WideNine

Happens when reality does not quite fit a preconceived narrative, and we all fall into it. Without knowing assignments on each play it is tough for us arm-chair coordinators to get it right. We see Jordan bust through with a tackle for a loss and think Star should be shooting a gap and doing the same thing. There was a hail of negative posts that Allen did not lead Brown enough on the one play that Darby (fixed) defended only to have Brown come back and say he ran the wrong route. Queue the face palms. We should be mindful that there could be other possibilities.

I think Horrible Harry was coming on getting that initial step and penetration forcing the double teams and being disruptive. Seemed to be acclimating to McD's scheme and had good showings against Bell and Barkley. Then he got hurt. Oliver and Peco are not there yet and it took two years for Harry to start to come on. Not sure what technique they had him playing, but it was working. Not sure what I think about Star, does not strike me as disruptive in the run game, but would honestly have to look at more plays and games focusing on him and McD says he is doing what he is asked to do in their scheme....

Actually sounded eerily similar to what he said about giving up the runs to Miami the week prior. We are really, really serious this time though

Teams are focusing on those guys who don't trap the ball. Less chance of having passes pop off your pads, better chance at catching contested throws, better at those toe-tapping throws to the boundary, etc... Bills finally are getting a better picture of the kind of receivers they need for success and they have come a long way from the Kelvin Benjamin mold last year.

Never underestimate the persistence of the ignorant. I have tried to correct or just better understand the position of some of the noobs, some are worth it. Other times it is like making that fateful eye-contact with that crazy dude muttering about Satan at the bus stop. You immediately realize your mistake, "Oh crap, now I am going to get sucked into his world!".

I have calmed down a bit so feel I can be a little more objective. I would not want my Bills to throw the baby out with the bathwater. To be fair Daboll has called an excellent red zone offense. Some of his play designs in that area have completely undressed opposing D's. The Bills lead or have led the league in red zone proficiency. It's consistency getting to the red zone that has been an issue and his willingness to call plays that expose Allen to unnecessary hits. I think that Daboll probably is a tough task master with Allen, but marrying the kid with one of the highest wonderlic scores but the most positional development needs with a task master who is sharp, and wants to run a complicated offense is not the worst thing for Allen's development as long as Daboll does not break his new shiny toy. Allen's short to intermediate game, touch on throws, throwing with anticipation, and in-game management is progressing and some of that has to be Daboll. Daboll has gotten a bit pass happy with too many plays developing East West behind the LOS and too few simply designed for quick North South execution. He just needs to think about where this offense and all its new pieces are in regards to developing chemistry and understanding his playbook, the field conditions, on field matchups and who is winning those and adapt. Even if he just forced himself into a more balance approach between pass and run, regardless of field conditions or worrying that the opposing team is good against the run, he would find more sustained success. I have never believed in conceding your run game just because the other team has a good run defense. You make them play pass and run the whole game unless you have to play catch up and take more chances. That way they cannot just pin their ears back rushing your QB, and you never know when you are going to break a long one. Correctable things if he has the willingness to take in the feedback from the coaches and players around him objectively and apply it in a way that helps this offense become more consistent.

Noticed the hard count too. I have been calling for them to be less predictable with their cadence to slow opposing players from jumping the snap and so that Allen could get a better read on pressure/blitz packages. There is one player that seems to be getting the Lion's share of false starts, Lee Smith, and there is no excuse. He just has to clean up his concentration issues. I think he is someone that officials focus on now because of his penalty history. Other pre-snap penalties on others I think may also be a result of how often the Bills have had to juggle their lineup due to injuries.

I do not mind running Allen, but prefer they be prescriptive around designed runs limiting those to the red zone. He is effective as a triple threat where he has options to pass, hand-off, or run it himself. That is a nightmare for defenses to defend especially when we can present some misdirection. This team's proficiency in the red zone is a testament to how difficult that is to defend with the short field. The worse I expect is that Allen has to elect to throw it away, or he gets stopped short, or we turn the ball over and miss out on at least 3 points, but put our defense in a better position. What I objected to yesterday is calling a QB sweep that looked like a QB sweep fooling no one, in the rain, with a struggling o-line, backed up deep in our own zone. So basically being blind to where we were on the field, the field conditions, and the current play of your offensive line - Feliciano (I think) was having a pretty rough day and I think I read that Morse also tripped on that play. I agree that we could use some upgrades, but Singletary was getting over 6 yards per and Gore 4.4, but only were given 12 carries. For the conditions yesterday that was far too few. I would have liked to see more involvement from Kroft - he caught a few, but the Eagles have struggled defending the middle of the field so between that and Allen keeping linebackers close to the box Kroft and Beasley should have been able to find holes just past those shallow zones and targeted more than they were. The Eagles made it a point to try to take away Brown there was a lot of bump and hold going on and the refs seemed to be letting it happen both ways. I prefer it when they let them play and as long as it is being called the same way from both sides its all good - the Bills needed to adjust to having a large part of their offense taken out and lean on others to step up.

