Week One: Bills at Jets

[LeGOATski]

6 minutes ago, YoloinOhio said:

 

 

? .... Gonna be a nail-biter

[YoloinOhio]

 

[Rocket94]

10 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I had the same thought.  If I were Gase, I'd run it down our throats until we prove we can stop it.

 

Yes. We do have to prove this. Hopefully we can set the tone early and send a message that we can't be run over. We do not want a repeat of last year...hopefully the run D will shore up.

The Jets are an unpredictable pain in the...never what team will show up.

[Stank_Nasty]

the bills run defense was 16th in yds allowed and 9th in yards per carry.... its like people watched the 2 worst run games of the year last year and are all of a sudden its this HUGE issue. I don't get it at all.

[NickelCity]

7 minutes ago, Stank_Nasty said:

the bills run defense was 16th in yds allowed and 9th in yards per carry.... its like people watched the 2 worst run games of the year last year and are all of a sudden its this HUGE issue. I don't get it at all.

 

Something about this defense is tough to gauge. For me at least. It never seems to look as good as it is, statistically.

[njbuff]

I have a feeling this board is going to blow up if the Bills lose Sunday.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

14 minutes ago, Stank_Nasty said:

the bills run defense was 16th in yds allowed and 9th in yards per carry.... its like people watched the 2 worst run games of the year last year and are all of a sudden its this HUGE issue. I don't get it at all.

 

Very honest reaction:  What point are you trying to make here?

 

Overall last season.  the Bills Defense was #1 in passing yards given up, and #16 in rush yards allowed.  The clear implication is that our pass defense was a strength, and our rush defense was a relative weakness.    It seems pretty clear that if we want to be a championship caliber contender, the rush defense is a relative area of defensive weakness requiring improvement.

 

Now we look at our opponent, the Jets, and we see that last year they had a rookie QB who was arguably a better passer than our rookie QB, but did not light up the league with his passing prowess, and he's going to have a guy he's actually never played a game with making snaps to him at center.

We also see that the Jets acquired a guy who was a workhorse, Bell Cow RB who rushed 21 times per game for 4 YPC the last time he played.

 

It isn't exactly the football equivalent of Rocket Science to think that if I were Gase designing my 'chess game' for the matchup, I'd take their area of relative strength (RB) and match it against our area of relative weakness (run D) and see how that went.

 

[WMDman]

15 minutes ago, njbuff said:

I have a feeling this board is going to blow up if the Bills lose Sunday.

we blow up after every loss NBD

[Stank_Nasty]

13 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Very honest reaction:  What point are you trying to make here?

 

Overall last season.  the Bills Defense was #1 in passing yards given up, and #16 in rush yards allowed.  The clear implication is that our pass defense was a strength, and our rush defense was a relative weakness.    It seems pretty clear that if we want to be a championship caliber contender, the rush defense is a relative area of defensive weakness requiring improvement.

 

Now we look at our opponent, the Jets, and we see that last year they had a rookie QB who was arguably a better passer than our rookie QB, but did not light up the league with his passing prowess, and he's going to have a guy he's actually never played a game with making snaps to him at center.

We also see that the Jets acquired a guy who was a workhorse, Bell Cow RB who rushed 21 times per game for 4 YPC the last time he played.

 

It isn't exactly the football equivalent of Rocket Science to think that if I were Gase designing my 'chess game' for the matchup, I'd take their area of relative strength (RB) and match it against our area of relative weakness (run D) and see how that went.

 

my point i'm trying to make is that I don't think our run defense is nearly as bad as it would need to be to just give an rb the rock all game and ride him to a win.... 9th in yards per carry(a nice ranking) and 16th(middle of the road) in yds allowed sorta shows they stopped it plenty. there were about 2 or 3 games they had let downs last year. the rest they were more than stellar. not to mention the seemed improvement of our freak athlete at MLB and a healthy Milano, who didn't happen to be present for the NE run defense debacle...

 

you wouldn't welcome a one dimensional running based gameplan? I would. I hope they come in with that sort of philosophy.

 

also my response was directly mainly at rockets comment that we need to show we wont be run over like last year..... that happened like twice. i'm not worried about it.

Edited September 5, 2019 by Stank_Nasty

[Juice_32]

25 minutes ago, NickelCity said:

 

Something about this defense is tough to gauge. For me at least. It never seems to look as good as it is, statistically.

 

I feel the same way. I know they are good on paper, but I'm never confident actually watching them. They seem to be very much in the "bend but don't break" mold. Or they will play lights out one week and then terrible the next. I'm hoping for more consistency from them this year.

[Stank_Nasty]

3 minutes ago, Juice_32 said:

 

I feel the same way. I know they are good on paper, but I'm never confident actually watching them. They seem to be very much in the "bend but don't break" mold. Or they will play lights out one week and then terrible the next. I'm hoping for more consistency from them this year.

there were plenty of weeks I felt confident watching them and just wished the offense would show up.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

15 minutes ago, NickelCity said:

Something about this defense is tough to gauge. For me at least. It never seems to look as good as it is, statistically.

 

 

Well, there's a couple things:

1) Several have pointed out that one reason we gave up relatively few yards is that because of problems on ST, we often gave our opponents a short field to start with.

So "#2 in yards given up" does not mean as much as "#18 in points given up"

2) Our D was sort of like Longfellow's "little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead.": "When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid."  We had 6 games where we held the opponent to <20 points.  But we also had 6 games where we allowed the opponent >24 points (only one against a division rival).  We also were one of the worst teams in red zone defense. 

 

So when you average it all out, we weren't bad, but it was sort of like the cartoon about "statistically, the Duck is Dead" (showing a cluster of shots to the right and the left of the duck.)

