The Good, The Bad, The Ugly 12 Men on the Field Addition

[Chaos]

THE GOOD

1.  For 58 minutes the defense held one of the NFL's lowest scoring offenses to 21 points. Enough to win the game. The defense was put in a tough spot the whole game and the performance was good to excellent for 58 minutes, but this was not the greatest show on turf they were holding at bay. 
2. The offense was able to take advantage of the Bills defensive effort to get a lead with only 2 minutes left in the game, and the Broncos offense 75 yards from the end zone.
3. The game commentary was even handed and technically accurate for the most part
4. For 59 minutes the officials did not get involved in deciding the outcome of the game.  Even the unfortunate PI call is more a problem of a bad rule, than a bad call.

 

THE BAD

 

1. Preparation.  Sean McDermott has been the head coach for 6 years now.  We still see too many games, where the Bills simply look unprepared.   The offense looked like it was playing its 12 preseason game.  The Bills were not prepared at the start.  The Bills were not prepared for the scramble no time out drills for FG attempts at the end of the first half, or the end of the game. 
2. Clock management.  There was no reason to use up the time outs on second and third down at the end of the game.  The Broncos were going to have the option of having plenty of time to get set on the field, and let the clock run down on any fourth down anyway.  But since the Bills burned their time outs, even if the HC or one of staff had the situational awareness to know 12 men where on the field, they couldn't stop the play to do anything about it.  

 

THE UGLY

 

1. Josh Allen may have had his worse game as a Bill.  Early in the season we saw that the talent is still there. At this point I feel like he has been mis-coached into ineffectiveness.  I hope like Seabiscuit, a change in coaching can turn him into the champion his talent suggests he should be
2. Fourth last drive defensive collapse of the season, on the last series.  In my version of complimentary football, if the team has a lead with 2 minutes to go, and the other team has the ball 75 yards from the endzone, you should win those game.  For professionals it should not matter how the team got into that position, it only matters that you are in that position.  It seems clear every single opponent the Bills play has a 2 minute game plan to easily beat the Bills on the last drive. 
3. Sean McDermott's post game press conference on twelve men on the field, throwing the team under the bus.   "“We practiced two or three times that week, the substitution from a dime [defense] to field goal block, and at the end of the day we didn’t execute it. It’s inexcusable,” he said." 
   1. This commentary is wrong on two levels.  One it is the wrong assignment of blame.  The Bills knew for three plays, that the broncos were scrambling to set up the FG and were no longer advancing the ball.  We wasted two time outs on second and third down.  Its inconceivable that a coaching staff would not use those time outs to make sure the players were 100% aware of their assignments on the scramble play.  If the coach thought "we practiced that earlier this week, in the calm of a practice, I am sure everybody knows what they are doing", that is insane.  The proper comment was "I had another end of game brain cramp. I didn't get the player assignments for the scramble repeated twice during the timeout. I simply ASSumed that we were ready"
   2. Even if this was not another coaching blunder this is not an appropriate comment for public consumption.  A lame "we need to review what happened" would have been 1000x better comment in this situation.  McDermott seems to be completely burned out and losing it at this point.  This is actually understandable. Hi stress job. Tons of pressure.  He needs someone above him to address this burnout situation.  We can't have a head coach calling out the players over and over to blame his poor clock management and end of game management on.

 

[UKBillFan]

Whilst I overall agree with what you say I thought Josh was worse against the Jets. There was a lot of blame to go around yesterday; the Jets game felt solely on him.

[SoCal Deek]

The time outs at the end were a real head scratcher, and I said so at the time. I literally have ZERO idea what McD thought he was trying to do. Utter failure. 

[Chaos]

16 minutes ago, UKBillFan said:

Whilst I overall agree with what you say I thought Josh was worse against the Jets. There was a lot of blame to go around yesterday; the Jets game felt solely on him.

A common theme between both games is that in the end Allen and the offense did just enough to give their team a chance to win. Patriots game was the same situation. A difference is that in the Jets game and the Patriots game, the Bills actually had controlled time of possession (or nearly even). Last night Broncos dominated time of possession, which is on Allen to a large degree.  I am Allen's biggest fan.  In the scheme of things he is easily far and way the best part of the Bills team.  But last night was a dud. 

[Avisan]

18 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

The time outs at the end were a real head scratcher, and I said so at the time. I literally have ZERO idea what McD thought he was trying to do. Utter failure. 

The timeouts forced the kick distance back several yards and forced the Broncos to take a kick in a rushed fashion.

 

It worked.  The kick narrowly missed.

