couple things:

 - What do you get out of running play action vs all the man coverage we're seeing?

 - Kincaid runs the entire route tree

 - We just need to be more consistent and stop shooting ourselves in the foot

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

17 minutes ago, Straight Hucklebuck said:

This is where I'm at. 

 

Hoof Hearted is talking about running to where the defenders aren't. 

 

Who is capable of doing that on this offense? 

 

I think Diggs looks as good as he's ever been. I haven't noticed a step loss. He's sudden, he's shifty, he's precise, he catches everything, and has just enough speed (4.45-4.49ish) to get behind people. Maybe the advanced metrics would show that he used to average a bit more separation, somebody posted he's at ~2.65 yards this year. 

 

But back to the point, is it any wonder that the Bills select a consensus 1st Rounder and in 6-games he's passed everyone else and is now the #2 option in this offense? 

 

I think the All-22, analysis, has shown Allen is turning down the hot reads and check downs sometimes, he's not getting the ball to Cook enough, but even Hoof Hearted and Chris Simms and I just heard Greg Cosell say it as well - this is not a very fast/talented offense. 

 

Could Allen have thrown to the middle of the field more and let Harty run away from Awozie on the coverage? Yes.  

 

But I do think there is a mismatch in the way our QB wants to play and the personnel they've handed him. I get the point that NFL defenses have really made it harder to get deep since Mahomes exploded onto the scene in 2018, but I'm sorry, there hasn't been much investment at WR in Allen's tenure here.

 

Last year the bottom 5 of the WR room was: Jamison Crowder, Isaiah McKenzie, Jake Kumerow, Cole Beasley, John Brown. I'm mean Allen got 35 TDs out of that group with Diggs, Davis and Knox. 

 

 

 

All of them are capable of getting separation on the conversion routes - that's the whole point of them. They are designed so that anyone (regardless of physical skill) has a chance to be open simply by running to green grass as opposed to into a coverage. That's why we've seen so much man this year. Teams have become savvy to it and aren't allowing us to run our conversion routes as often and we do not have the guys to beat man coverage consistently. 

[The Rise of the Two High Shell & Its Impact on the Bills]

11 minutes ago, BarleyNY said:

I’ve noticed two high coverage on plenty of occasions although I’ve only been to one game and seen one on All-22. Do you have access to any stats because I’m basing it on what I’m noticing and the general league trend?

The Bills have seen less Cover 2 than most teams, and as a whole it's not being run a ton in the league. Quarters is by far the most common split safety coverage being run league wide. We're seeing a ton of MoF Closed coverages this year.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

5 minutes ago, Beast said:

OK, thanks for ghat. I don’t have all 22 access or anything like that.

 

Is he getting separation? Is there a reason you feel they aren’t going to him at all? Covered well?

I dunno, he's been open often on the wheel and Josh just looks him off. It's frustrating at times.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

10 minutes ago, RunTheBall said:

Now that is something I had never considered - that looking vanilla is something you want it to look like to an armchair coach/GM like myself. Makes sense given there are multiply post snap reads/options that can be implemented on each play.

 

Unfortunately, you are shifting my opinion to this is more of a player execution issue than a pure Dorsey issue (although I’m sure it’s a mix of both).  Damn, I really like when I can hate on one guy for all our problems. Ahh well… hahah

It's definitely a mixture of both. We've seen way more man coverage this year than I can remember us seeing in the past and a lot of that has to do with our scheme. The route conversion stuff gets nullified if you don't have a zone defender you can make wrong every snap. I don't think we've done a great job in man coverage from a scheme standpoint from Dorsey's end, but also an execution standpoint from the player side. We're doing a lot of "win your 1v1" instead of scheming guys open using crossers to run away from coverage or using rubs to get guys separation. 

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

2 hours ago, RunTheBall said:

Thank you for the write up, this is fascinating stuff and really helps me understand what’s going on.

 

For such a complex offense, it sure does look vanilla though. Maybe that’s why some guys can’t get on the field or are invisible when they do, they don’t have the head for it.

