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Trending in the Right Direction (Numbers)


billsrul120

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I wanted to see if the numbers lined up with the eye test that the Bills have been improving on both sides of the ball so I made a plot of the 4 game rolling average in points scored and points allowed.  As you can see, The Bills are have trended upwards in points scored and downward in points given up over the course of the season.  Over the last 4 games, the Bills are averaging 33.75 points scored and just 18.75 points given up.

 

Now it is just the last 4 games, but those numbers put the Bills as the highest scoring team and the 3rd best team in terms of points allowed in the league (Pittsburgh [18.2] and Miami [18.4]).  This team appears to be very legit. 

image.thumb.png.b8cba463b1b4dbbb365593952ef04c61.png

image.thumb.png.353e5925b5830619e91d2e67ac336338.png

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1 hour ago, billsrul120 said:

I wanted to see if the numbers lined up with the eye test that the Bills have been improving on both sides of the ball so I made a plot of the 4 game rolling average in points scored and points allowed.  As you can see, The Bills are have trended upwards in points scored and downward in points given up over the course of the season.  Over the last 4 games, the Bills are averaging 33.75 points scored and just 18.75 points given up.

 

Now it is just the last 4 games, but those numbers put the Bills as the highest scoring team and the 3rd best team in terms of points allowed in the league (Pittsburgh [18.2] and Miami [18.4]).  This team appears to be very legit. 

image.thumb.png.b8cba463b1b4dbbb365593952ef04c61.png

image.thumb.png.353e5925b5830619e91d2e67ac336338.png

 

Nice.

 

I am guilty of getting a bit lazy with the analytics using numbers for the season as a total...media pundits are just as bad.

 

With sports, trends are so important because teams are not static and evolve or devolve over a season.

 

The eye test told me our defense was better than their season aggregate and early performance. I think we noticed more play on the other side of the LOS. With that push there has been more TFLs and better play vs. the run.

 

Nice to see the trend line that backs that up.

 

 

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Metrics people! Metrics!

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16 minutes ago, Cruiserplayer said:

Not to be Negative Nancy but we are about where we were. Pitt, 9ers, Broncos D missing a lot of pieces. None of the 4 O are super scary (Herbert looks pretty good). However it is great to see our run D and middle of our D improving. 

Offense IS about where we were, true, but I think that's more a commentary about the beginning of the season than about progress.   Like a few other teams, I think the Bills were way ahead coming out of the gate.  It took the league four or five weeks to figure out how to stop getting absolutely bombed out of the park by the best passing teams.   Probably a better way to think about it that the first four or five weeks of the season was preseason.  In the middle of October, teams had caught on.  So if you look at the offensive graph starting at week 6 or week 8, you see a serious upward trend.  That's what's real, I think.  

 

On defense, the graph just confirms what everyone has been seeing.   The defense has really come together in the last month.   Klein came alive, Edmunds got healthy or woke up, Milano came back, the defensive line started playing better as a unit and learned how to play the run better.  Everything just began to click.  

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1 hour ago, Shaw66 said:

Offense IS about where we were, true, but I think that's more a commentary about the beginning of the season than about progress.   Like a few other teams, I think the Bills were way ahead coming out of the gate.  It took the league four or five weeks to figure out how to stop getting absolutely bombed out of the park by the best passing teams.   Probably a better way to think about it that the first four or five weeks of the season was preseason.  In the middle of October, teams had caught on.  So if you look at the offensive graph starting at week 6 or week 8, you see a serious upward trend.  That's what's real, I think.  

 

On defense, the graph just confirms what everyone has been seeing.   The defense has really come together in the last month.   Klein came alive, Edmunds got healthy or woke up, Milano came back, the defensive line started playing better as a unit and learned how to play the run better.  Everything just began to click.  

Bingo....I think people underestimated the impact of not having traditional training camp and those pre-season work weeks (not the games themselves). 

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2 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

Offense IS about where we were, true, but I think that's more a commentary about the beginning of the season than about progress.   Like a few other teams, I think the Bills were way ahead coming out of the gate.  It took the league four or five weeks to figure out how to stop getting absolutely bombed out of the park by the best passing teams.   Probably a better way to think about it that the first four or five weeks of the season was preseason.  In the middle of October, teams had caught on.  So if you look at the offensive graph starting at week 6 or week 8, you see a serious upward trend.  That's what's real, I think.  

 

On defense, the graph just confirms what everyone has been seeing.   The defense has really come together in the last month.   Klein came alive, Edmunds got healthy or woke up, Milano came back, the defensive line started playing better as a unit and learned how to play the run better.  Everything just began to click.  

 

All true Shaw66, but another angle is the one that McDermott has been preaching around complimentary football.

 

The Titans had a scheme to take advantage of the Bills both offensively and defensively. Run the ball against our porous run defense, maintain possession, limit opportunities for Allan and the offense, take the lead, and get Allen and the offense to press and play out of character. They then used layers of zone, cover 3, and went away from the blitz and cover 0 looks Allen was tearing up early in the season. It worked, Allen pressed because we were behind, the offense sputtered, and the more guys we committed to stopping Henry the more the subs and injured backer core was exposed defending passes over the middle.

