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All-22 Grades for Bills/Chiefs (The Athletic)


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On 10/24/2020 at 8:14 AM, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Several here and some of the guys from Cover1 have suggested that the Bills defensive play calls have become predictable

There's enough on film, apparently, that teams can make a good guess about what our coverage is actually gonna be

 

 

 

I believe it, but it's something new. We weren't even slightly predictable last year. Even Brady was consistently confused by us. So why are we not running the games anymore where we overload one side but back one guy out of the other side to cover the middle? Where are all the confusing pressures, where we schemed pressure rather than just blitzing?

 

IMO the most likely reason we don't see those this year is they think that with the guys we've got now we can't run them well. Without Milano, maybe? Or with Tremaine's injury? Or without Tre consistently blanketing the other team's #1? I don't know what it is but my best guess is they think that they can't run all of their catalog with the personnel group they're having to field right now.

Edited by Thurman#1
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On 10/24/2020 at 5:26 AM, LABILLBACKER said:

I think 99% of Bills fans are coming to the realization that albeit not an elite player, Star was invaluable to this team. Asking Ed to play 3Tech is ridiculous. We don't have alot of options.  Other maybe Zimmer, no one has stepped up with the skillset to play 1Tech. So we beg Snacks, trade for a 1T or just wing it for the rest of the season? And we have  2 more years on Star's deal.

 

 

After Star opted out this year, we have three years left on his deal.

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9 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Wow, @Stank_Nasty, what a find! 

 

The most interesting part to me is the beginning where he talks about the Chiefs offense and the Bills defense. Wow.  He does not mince words

 

Don't hold back, Chris Simms, tell me what you really think.  He does not mince words talking about Buffalo's defense.  He says point blank "their Defense sucks.  It's not talented. It's not creative".  Says the Bills offense has to carry the team.  Said "nobody on the front seven is worth a damn" in Buffalo.  Said we were continually in some defensive alignments where "I don't even know how you stop this run in this alignment"

 

Stat I hadn't realized: 46 rushing attempts and 245 yds rushing most ever for Andy Reid.  Said over and over again the Chiefs used the same play as the Rams had run with success against the Bills, which he describes as zone to the right, someone behind the LOS, cut back.  Said the nickel back Taron Johnson and Jordon Poyer were "too often" left as the key defenders, which is "never a good thing" when your nickel corner and safety are making most of the tackles.

 

Said on the Kelce TD, it was a totally busted coverage by AJ Klein, that he was playing 10 yds out of position and the Bills coaches were yelling at Tre' White, not realizing it was Klein who was all messed up.

 

His part about the Bills offense was also good, but not as jaw-dropping in frankness.  He talked about some of Josh Allen's early misses and yeah, the part about how Singletary used body language that told Josh he was running a wheel route and then cut the the flat (that was a problem last year, as well, not so much with Bease and Brown but everyone else - Daboll's offense explicitly calls for the QB to read the receiver's body language to tell what route they will run).  Disappointing.

Anyway, his conclusion was that the Bills might want to rethink running the "slow death" defense, maybe they'd be better off saying "OK, he's gonna score a TD, do it fast and get Allen and Diggs back out here".

I need to find this and listen to it more often, too often these commentators mince words but Simms really lays it out.

Agree or disagree, totally worth a listen, 10/10

 

 

Yes, that segment was frigging awesome. What the heck happened to this defense?? Simms basically says they’re one of the worst units in the league, and he ain’t wrong. And man, does he rip Leslie Frazier.

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What gets me is how so many Bills fans put Josh Allen under the microscope and say he is the reason the Bills lost that game...

 

I can't recall many QBs that can carry the entire team with a defense that played that poorly and literally no run game. Perhaps John Elway in his early days and even then they had Karl Mecklenburg, Dennis Smith, Rulon Jones, Tom Jackson on defense.