 

Seems to me the burden is on the players to figure out the coverage pre snap, then adjust their routes post snap using 1-4 options depending on where they are when they hit their decision point, then be on the same page with Josh at that decision point. Yikes! Takes a lot of the burden off Dorsey to outsmart the DC. Instead, he has such a complex offense with man/zone beaters built in to most plays that he can say “Hey, if you guys just did these 5 things correctly pre and post snap the play would have been a success”. That’s a lot to ask on every play especially when the explosive plays are taken away and we have to march down the field.

 

 

To your first point - that's exactly what you want. When you watch a game and without understanding what is happening our offense looks extremely vanilla. That's what makes it so hard to defend, because if you come into the game thinking I just need to stop these however many route concepts and then you go out to stop those you won't even see those routes because they'll be converted to something different. Now obviously this isn't the case on every concept, but we do have quite a few that are.

 

It's definitely not as complicated as it sounds. In the simplest form it's run to where the defenders aren't. Is it more to handle mentally than just a pre-determined concept, sure, but from my experience players love it because it gives them the opportunity to be open every time.

1 hour ago, Beast said:

I like what you said about we aren’t fast as an offense. That is so true and it seems we do nothing to attempt to take advantage of the speed we do have.

 

For instance, it seems we almost always have Cook slip out of the backfield and sit underneath. I have no issue with this as it is a nice 5-8 yard gain as coverage from all angles quickly converge. The point being Cook is stationary when he catches the ball. 

 

Cook is a very fast player. I don’t recall ever seeing him deployed on a wheel route that he may actually be able to just use flat out speed to beat defenders for a big play. I’m not trying to compare era’s but Thurman Thomas was used on these routes very successfully and though Thurman was a better receiving threat than Cook is, Cook is faster than Thurman was. I’d love to see the Bills at least try this. And not ***** can it if it doesn’t work the first time. Give the defense something else to think about.

 

And I won’t even get into the way Harty is not being used.

 

 

 

Cook is used on wheels every time we run mesh, and is the first read on that concept the majority of the time. We've also split him out when we go empty to try and get him the ball in the open field. Can they do more of it, certainly, but it's definitely been done to some degree.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

2 hours ago, Coach Tuesday said:

Thanks for this.  What’s frustrating to me about what you’re describing is that on both sides of the ball, for the most part (excepting Torrence, Kincaid, Dorian), these are players who have been playing in these schemes for quite awhile now.  It seems like they are not practicing the right way.  You’re describing post-snap execution errors not schematic issues.  Are they simply not preparing enough?

I don't think it's a preparation issue. I'll put it this way - it's hard to pre-determine human reactions. What I mean by that is individual player movements post-snap will not look the same every time they do something - there will be variance simply because those guys are human too. So for example - from a pre-snap look a player could have a preconceived idea of what coverage a team is playing. However, if post-snap the defender is slow to react or diagnose what is going on that will delay our receivers post-snap processing which can then throw off the timing of a concept. It's not that our guys are doing the wrong things all the time. More often it's timings that are thrown off.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

34 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

 

Sounds like a coaching issue, yes? We talk a lot about player execution versus coaching on here, but it seems to me that the former is following from the latter. I don't believe, for example, that a seasoned veteran like Micah Hyde would be making errors like that on his own if he was being prepared the right way. Similarly I don't believe Josh Allen would take a 1v1 deep shot to Deonte Harty if he was being prepared the right away. I think on both sides of the ball there is a big lack of detail from the coaching, and a lack of understanding of each player's strengths/weaknesses, and this is leading to many of these errors that we attribute solely to player execution.

 

The eye discipline on zone blitzes, yes. The 1v1 from Allen, no. That's just him playing within the scheme and taking the match-up he likes. In McDermott's defense too you can clearly see on film there has been an emphasis on details since he took over. Footwork and eyes have been much improved - you can really see the difference when the back-ups come in.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

14 hours ago, stuvian said:

Rushing 5 and 6 defenders and getting no pressure is failure. 