26 minutes ago, Chaos said:

"we practiced that earlier this week, in the calm of a practice, I am sure everybody knows what they are doing",

These are professionals.  It absolutely SHOULD be expected for them to execute basic assignments on game day after multiple practice run-throughs that week.

 

Coaches will likely be fired at the end of the season, and also players need to execute the basics of their jobs.

[SoCal Deek]

1 minute ago, Avisan said:

The timeouts forced the kick distance back several yards and forced the Broncos to take a kick in a rushed fashion.

 

It worked.  The kick narrowly missed.

You have gotta be kidding right? Several yards? Because their QB took a knee? The Broncos CONCEDED those yards freely! Sheeesh. If you’re taking time outs, the idea is to get YOUR OWN TEAM organized for the situation to come. Utter and complete failure. 

[Avisan]

Just now, SoCal Deek said:

You have gotta be kidding right? Several yards? Because their QB took a knee? The Broncos CONCEDED those yards freely! Sheeesh. If you’re taking time outs, the idea is to get YOUR OWN TEAM organized for the situation to come. Utter and complete failure. 

Yeah, every knee moved the kick back a yard or two, which statistically increases the miss chance.  It also took wiggle room away from the kicking team in setup time.

 

It worked.  It worked perfectly, actually.  But we tried to play football with 12 fellas instead of 11.

[Chaos]

5 minutes ago, Avisan said:

The timeouts forced the kick distance back several yards and forced the Broncos to take a kick in a rushed fashion.

 

It worked.  The kick narrowly missed.

These are professionals.  It absolutely SHOULD be expected for them to execute basic assignments on game day after multiple practice run-throughs that week.

 

Coaches will likely be fired at the end of the season, and also players need to execute the basics of their jobs.

The amount of rushing on second down and distance were not materially changed by fourth down. Not at all. We simply used up the timeouts.  

[SoCal Deek]

Just now, Avisan said:

Yeah, every knee moved the kick back a yard or two, which statistically increases the miss chance.  It also took wiggle room away from the kicking team in setup time.

 

It worked.  It worked perfectly, actually.  But we tried to play football with 12 fellas instead of 11.

It didn’t work. The Broncos were NOT rushed getting the kicking team in position. They were in position and ready. The kicker just missed the kick. It happens. The Bills however WERE inexplicably rushed! Utter failure. 

[Chaos]

2 minutes ago, Avisan said:

Yeah, every knee moved the kick back a yard or two, which statistically increases the miss chance.  It also took wiggle room away from the kicking team in setup time.

 

It worked.  It worked perfectly, actually.  But we tried to play football with 12 fellas instead of 11.

In fact based world, it did not work.  In real life, the rushing around caused the Bills to have 12 men on the field instead of 11, moving the Ball five yards forward and giving them two chances to make the kick. 

[entropyrules]

I think maybe going forward we need to make this the Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the "Billsy."  After this latest 12 men on the field fiasco I think back to Mckelvin running the ball out of the end zone against the Patriots and promptly fumbling so the Bills who had a two score lead at the time could then lose the game in the last several minutes. I hope someone with better recall can create a compendium of "Billsy" moments over the history of Bills football.

[UKBillFan]

14 minutes ago, Chaos said:

A common theme between both games is that in the end Allen and the offense did just enough to give their team a chance to win. Patriots game was the same situation. A difference is that in the Jets game and the Patriots game, the Bills actually had controlled time of possession (or nearly even). Last night Broncos dominated time of possession, which is on Allen to a large degree.  I am Allen's biggest fan.  In the scheme of things he is easily far and way the best part of the Bills team.  But last night was a dud. 

 

But then the TOP was unbalanced because of Cook's fumble, Davis' drop, Kincaid's drop, Murray's drop, Diggs' drop. They all led to three and outs and interceptions or punting back. Cook had another fumble which he luckily regathered. Of course, they then had Josh's inexcusable interception and the botched hand off, which were on him. But it's why I think saying yesterday was his worst game was slightly unfair as other players nor the coaching stepped up to the mark on offense either. Whilst against the Jets it felt like they did.

[Avisan]

8 minutes ago, Chaos said:

The amount of rushing on second down and distance were not materially changed by fourth down. Not at all. We simply used up the timeouts.  

 

5 minutes ago, Chaos said:

In fact based world, it did not work.  In real life, the rushing around caused the Bills to have 12 men on the field instead of 11, moving the Ball five yards forward and giving them two chances to make the kick. 

Their kicker narrowly missed a 41-yarder wide right, with a kick that might have been good from 36.  The idea made perfect sense and was clear as we were doing it.  There is a statistical link between distance and make % that is more significant than icing, for example.  It was the objectively correct call, AND it worked!

