Analysis of the Entire Body of Bills' Work for 2011

[Casey D]

This season has been so emotionally charged from the great start to the 7 game losing streak to the win yesterday, it has been hard to give a dispassionate analysis of the season to get some handle on where this team is abilty-wise. If you look back at the season now, the team was probably more competitive than it feels given the losing streak.

 

Out of 15 games, the Bills won 6 against some good teams, including NE, Oak, Philadelphia and Denver. They crushed two weaker opponents in KC and Washington. So those 6 wins are of fairly high quality.

 

Three of the Bills losses were tight games that could have gone either way-- Cincinnati, NYG and Jets2. Those are all solid teams, so 3 more solid games by the Bills, albeit losses.

 

There were two losses where the Bills were in the game, but deserved to lose, Tennessee and Miami2. Not disaster games however--watchable to the end.

 

Then there were 4 putrid performances, Jets1, Dallas, Miami1 and SD.

 

Because the putrid performances were largely strung together later in the season, they provide the most vivid image of the season and indicate that the Bills are truly awful and totally lack talent. But when you look at the whole body of work, there were 9 good games and 2 fair games to go with the putrid 4, so 11 games out of 15 were at least reasonable efforts. It suggests the team is not as bad as it has felt for the past two months, and that while the team is not as good as the 5-2 start, it is not nearly as far away from that standard as it has felt recently. With a good off-season keeping and adding talent, and some better luck next year injury wise, they might be as consistently good next year for 16 games(or for most of them if they could, say, reduce the true stinkers to 1 or 2 games) as they were for the first 7 this year. Here's hoping and Merry Christmas!

[San Jose Bills Fan]

I agree with your breakdown of the season.

 

I would add that if you accept wins as wins, you have to accept losses as losses.

 

In other words, you can't play the game of "the Bills record should be better because they should have won this game" when there were games where you could easily say "the Bills should have lost this game."

 

Put differently, you are what your record says you are… a 6-9 team and a team which is 10-13 in their last 23 starts.

[thewildrabbit]

This season has been so emotionally charged from the great start to the 7 game losing streak to the win yesterday, it has been hard to give a dispassionate analysis of the season to get some handle on where this team is abilty-wise. If you look back at the season now, the team was probably more competitive than it feels given the losing streak.

 

Out of 15 games, the Bills won 6 against some good teams, including NE, Oak, Philadelphia and Denver. They crushed two weaker opponents in KC and Washington. So those 6 wins are of fairly high quality.

 

Three of the Bills losses were tight games that could have gone either way-- Cincinnati, NYG and Jets2. Those are all solid teams, so 3 more solid games by the Bills, albeit losses.

 

There were two losses where the Bills were in the game, but deserved to lose, Tennessee and Miami2. Not disaster games however--watchable to the end.

 

Then there were 4 putrid performances, Jets1, Dallas, Miami1 and SD.

 

Because the putrid performances were largely strung together later in the season, they provide the most vivid image of the season and indicate that the Bills are truly awful and totally lack talent. But when you look at the whole body of work, there were 9 good games and 2 fair games to go with the putrid 4, so 11 games out of 15 were at least reasonable efforts. It suggests the team is not as bad as it has felt for the past two months, and that while the team is not as good as the 5-2 start, it is not nearly as far away from that standard as it has felt recently. With a good off-season keeping and adding talent, and some better luck next year injury wise, they might be as consistently good next year for 16 games(or for most of them if they could, say, reduce the true stinkers to 1 or 2 games) as they were for the first 7 this year. Here's hoping and Merry Christmas!

Yea well, after the Cincy game in which the Bengal defense showed the rest of the league how to stop Chan Gaileys offense the decline started right there. For the most part the offense went into the toilet against the better defenses through out the year. Chan Gailey never really changed or adjusted his offense to counter what opposing defenses were doing to shut down the Bills offense until this last game against Denver. In which he kept utilizing the RB the entire game. The simple reason for that might be that the Bills had the lead, so he ran the ball.

 

Usually once the Bills were down by 7 points Gailey just kept forcing Fitz to throw, even when the pass wasn't working as well as the run. It almost looked like Denver had switched places with the bills for a week. Tebow throwing 4 iNT"s while trying to play catch up instead of just running their normal game plan of run run run score. I think once Tom Brady gets the Patriots the lead next week Gailey will revert to his normal try and play from behind game plan, where he call for pass after pass.

