Lee, we hardly knew ye

[Hapless Bills Fan]

2 minutes ago, klos63 said:

actually I have.  Most NFL players are very athletic, Knox is probably in the lower half of NFL TE's right now. I think he will continue to improve, but how much and how quickly are important questions. I heard a rumor we are interested in Engram for a 3rd, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

 

I think it might be helpful to distinguish between base athleticism and what's shown on the football field.

 

What Knox has shown on the football field to date is NOT elite.  He's inconsistent as a blocker.  He drops too many balls or fails to make the athletic play to bring in some high-difficulty but catchable balls.  There's the old meme "looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane".  Cover1 made a favorable comment about a strong arm-over by Knox that blew him open in one of their film breakdowns in a damning way: "he's usually not a very physical player" (I think they meant as a receiver) and they're right - he lacks the moves of a top receiving TE like Kelce or Kittle or even Gedeiki

 

Then there's intrinsic athleticism.  I would believe that Knox probably shows freaky athletic traits in the training center or in drills.

So you and Lee Smith can both be right 😅

[JGMcD2]

14 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

As Lee Smith said, "Dawson has to take BIG advantage of his opportunities".  Maybe that's a different way of saying "he has lost Allen's trust" - I don't think it's quite true, but I think that Beasley and Diggs have proven themselves to be elite receiving options while Dawson to this point is literally a 50/50 guy.

I don’t think he’s lost Josh’s trust at all. Knox, at least it seemed like, was a go to target in the RZ down the stretch and in the first playoff game. 
 

I just think when your options are Diggs, who has shown he can take over a game... gosh that San Francisco game when before the play you knew he was going to break the DBs ankles and Josh was going to throw it to him was amazing.... and then Cole who’s IMO acted as that security blanket for Josh the last two seasons... it’s hard to get anyone else substantial targets. 

[klos63]

30 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I think it might be helpful to distinguish between base athleticism and what's shown on the football field.

 

What Knox has shown on the football field to date is NOT elite.  He's inconsistent as a blocker.  He drops too many balls or fails to make the athletic play to bring in some high-difficulty but catchable balls.  There's the old meme "looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane".  Cover1 made a favorable comment about a strong arm-over by Knox that blew him open in one of their film breakdowns in a damning way: "he's usually not a very physical player" (I think they meant as a receiver) and they're right - he lacks the moves of a top receiving TE like Kelce or Kittle or even Gedeiki

 

Then there's intrinsic athleticism.  I would believe that Knox probably shows freaky athletic traits in the training center or in drills.

So you and Lee Smith can both be right 😅

Me and Lee are tight!

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 hour ago, JGMcD2 said:

I don’t disagree with you on it not being a zero-sum game. Although I do disagree with you on the fact that there are enough plays to squeeze out. The Chargers, I believe were the leader, but they were a serious outlier over the last 10 years. There’s maybe ~30 more plays we can reasonably run, but then you have to take into account run/pass splits. 
 

I think it does make sense to tweak the target distribution a little bit so teams have to account for some other guys... but then again we were a Taiwan Jones dropped pass in the end zone and an Andre Roberts tap pass stopped at the 1 away from setting the NFL record for different players with a receiving TD. 

 

Question: What do you mean by "serious outlier in the last 10 years"?  The data I see in Pro-football-reference indicates that the Chargers total # of plays was met or exceeded 6 times in the last 10 years - exceeded 3x.  That's not even "outlier" territory much less "serious outlier" in my viewpoint.

 

Being a numbers geek, I pulled the data of the top-5 teams for # of plays, calculated an average, took the difference between that and the Bills # of plays this year, and averaged the difference.  On average, the difference between this year's Bills and a top-5 # of plays team was 61 plays.  Using a conservative 50/50 run/pass split, that would be 30 more pass plays available in a manner that's demonstrably achievable for a top NFL team, on average, over the last 10 years.

My point, though, is not about target distribution (and certainly not for the sake of target distribution), but about play execution.  Far more than some people appreciate, Daboll's play designs usually do feature checkdown or outlet options.  We have gotten to a point where defenses blanket our top WR deep and over the middle and usually leave those outlets plenty of room, because they figure (correctly) that Allen probably won't take them.  (If you'd like to see a good breakdown, take a look at Brett Kollmann's "Josh Allen vs The World" piece.)

I believe that if Allen specifically delivers the ball more to those specific targets (which are usually but not always the TE or the RB), we will move the chains more and sustain more drives, as well as taking some of the coverage pressure off of the WR. 