This. This org from McBean down has shown that they are willing to move on if their coaches are not grading out well, or if there is someone with a bit more street cred out there. They moved on from their o-line coach last year because of the regression of some of our returning players and what seemed like an inability to coach up the new guys. I think Bobby has been an upgrade, just do not understand why every year we have so many false start penalties regardless of who is at the helm - completely correctable. I think Daboll has done a good job correcting Allen's short game, teaching him to read defenses, getting him to go through his progressions and throw more with anticipation to spots on the field. He has a complex play book and I don't see a confused young QB out there executing it although he has gotten rattled before trying to read disguised coverages while under pressure (NE Game). What I am not confident in is: his ability to adjust his play calling to better align and take advantage of field and game conditions. If you want to limit exposing Allen to hits and that is not just words, and if you do not want to put your defense in a bad spot, do not call a QB sweep against a stacked box, deep in your own zone, on a slippery field with a wet ball. That and other stubborn tendencies where he absolutely drags his feet before turning to the run, just makes me think that he may have a ceiling of what he will be able to provide this team as an OC. I do think that a lot of QBs that have gone on to make it in this league have benefited from being in stable organizations with some offensive continuity, but we will see. I sometimes feel like Daboll is designing a bit of a finesse offense like one you would see on a fast field under a dome, but in New Era you have to be very aware of the weather and field conditions and be able to adapt to them.

I have to stop being superstitious about the unis. If they tossed out every uni my Bills stink up the field wearing they would be out there buck naked.

Good catch as I did not take Allen OR Wentz out of it, but even makes a better case: We only ran Singletary and Gore together a total of 12 times to the Eagles 33 times for their designed runs. Singletary Ave: 6.3 yds/carry Gore: 3.78 yds/carry It was working, but you have to run your running backs more than 12 times, and I am pretty sure we would have had more success keeping it on the ground than all the 3 and outs we had trying to pass in that crap. Plus we would have taken some time off the clock, and perhaps even have given our defense a rest. I am not saying line up in the I formation and sell out that it is a run play, but would prefer we used a base package that Allen could run or pass out of based on the front and leaned more on the run.

It was interesting looking over the stats between teams: The Bills had more passing attempts - Eagles had 24 the Bills attempted 34 Both teams had one turnover but the glaring thing we all noticed who were not looking for something in particular was the rushing attempts Eagles had 41 rushes to the Bills 20 And for McD or anyone to say that we moved away from the run game because the Eagles defense was too successful stopping it: Eagles had 5.3 yards per rush and the Bills had 4.9 - it was a good day to run the ball for either team it is just that the Eagles took advantage of it and we did not. Just a poor job coaching to what was working in the conditions that were on the field and unnecessarily exposing your offense to high-risk/low-reward play calls that took no time off the clock to rest a flagging D. Not sure if I care if it is Gore or Singletary getting more touches as long as our running backs GET more touches and as long as Daboll uses Singletary when he wants to attack the edges - running the stretch plays where he can use his cutback ability and acceleration more effectively than Gore. and... why did it seem like the Bills were the only team slipping out there - almost forgot to throw the equipment guy under the bus while I was venting