 

My take is the offensive line play was so poor that Fitz only was able to throw those short 3 step drop back passes, and wasn't able to build a deep passing offense simply because he didn't have adequate time. For the most part even when Eric Wood, Dem Bell and that O line was completely healthy Fitz never had a true NFL pocket to pass from. No pocket to float around in, no pocket to step up in, no pocket to take 5-7 step drop backs in. This limited what the offense was able to do all year.

 

 

The other part is the defense, which has been horrible in giving up massive amounts of yardage game after game all year long. They really never did stop any team in any game, except the Redskins and Chiefs. When the team manages to get a bunch of turnovers they seem to win.The Bills still almost lost to the Patriots even with Brady throwing 4 INT's. The bills offense only scored one TD in the last game against Denver, it was all defense and special teams that won it.

 

The Bills have almost enough talent to win in the league and be competitive. The problem is they just seem to try and get by with sub par players in certain areas. Plus the coaching stinks, the team needs a new DC & OC. People with proven NFL experience and ability. The GM kinda stinks in the fact that he really didn't do a good enough job finding the proper players in certain areas. He knew he needed to upgrade certain players and either didn't bother or didn't care.

 

Coaching grade F

GM grade D

Players grade C

 

Fans grade A+ Merry Christmas

[Ronin]

The bottom line is that under Nix/Gailey the team has not improved.

 

Despite going from Edwards, a real schlep of a QB and one that Gailey initially thought was good, to Fitzpatrick, an average one, and significant additions on D, the team is no better than the 6-10/7-9 team that they inherited.

 

The offense is perhaps marginally better, but that addition-by-subtraction upgrade from Edwards to Fitzpatrick should have yielded more than that. Meanwhile, the D has gotten significantly worse despite greater talent on it. That's not to say that it's talented, but they do have Dareus and Barnett this season. Anyway, after the Pats shred our D for another 40 points come Sunday, Gailey's D will have allowed more points than any Bills' D since probably 1984 when the Bills reeked and no one went to games.

 

They've barely outscored Jauron's '08 team, probably won't outscore Malarkey's '04 team, and will probably hover around Williams' '02 team for points scored.

 

Hardly impressive.

 

It's time to face facts, the Bills have once again hired an inept GM and coach, who in turn hired ridiculously inept coordinators.

 

Even if we win on Sunday, the Bills haven't lost more games in two seasons under a head coach since the Bullough/Stephenson days in the mid-80s when no one even went to games and the upper decks were completely empty and even the lower bowl was only half-full on the sidelines.

[Gray Beard]

Yea well, after the Cincy game in which the Bengal defense showed the rest of the league how to stop Chan Gaileys offense the decline started right there. For the most part the offense went into the toilet against the better defenses through out the year. Chan Gailey never really changed or adjusted his offense to counter what opposing defenses were doing to shut down the Bills offense until this last game against Denver. In which he kept utilizing the RB the entire game. The simple reason for that might be that the Bills had the lead, so he ran the ball.

 

Usually once the Bills were down by 7 points Gailey just kept forcing Fitz to throw, even when the pass wasn't working as well as the run. It almost looked like Denver had switched places with the bills for a week. Tebow throwing 4 iNT"s while trying to play catch up instead of just running their normal game plan of run run run score. I think once Tom Brady gets the Patriots the lead next week Gailey will revert to his normal try and play from behind game plan, where he call for pass after pass.

 

My take is the offensive line play was so poor that Fitz only was able to throw those short 3 step drop back passes, and wasn't able to build a deep passing offense simply because he didn't have adequate time. For the most part even when Eric Wood, Dem Bell and that O line was completely healthy Fitz never had a true NFL pocket to pass from. No pocket to float around in, no pocket to step up in, no pocket to take 5-7 step drop backs in. This limited what the offense was able to do all year.

 

 

The other part is the defense, which has been horrible in giving up massive amounts of yardage game after game all year long. They really never did stop any team in any game, except the Redskins and Chiefs. When the team manages to get a bunch of turnovers they seem to win. The Bills still almost lost to the Patriots even with Brady throwing 4 INT's. The bills offense only scored one TD in the last game against Denver, it was all defense and special teams that won it.

 

The Bills have almost enough talent to win in the league and be competitive. The problem is they just seem to try and get by with sub par players in certain areas. Plus the coaching stinks, the team needs a new DC & OC. People with proven NFL experience and ability. The GM kinda stinks in the fact that he really didn't do a good enough job finding the proper players in certain areas. He knew he needed to upgrade certain players and either didn't bother or didn't care.

Great summary. I bolded the parts that I thought were key.

[jjmac]

Part of the problem in Cincy was that we had built a lead, but allowed it to disappear in the second half. Our players seemed to be mailing it in, and the Bengals took advantage.