 

The Bills need to figure out the reason why he isn't doing this and have it loaded up and driven away in a plain van.  If it's that he doesn't trust his RBs Motor and Moss and his TE Knox as reliable outlets in these situations, then we need a change at those positions.  I don't think that's entirely the case, because there are times when I see a sure-handed guy like Diggs or Beasley in that role and Allen still won't take them, but it surely factors in. 

 

If it's that Allen still doesn't 100% trust his throws to those areas of the field - and it was a problem for him his first year in the league and he does have an area where his completion % is still below league average, to the left behind the LOS -  then he needs to tool down on that.  Gotta hit the Bunnies!

 

If it's that they're there as decoys but not really part of his progressions - then a decoy doesn't work if it's always a decoy, that needs to change.

Bottom line: as the Bills showed vs the Ravens and vs Pittsburgh,defenses will exploit a known gap in a team's offense by doubling down against that team's strengths UNTIL the opponent shows they can exploit that defensive game plan successfully.  Minimal run game against a strong DL and a known propensity to overlook the outlet or checkdown receiver on Allen's part were Bills weaknesses.  KC exploited them.
 

PS here are my data.  Click to embiggen

 

 

[whorlnut]

3 hours ago, dave mcbride said:

This is a GREAT interview. I strongly recommend watching it, especially regarding what he says about Dawson Knox. He basically said that he didn’t play much before coming to the NFL and just needs time. He also said that he is an athletic freak with an *extremely* bright future. Smith actually says “etch it in stone” with regard to his prediction that Knox will become elite. He says he’s uncoverable and that DBs hate tackling him.

Well here are my thoughts on that...he’s not all of a sudden going to start catching everything that hits his hands. He just doesn’t seem to be reliable. He may still be learning the position, but you can either catch or you can’t. He seems way too unreliable in that regard... 

[Don Otreply]

What Lee says about Knox is diametrically opposed to a large number of posters here. 
I too like to bust Knox once in a while 😁.

I like what he says about getting open as the key to being a good WR, Beasley ain’t fast, he is quick, and he gets open, 
combine that with what, hardly any drops, Beasley is way under rated.

 

Nice interview, thanks for posting it, 👍

[transient]

35 minutes ago, whorlnut said:

Well here are my thoughts on that...he’s not all of a sudden going to start catching everything that hits his hands. He just doesn’t seem to be reliable. He may still be learning the position, but you can either catch or you can’t. He seems way too unreliable in that regard... 

Knox can catch. What he’s failed to prove is whether he can kee his head in the game for an entire 60 minutes. Typically, when he’s making a boneheaded play it’s something routine, and yet he manages to make low percentage catches fairly regularly. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

45 minutes ago, whorlnut said:

Well here are my thoughts on that...he’s not all of a sudden going to start catching everything that hits his hands. He just doesn’t seem to be reliable. He may still be learning the position, but you can either catch or you can’t. He seems way too unreliable in that regard... 

 

Lee Smith, who FWIW seems to be in the category "can catch, if he can manage to get open and it's thrown to him", seems to disagree with you there.

He says that catching is like dribbling a basketball or shooting 3 pointers:  the more you work at something, the more instinctive it becomes.

 

What you say sort of reminds me of the consensus Pundit view about accuracy for a QB: you either have it or you don't, it can't be improved.  And yet, last season....

[DJB]

Unless Knox finds a set of hands he will never become a top notch TE. 

[Buffalo_Stampede]

1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I think it might be helpful to distinguish between base athleticism and what's shown on the football field.

 

What Knox has shown on the football field to date is NOT elite.  He's inconsistent as a blocker.  He drops too many balls or fails to make the athletic play to bring in some high-difficulty but catchable balls.  There's the old meme "looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane".  Cover1 made a favorable comment about a strong arm-over by Knox that blew him open in one of their film breakdowns in a damning way: "he's usually not a very physical player" (I think they meant as a receiver) and they're right - he lacks the moves of a top receiving TE like Kelce or Kittle or even Gedeiki

 

Then there's intrinsic athleticism.  I would believe that Knox probably shows freaky athletic traits in the training center or in drills.

So you and Lee Smith can both be right 😅

He's made highly contested catches. He shows high level game athletism. He's just very inconsistent and not a good blocker at the moment. 

 

TEs kind of develop like QBs. Take 2-3 years. I can't say Knox hasn't shown some potential. I think he's worth more time. 

54 minutes ago, DJB said:

Unless Knox finds a set of hands he will never become a top notch TE. 

It's way more than that. He has to develop as a route runner and blocker. 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

9 minutes ago, Buffalo_Stampede said:

He's made highly contested catches. He shows high level game athletism. He's just very inconsistent and not a good blocker at the moment. 