There’s no doubt about it, and it’s on both ends. We’re not hitting home sometimes but also the coverage isn’t allowing us to hit home at other times. It’s frustrating to continually see us playing with zone eyes on these zone blitzes - man match and give your rush a chance.

[The Rise of the Two High Shell & Its Impact on the Bills]

10 hours ago, BarleyNY said:

Everything is cyclical. The high flying, explosive offenses predicated on chunk pass plays have led to the re-emergence of defenses like Cover 2 (two high shell) and to a lesser extent Cover 4 (quarters). NFL schemes are complex, but generally those two coverages are poor against the run while Cover 1 and 3 are much better against it.

 

The upshot of the big uptick in Cover 2 is that offenses have been limited on deep shots and have gone even more to an underneath game than previously. Overall offensive efficiency is up, but scoring and yardage are down because offenses are taking smaller wins at the expense of explosive plays. I’ll have to find the stat, but one play over 20 yards on a drive increases the chances of scoring on that play dramatically.

 

The other thing C2 gives the defense is five players in underneath coverage. This is why it’s more popular than C4 right now. Defenses are taking more risks jumping routes, blitzing (2 high shell with 4  under), aggressive pass rushing, etc. Defensive coordinators know they’ll get carved up if they play passively so causing a turnover or other negative play is worth the risk of a big offensive play - especially if there are safeties over top to prevent a score. Once a team does get inside the red zone if a defense can tighten up and only allow a FG attempt, then that’s a win for the defense these days. 

 

So what does an offense have to do to get a defense out of C2? Two big things: 1) Effectively run the ball and 2) Run an efficient passing game with a QB (and receivers) who can make the correct reads quickly. 

 

That brings us to the Bills. This is why Kincaid is starting to kill it. He is an excellent route runner who uncovers quickly. It’s also why Gabe Davis isn’t getting many looks - he doesn’t uncover quickly. The lack of a dependable run game has been killing the Bills. If teams can stay in 2 high and stop our run game they don’t have much reason to get out of it and it makes life tough on our QB. Allen has not been bad, but seeing so much two high is an issue for him. He’s much better when he can take deep shots more often than he is quickly reading defenses and distributing the ball with pinpoint short and intermediate passes. 

 

We just saw a team that is made to handle this. Burrow and his WRs are the kind of players that will thrive against two high - with or without blitzes coming at him. It’s their game. As for the Bills, without a running game I think we are in for more of what we have seen so far this year. They can still be a good offense, but it won’t be great or explosive because teams will stay in 2 high. They absolutely have to find a way to get that run game moving. If they can’t get the run game going then they should probably try to find a WR on the team who is better at uncovering quickly than Davis and sub him in more. That will give Allen another quick option and stress defenses more. 

We actually haven’t seen a lot of Cover 2 from defenses against us this season.

[Notes from the Cinci Game]

8 minutes ago, Straight Hucklebuck said:

Kincaid comment was in reference Davis pulling coverage away. His long on the year is 22 yards, it's not like they're bombs away with him. He's catching more of the type of patterns he was in his first game against the Jets. 

I'm assuming your line of thinking is that because Davis is pulling coverage that Kincaid should be running deeper routes?

 

11 minutes ago, Straight Hucklebuck said:

The other comment on the run game is in reference to the Bills being dominated in the run game by the Bengals defensive line. When I watched that game, I felt like they ditched the run early and rightfully so. 

 

So when I looked it up, Cook only had 6 carries, and Murray had just the two conversions later in the game. The Bills running backs outgained the Bengals rushing offense including Burrow without any of Allen's carries. So while some plays looked bad, the Bengals stuffing the run was a small part of the actual plays that were run. 

Right, the response was to a question posed about the OL and their execution in both the run and the pass. It wasn't about the volume of runs - just that they didn't execute well when called upon. So I'm still not clear why you're bringing up number of carries.