Interesting, because I could not track it from the broadcast, but there was an attempted screen in the second half where the announcers mentioned one of the Bills seemed to be completely on the wrong page and took off up field - and the Eagles D seemed to be all over it. Allen threw it at his linemen's feet and I thought that was a silver lining I could take from what looked like one of several broken plays. I don't think Allen played great, but I don't think he played terrible either. I just wish Daboll leaned a bit more on his running game with the field conditions they way they were. Seemed to be the wiser route that the Eagles took. Feels like we conceded victory to their defense stopping the run without really testing it - like passing is what you are supposed to do against a strong run defense when the wind is at your back, but if the winds are blowing and it is raining you have to shift strategy. Feels like Daboll has preconceived notions of what is supposed to be working rather than what is actually working on the field at the time. Enough has been said about our defense, the way the d-line was getting moved off of their spots, which had a trickle-down with guys not being in the right fits - then there were just missed tackles or tackles made after bigger gains. Was not a good game all around, from the game plan, to game-day coaching, to player execution - sometimes you just get beat from top to bottom. Even our special teams were struggling a bit with Hausch-money pushing it to the right when all the flags were showing a stiff left-to-right wind, the blocked extra point. We did get some turnovers, which is a positive, but we have to be able to do more with them. On to Washington...

I thought about this today. There have been folks saying that his game is finally tailing off and we need a pass rushing end earlier this year, but I thought perhaps it was a slow start, but I cannot recall a year where his name was mentioned so infrequently. He had that hustle fumble recovery play last week, but really has not been as much of a factor rushing the QB. May be time to start developing a young DE or shopping for a proven commodity.

This is about the time after my Bills lay a turd that my anger morphs into gallows humor...

Today was a rant-worthy performance. Nuff said.

Well a non-conference game and hopefully something to light a fire under a team that has struggled since their their break. To be fair to Daboll I like how he has Allen progressing. Throwing receivers open, touch on screens and wheel routes, etc...have all been trending the right way. In a game where Allen would normally make a bad situation, by bad meaning where both sides of the ball are struggling, worse - he threw it away several times when I expected the hero ball to emerge. The flip side of this is I am not a fan of the designed QB runs when we are not in the red zone, or sans receiving options. I also think he struggles adjusting his plays to take advantage of personnel and game conditions during games. We will see, we won't hear anything resembling a public beating in Mcd's pressers, but I expect it will be an interesting week at OBD.

Their defense definitely were playing on our side of the line in the first half. Their offensive line was pushing around our D in the 2nd. Yep, that was a beating.

Early in the game I think that was true, but not after the half after they made some adjustments. Gore's few carries were strong evidence it was working. I think McD was giving air support for Daboll, but will disect that game plan in private. I prefer he runs things that way, never seen anything good come from throwing your coaches under the bus in a public forum. Bad teams with bad HCs do that.

I admit, the "winning" part usually gives me the beer-goggles needed to accept any amount of ugly. I mean who among us would scoff at a fugly 1 point victory in a SB?

Dude would be an upgrade to Yeldon. Soft hands as Dabs loves using his RBs in the passing game, and YAC with some attitude. Not the most pressing need, but an upgrade on depth.

Disagree with this, but it happens right? I think Dabol called a game that I would expect to see in a dome. He ignored conditions on the field, field position and game situations, and ignored the plays that his offense was executing vs the plays they were struggling to make. In a game that begged for grind it out ball control in the 2nd half before they fell so far behind he was giving up 3 and outs with pass, pass, pass and putting a struggling defense back on the field. Not his best day. He called a bad game, AND the Bills players did not execute very well either. I think it is safe to say that both can happen.

There are days when the conditions dictate "slobber-knocker" kind of football where it is more a matter of will and beating the man across from you till you can make that screen or dump off go for a lot of yards because the opposing team is desperate, you have the lead, and they have sold out to stop the run. And that is the truth - you cannot always rely on 4th qtr heroics if your defense cannot stop the opposing team. You are not going to get the ball back, they are the ones eating up the clock with long drives. There are times you just have to play 60 minutes of sound football with solid play calls and execution. That was not the Bills today. It happens.

This... is an accurate statement. There were a host of flaws today and last week against the Dolphins. The Bills have had a soft schedule and a fast start with no apologies for either, but have yet to prove they can hang with teams that have better records and coaching. This team is not there yet, and has been exposed the last two weeks. Is what it is, but I think how McD handles these next few weeks will say a lot about where this organization truly is in regards to their journey to try to become a playoff-caliber team. They may be a few pieces short, but I have always felt that a lot comes down to game planning and schemes that give the personnel you have on your roster the best chance of winning.

Wanted it a bit more maybe, have to tip your hat to their defensive line depth too. Had some injuries up front and their backups played well and had our offensive line on their heels for most of the day.