 

That's actually the frustrating thing about Knox.  He can block like an eraser at times, just take a guy out of a play.

 

Then he can totally whiff.

 

It's just like his hands, inconsistent.

 

 

[DJB]

22 minutes ago, Buffalo_Stampede said:

He's made highly contested catches. He shows high level game athletism. He's just very inconsistent and not a good blocker at the moment. 

 

TEs kind of develop like QBs. Take 2-3 years. I can't say Knox hasn't shown some potential. I think he's worth more time. 

It's way more than that. He has to develop as a route runner and blocker. 

 

Oh I agree 100%. I'm one of his biggest critics. 

[MJS]

3 hours ago, klos63 said:

like I said, he knows better than I do, but still haven't seen anything freakish about him. Nothing he has done really stands out as anything special. I don't dislike him and he's worth having on the team, but even Beane said we need more from him, freakish or not.

He is pretty fast for his size. He has actually made some pretty great catches. He just follows those up with easy drops.

 

And when he gets the ball in his hands he runs defenders over.

 

I've seen special stuff from him. But none of it matters if he can't consistently make the easy plays. That's what plagues him.

[Aussie Joe]

1 hour ago, DJB said:

Unless Knox finds a set of hands he will never become a top notch TE. 

He has made some very difficult catches.... and dropped a number of easier ones..
 

The problem is not that he doesn’t have “the hands”..maybe it’s a mental/ concentration thing...

[Hapless Bills Fan]

Really good listen, @Blue on Blue.  Thanks.  Might encourage me to listen to other Tim Graham podcasts.

 

A couple of points that stood out to me:

1) Talking about the brief time he spent with NE/Brady (2011, or Brady's 10th year).  He said Brady is very hard on his teammates, ultra competitive, demands a lot from his guys, and has zero interest in you screwing up even 1 play at practice.  But that you can see no one is happier for his teammates when they win the championship.

[I kind of wonder if that's a transition Allen will need to make, Palmer and others talk about how likeable he is and always happy, is he going to have to learn a "switch" and demand more of his guys?  Wish TGAF had followed up on this....]

2) How guys like Brady who play 15-20 years in the league are just "Different between the ears".  Said he himself currently has 0 interest in the weight room or in catching a football, and sees 0 chance he would want to play 15-17 years [Smith is a 10 year NFL vet]

3) He uses the phrase "played 10 years".  Graham picks up on the past tense and asks if this means he's retiring.  Smith denies that anything has been decided but says "Beane has to want me" and that with limited cap "old fat tight end is probably low on the priority list". 

 

But frankly, I think he's already retired in his head.  Said he's enjoyed watching his 12 year old son play basketball more than he's enjoyed playing football recently, and that "if I do 1 more season that'd be the absolute most".  I think it was Marv Levey who said "if you say you're going to retire after 1 more season, you've already retired you just don't know it yet".  So now I'm pretty much hoping the Bills don't bring him back.

 

4) Says he was glad that he was able to be back on the Bills for the "entrance to something special", that he thinks Reid-Mahomes and McDermott-Allen will be the new rivalry for years to come like Brady-Manning.  Says of Allen "Maybe he learned 1 thing from my old ass and that's something I can be thankful for"

 

5) Others covered the Dawson Knox segment pretty well.  Says for a TE like Kelsey, getting open it's not just arithmetic it's like AP Calculus.  Says Kelce is like Cole Beasley playing TE as far as knowing what the defense is going to do and what areas in the zone are going to be open.  Says Dawson hasn't played much ball, left early from Ole' Miss and has a "bright bright bright" future.  Says catching the football is like any other physical skill, the more you do it the more instinctive it becomes.

 

6) Is asked about the ref'ing in the Superbowl game.  He says that coaches give players a scouting report on the refs each week.  Says that some refs call everything, others it's like a "bar fight" and they just let guys play.  Says the Bills didn't lose because of the holding or because penalties were called.  Said for the most part, the penalties called in the Superbowl were legit, but that he would tell the NFL let the "bar fight" refs work the Superbowl because he doesn't think you should be so aware of the refs in the biggest game of the season.  Interesting perspective.

 

 

 

[Chandler#81]

5 hours ago, klos63 said:

He knows better than I , but I haven't seen anything 'freakish' about Knox yet. Most NFL players are great athletes, nothing really stands out with him. I wouldn't cut him, I think he's a decent 2nd tight end, but would love to get Engram from the Giants for this season.

You’ve been B-slapped around enough, so I won’t pile on. Instead, I’ll offer that you tape the games and rewatch without worrying about w/l. Lee is correct about Dawson and Beane’s scouts knew it.