 

That defense that played against the Titans, Chiefs reminded me so much of Dick Jauron's defenses running that awful Tampa 2. Now the entire NFL world watched what the Titans, Chiefs did to win against Buffalo and the Bills will see that again and again all season.

 

Someone called for Lesie Frazier to be fired and now I'm thinking that might have been the right thing to do. That extension the Bills gave McD also reminds me of Jauron getting that extension and the team went flat. 

 

After watching games like these last two make me rethink the Bills might be a Skeletor 7-9 team with 10 games left. Jets, Pats, Seattle, Arizona, BYE, Chargers, 49ers, Steelers, Denver, Pats, Dolphins.  

 

Gotta get that Buffalo run game working and the defense back to respectability. Fire Frazier if that's what it's gonna take. 

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9 hours ago, Stank_Nasty said:

I try to catch him weekly. He’s been all in on McDermott, Allen, and the Bills since offseason of 2019. But I truly enjoy his stuff because of what you just described. He never holds back the good OR the bad. Very direct. It’s refreshing. He’ll heap praise when it’s there to heap and then the next week say the exact same dude left something to be desired. 
 

It’s really saying something if Simms is ripping the defense and the coaching of it because he has praised them routinely over the last 2 years. 
 

FWIW I totally agree with him on the D. Not only is it a leaky sieve but the creative looks we’ve seen in the past seem to be gone. What a mess. I agree, if you aren’t gonna be able to stop anyone take some freaking chances and increase your odds of maybe making a big play or 2. 

 

The biggest "ouch" to me in the KC game was Simms saying Buffalo doesn't have anyone on the front 7 that's worth a damn.

 

Going into the season, even after Star opted out, we were supposed to have at least six who were pretty good, including three young un's on rookie deals:

Hughes

Addison

Harrison Phillips

Ed Oliver

Tre'Maine Edmunds

Milano

 

Klein was supposed to be a solid addition, as was Jefferson

 

Instead Klein seems literally "lost in space" half the time, Milano has missed half our games and is hampered by lack of DL play the rest, Phillips seems more interested in Special Needs kids than in playing DT, Oliver took himself out of the last 4 games with an illegal leg whip injury, and holding has totally neutralized Hughes.

 

We don't mention this much but one big change was on DL coach.  Our DL coach left suddenly to take a college job after which we hired the Panthers DL coach after the fired Rivera.  He was supposed to be fantastic and an improvement, but you can't prove it by the results.

 

How much has that change messed things up?

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

The biggest "ouch" to me in the KC game was Simms saying Buffalo doesn't have anyone on the front 7 that's worth a damn.

 

Going into the season, even after Star opted out, we were supposed to have at least six who were pretty good, including three young un's on rookie deals:

Hughes

Addison

Harrison Phillips

Ed Oliver

Tre'Maine Edmunds

Milano

 

Klein was supposed to be a solid addition, as was Jefferson

 

Instead Klein seems literally "lost in space" half the time, Milano has missed half our games and is hampered by lack of DL play the rest, Phillips seems more interested in Special Needs kids than in playing DT, Oliver took himself out of the last 4 games with an illegal leg whip injury, and holding has totally neutralized Hughes.

 

We don't mention this much but one big change was on DL coach.  Our DL coach left suddenly to take a college job after which we hired the Panthers DL coach after the fired Rivera.  He was supposed to be fantastic and an improvement, but you can't prove it by the results.

 

How much has that change messed things up?

 

 

 

 

 

Death by a thousands cuts there. A lot of small factors seems to led us to this point. 
 

I would also add that we may have lost quite a bit of fire and attitude with Zo, Lawson, and Phillips departures. 

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On 10/23/2020 at 9:33 AM, zevo said:

The bomb to Diggs in the endzone was a dime and a game changer...I believe there was one other deep shot that went to brown that was there as well

The one to diggs just barely got tipped but that throw in the rain while moving was unreal.   If we hit that...it's a different game. 

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