 

 

[HappyDays]

35 minutes ago, NickelCity said:

 

Something about this defense is tough to gauge. For me at least. It never seems to look as good as it is, statistically.

 

Statistics are relative. Defensive production across the league has gone down, so even though we don't always look great we are still far better than most other defenses. The days of consistently holding teams to 2 TDs or less is gone. Good offenses are going to get their yards and points no matter what you throw at them. The best you can do is slow them down, force turnovers, and build an offense capable of keeping up and protecting the ball.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

20 minutes ago, Stank_Nasty said:

my point i'm trying to make is that I don't think our run defense is nearly as bad as it would need to be to just give an rb the rock all game and ride him to a win.... 9th in yards per carry(a nice ranking) and 16th(middle of the road) in yds allowed sorta shows they stopped it plenty. there were about 2 or 3 games they had let downs last year. the rest they were more than stellar. not to mention the seemed improvement of our freak athlete at MLB and a healthy Milano, who didn't happen to be present for the NE run defense debacle...

 

What do you call a "let down"?  We gave up >100 yds 7 times and 99 or 100 yds 2 times.  We had 3 games where we gave up >200 yds.  Is it a "let down" only if we give up a mind-numbing >200 yds?  Or does 141 yds count etc?

 

I don't know about "a RB" and it certainly wouldn't be my whole game plan, but at a simplistic level if I were facing off to play Football Coaching Chess against McDermott's team and had Le'Veon Bell on my roster, I would most certainly start out giving him the rock and make us prove we can stop him - if we "sell out" to stop the run like we did in the 2017 playoff game against Fournette and the Jaguars,  then I unleash Darnold.

 

16 minutes ago, Stank_Nasty said:

there were plenty of weeks I felt confident watching them and just wished the offense would show up.

 

This is true.  There were also weeks when I wished the D would grow a backbone.

[thebandit27]

12 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

 

Well, there's a couple things:

1) Several have pointed out that one reason we gave up relatively few yards is that because of problems on ST, we often gave our opponents a short field to start with.

So "#2 in yards given up" does not mean as much as "#18 in points given up"

2) Our D was sort of like Longfellow's "little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead.": "When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid."  We had 6 games where we held the opponent to <20 points.  But we also had 6 games where we allowed the opponent >24 points (only one against a division rival).  We also were one of the worst teams in red zone defense. 

 

So when you average it all out, we weren't bad, but it was sort of like the cartoon about "statistically, the Duck is Dead" (showing a cluster of shots to the right and the left of the duck.)

 

 

 

Regarding #1 above, I have to say "kind of"...if you look at the drive stats, they tell a bit more of the story:

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestatsdef/2018

 

You are absolutely correct that Buffalo ranked dead last in LOS per drive.  However, they also ranked 1st in number of plays allowed per drive, 2nd in yards allowed per drive, 10th in points allowed per drive, and 6th in drive success rate (i.e. percentage of drives that resulted in a first down or TD--sans kneeldowns).  They also produced the 3rd-highest percentage of 3-and-outs.

 

Just some additional context for consideration.

[K-9]

56 minutes ago, Stank_Nasty said:

the bills run defense was 16th in yds allowed and 9th in yards per carry.... its like people watched the 2 worst run games of the year last year and are all of a sudden its this HUGE issue. I don't get it at all.

I don’t get it, either. The Jest ran the ball 46 times for 161 yards against us last year. I get that they’ve added Osemele and Kalil and have L Bell, but are they that much better? Not imo. 

1 minute ago, thebandit27 said:

 

Regarding #1 above, I have to say "kind of"...if you look at the drive stats, they tell a bit more of the story:

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestatsdef/2018

 

You are absolutely correct that Buffalo ranked dead last in LOS per drive.  However, they also ranked 1st in number of plays allowed per drive, 2nd in yards allowed per drive, 10th in points allowed per drive, and 6th in drive success rate (i.e. percentage of drives that resulted in a first down or TD--sans kneeldowns).  They also produced the 3rd-highest percentage of 3-and-outs.

 

Just some additional context for consideration.

Thanks for this. Additional context is important. When we start playing with more leads, especially in the second half of games, our run defense will improve greatly from a statistical standpoint.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

7 minutes ago, K-9 said:

I don’t get it, either. The Jest ran the ball 46 times for 161 yards against us last year. I get that they’ve added Osemele and Kalil and have L Bell, but are they that much better? Not imo. 

 

Well, that's one of these "Play the Game and we'll See" things, isn't it?

 

Leveon Bell is certainly on another level relative to Crowell and a 30 year old Powell, their RB last year.

The Jets think they've significantly improved their OL. 

 

We'll see.  It would certainly make me happy if our D improvements > their O improvements.

 

 

[K-9]

Just now, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Well, that's one of these "Play the Game and we'll See" things, isn't it?

 

Leveon Bell is certainly on another level relative to Crowell and a 30 year old Powell, their RB last year.

The Jets think they've significantly improved their OL. 

 

We'll see.  It would certainly make me happy if our D improvements > their O improvements.

 

 

Indeed. That’s why they play the games. 

 

Bell was certainly on another level with that great Steelers offense, but I need to be convinced that he will simply pick up where he left off after being idle for 19 months on a less talented team.. Lotta New York media hype in the meantime, though. 

[PlayoffsPlease]

1 hour ago, NickelCity said:

 

Something about this defense is tough to gauge. For me at least. It never seems to look as good as it is, statistically.

This is because teams were able to coast against us last year n many  games

[NickelCity]

43 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

"#2 in yards given up" does not mean as much as "#18 in points given up"

 

I knew the discrepancy was considerable, but that is rough. Especially considering the latter is what actually matters. We better get that in the top 10 if we want a shot at the playoffs.