[JGMcD2]

3 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Question: What do you mean by "serious outlier in the last 10 years"?  The data I see in Pro-football-reference indicates that the Chargers total # of plays was met or exceeded 6 times in the last 10 years - exceeded 3x.  That's not even "outlier" territory much less "serious outlier" in my viewpoint.

 

Being a numbers geek, I pulled the data of the top-5 teams for # of plays, calculated an average, took the difference between that and the Bills # of plays this year, and averaged the difference.  On average, the difference between this year's Bills and a top-5 # of plays team was 61 plays.  Using a conservative 50/50 run/pass split, that would be 30 more pass plays available in a manner that's demonstrably achievable for a top NFL team, on average, over the last 10 years.

My point, though, is not about target distribution (and certainly not for the sake of target distribution), but about play execution.  Far more than some people appreciate, Daboll's play designs usually do feature checkdown or outlet options.  We have gotten to a point where defenses blanket our top WR deep and over the middle and usually leave those outlets plenty of room, because they figure (correctly) that Allen probably won't take them.  (If you'd like to see a good breakdown, take a look at Brett Kollmann's "Josh Allen vs The World" piece.)

I believe that if Allen specifically delivers the ball more to those specific targets (which are usually but not always the TE or the RB), we will move the chains more and sustain more drives, as well as taking some of the coverage pressure off of the WR. 

 

The Bills need to figure out the reason why he isn't doing this and have it loaded up and driven away in a plain van.  If it's that he doesn't trust his RBs Motor and Moss and his TE Knox as reliable outlets in these situations, then we need a change at those positions.  I don't think that's entirely the case, because there are times when I see a sure-handed guy like Diggs or Beasley in that role and Allen still won't take them, but it surely factors in. 

 

If it's that Allen still doesn't 100% trust his throws to those areas of the field - and it was a problem for him his first year in the league and he does have an area where his completion % is still below league average, to the left behind the LOS -  then he needs to tool down on that.  Gotta hit the Bunnies!

 

If it's that they're there as decoys but not really part of his progressions - then a decoy doesn't work if it's always a decoy, that needs to change.

Bottom line: as the Bills showed vs the Ravens and vs Pittsburgh,defenses will exploit a known gap in a team's offense by doubling down against that team's strengths UNTIL the opponent shows they can exploit that defensive game plan successfully.  Minimal run game against a strong DL and a known propensity to overlook the outlet or checkdown receiver on Allen's part were Bills weaknesses.  KC exploited them.
 

PS here are my data.  Click to embiggen

 

 

 

Sorry, serious outlier was a gross exaggeration. I misremembered what I had put together... reaching 1100 is fairly extreme and anything over 1150 is an outlier over the last 10 seasons. This was saved from the last time I posted it, but I have another boxplot on my computer showing the cumulative of the last 10 seasons. 
 

Where the Bills were this year was at the upper limits of the 3rd quartile over a 10 season span. You’re REALLY pushing it getting anywhere above there. It’s just not all the much more room. Another thing, is how many of those teams were actually top teams? I know one season was New England where they had like 1200 something plays... but if I recall correctly it was almost random as to the caliber of team that found themselves running over 1100 plays. There are years bad Bills teams were running within 15 plays of what we ran this year... the Bills in 2013 who were 6-10 ran 1116 plays. 

[klos63]

2 minutes ago, Chandler#81 said:

You’ve been B-slapped around enough, so I won’t pile on. Instead, I’ll offer that you tape the games and rewatch without worrying about w/l. Lee is correct about Dawson and Beane’s scouts knew it.

Hardly, but save me the time and point out examples of this 'freakish athlete'. I would think they'd be quite obvious, right?  Beane obviously isn't happy with TE production.

[Punching Bag]

4 hours ago, klos63 said:

actually I have.  Most NFL players are very athletic, Knox is probably in the lower half of NFL TE's right now. I think he will continue to improve, but how much and how quickly are important questions. I heard a rumor we are interested in Engram for a 3rd, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

 

Lower half of starting TE's I'd agree with but not lower half of NFL TE's.  There are a lot of TEs on that list.

[eball]

1 hour ago, klos63 said:

Hardly, but save me the time and point out examples of this 'freakish athlete'. I would think they'd be quite obvious, right?  Beane obviously isn't happy with TE production.

 

I don’t know what you’ve been watching but Knox’s athleticism is obvious to anyone paying attention.  He just hasn’t fully developed into the position yet and is still learning.  Remember a guy named Josh Allen who took some time because he didn’t have as much experience as other guys?

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by eball