 

Teams quickly copied the Titans blueprint, game after game Allen saw 2 deep zones and just 4-5 man rushes. This forced him to hold onto the ball longer trying to find receivers breaking deep and exposed our offense to more incompletions and negative plays. Teams also focused on running on us just like the Titans... the Chiefs came in and we expected some kind of air raid offensive showdown between Allen and Mahomes, but Andy Reid is a smart coach - they ran and ran and ran. Their TOP in that game was ridiculous.

 

On top of that our Special Teams seemed to find ways every week to let teams down punts near our goal line, or taking deep kickoffs out of the end zone to be snuffed out behind the 20, or our rookie kicker was missing kicks, our punter was shanking punts when we needed to flip the field...

 

Things had to change, Bills coaches had to step up and do a better job game planning and preparing, finding the right players and putting them in positions to succeed. Allen, Daboll, and the QB room did a great job of self-scouting and gaining an understanding of what teams were doing to smother our offense. They started focusing on exploiting the matchups beneath the sticks, remembered they had that Beasley guy and that Diggs is not too shabby either at finding the soft spots in zone as well. Josh worked at being patient, better recognizing and exploiting zone coverages and calling the right protections. Ford was hurt, but other guys stepped up and we got Mongo back and our offensive line has been clicking better as a unit.

 

With offensive production and moving the chains, our offense did not put our defense in as many bad positions. With more scoring and time of possession came a defense that was more rested, but they knew too that they were still letting their offense down by pissing away late leads and they still had to improve stopping the run.

 

They have tried a lot of different combinations in that 1-tech DT spot and seem to have settled on rotating Jefferson and Butler with Oliver and Horrible Harry manning the 3-tech spot - usually... Leslie has them doing a lot of pre-snap shifting to make it harder for teams to coordinate iso and double-team blocks. Zimmer who came on for us for a while has been the odd man out. 

 

Leslie also figured out the best ways to use Klein and Edmunds gradually has gotten healthy and has been less timid about sticking his shoulder into tackling... still would like to see him shed blockers, keep the pad-level low, square-up and wrap up better, but not denying the improvement in his game. There were key new pieces in this defense and they were not playing as a unit, the loss of the leadership that the Lorax provided was keenly felt earlier in the year. It was clear that they were going to have to find their new chemistry and have others step up as leaders - I think they have.

 

Murphy rode the pine and Frazier went to Epenesa and Johnson in the DE rotation. Milano has gotten healthy so we have that linebacker who can cover the middle and skate with those TEs and larger receivers working the shallow crossers. With all the changes the Bills began to see results. More push, more run stops, and more TFL, they were able to make more teams punt, fall behind, and become one-dimensional passing. With that we could dial up the pressure which has lead to multiple turnovers.

 

I still think that our defense is still susceptible to a strong run game (would not want us facing Henry again), but if our offense can score they put pressure on teams to keep up on the scoreboard and that leads to our defense facing more pass attempts and they are less exposed to defending a run-heavy game play by the opposing team.

 

Through all this our Special Teams brought their game up to a higher level, when we needed it we got that good return, that punt that flipped the field, that tackle on that kickoff that pinned our opponent, and our rookie kicker found his zone.

 

 

Edited by WideNine
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6 hours ago, billsrul120 said:

I wanted to see if the numbers lined up with the eye test that the Bills have been improving on both sides of the ball so I made a plot of the 4 game rolling average in points scored and points allowed.  As you can see, The Bills are have trended upwards in points scored and downward in points given up over the course of the season.  Over the last 4 games, the Bills are averaging 33.75 points scored and just 18.75 points given up.

 

Now it is just the last 4 games, but those numbers put the Bills as the highest scoring team and the 3rd best team in terms of points allowed in the league (Pittsburgh [18.2] and Miami [18.4]).  This team appears to be very legit. 

image.thumb.png.b8cba463b1b4dbbb365593952ef04c61.png

image.thumb.png.353e5925b5830619e91d2e67ac336338.png


so based on this they should win the Super Bowl 37-18 😉 

Edited by Over 29 years of fanhood
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I decided to take a look at the past 4 games to look at the stats to see how dominant the Bill have been. The passing numbers are skewed for the opponents because we gave up a fair amount of garbage time yards to the 49ers. This team could of gone two ways after the bye. Teams in the past would of folded and gone on a losing streak against tough opponents especially under the prime time lights. But not this team, they have taken the anger of the last second play against the Cardinals and turned into the most dominating team in football these past 4 weeks. There is not a team right now that wants to face the Bills with the way they have been playing.

 

                                            Bills                                       Opponent

 

Points per Game:               33.75                                        18.75

Passing Yards per Game  281.75                                      231

Rushing Yards Per Game  134.75                                      87.25 (3.775 yard per attempt)

Average Time of Poss        33.5 minutes                           26.5 minutes

 

 

 

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