 

If you need a timeout to make sure that the right number of folks make it on the field for a special teams formation, something has gone terribly wrong

 

Which obviously it did, but it doesn't change the timeouts there being the statistically correct decision

[Robert Paulson]

41 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Clock management.  There was no reason to use up the time outs on second and third down at the end of the game.  The Broncos were going to have the option of having plenty of time to get set on the field, and let the clock run down on any fourth down anyway.  But since the Bills burned their time outs, even if the HC or one of staff had the situational awareness to know 12 men where on the field, they couldn't stop the play to do anything about it.  

This drove me nuts at the end of both halves. we gave them a FG at the end of the first and were totally unprepared at the end of the game. just terrible clock managmenet

[Avisan]

6 minutes ago, Chaos said:

In fact based world, it did not work.  In real life, the rushing around caused the Bills to have 12 men on the field instead of 11, moving the Ball five yards forward and giving them two chances to make the kick. 

This has nothing to do with calling the timeouts, either a coach or a player screwed up inexcusably with respect to the field goal defense unit in a way that simply should not happen at the professional level.  Ultimate accountability falls on the head coach, but the timeouts themselves were objectively correct and nobody is questioning them if we have any number fewer than 12 on the field for the FG attempt.

1 minute ago, Robert Paulson said:

This drove me nuts at the end of both halves. we gave them a FG at the end of the first and were totally unprepared at the end of the game. just terrible clock managmenet

We were looking to score at the end of the first, the clock management was perfect to attempt that.  Clock management didn't throw an interception.

[Lost]

I'd like to add some thoughts to this thread.

 

1.  Josh had a few throws that were off and the one INT was a dumb decision.  But despite his bad play he was still one of the three best performing players on O last night.  There were drive killing drops being spread all around from Davis, to Kincaid and even Diggs.   

 

2.  My thought is players perform better when they are enjoying the game but it sure seems like they are not and that goes back to coaching in my eyes.  McD has lost this locker room and the fan base.   

 

3. While the D performed admirably I still thought the playcalling was garbage on that side of the ball.  It seemed like we were blitzing on nearly 50% of snaps and got zero sacks from blitz until the last drive.   And when we finally did get that sack to put them out of field goal range, we did a cover 0 blitz again the very next play.   Like why??

 

4.  The bills have an over pursuing problem on defense.  Our edge rushers were blowing past Wilson by like 5 yards on every damn play.  I don't see other teams edge rushers do this as much as the Billls do.  Just seems weird.

 

5. Benching cook for nearly a quarter of play is a complete D-bag move by McD especially when nobody else was equally punished for poor execution.  His fumble was more of a good play by the defender than an egregious mishandling of the ball.  

 

6.  Many will say "why are calling for the firing of the coaching staff when Allen deserves his share of blame as well.  Answer:  we have seen Allen at his peak and when he is in that space, he is no question the best QB in the league.  Unfortunately we haven't really seen much of that Allen since Dabol left.   When was the last time we've seen Dorsey or McD calling plays and said "wow, this might be the greatest coach we've ever seen"?   This staff has somehow broken Allen.  

 

7.  After the benching of Cook in the first half and the slow downward trajectory of Allen, I got back to thinking about Kaiir Elam.   The guy they traded up for in the first round in 2022 and arguably played pretty good in the snaps he played last season is somehow now such a liability to this defense that he had to be placed on IR this season.   Something about this coaching staff seems to shatter peoples confidence to me because I refuse to believe Elam could have regressed that much for a reason other than poor coaching.  

 

8.  Fire McDermott.

 

9. Fire Dorsey.

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by Lost

[NoSaint]

16 minutes ago, Avisan said:

The timeouts forced the kick distance back several yards and forced the Broncos to take a kick in a rushed fashion.

 

It worked.  The kick narrowly missed.

These are professionals.  It absolutely SHOULD be expected for them to execute basic assignments on game day after multiple practice run-throughs that week.

 

Coaches will likely be fired at the end of the season, and also players need to execute the basics of their jobs.

obviously they should execute everything but it’s a human game and we have coaching roles on the sideline during games for a reason. dime to fg block on Tuesday is far less stressful and who knows if we still had the same 11 guys available on each unit by late in the game.
 

during the second timeout every defensive player on the field should’ve been told on or off explicitly and the X number of guys running on should’ve been held together as a unit. 
 

 

[Robert Paulson]

44 minutes ago, Chaos said:

1. Sean McDermott's post game press conference on twelve men on the field, throwing the team under the bus.   "“We practiced two or three times that week, the substitution from a dime [defense] to field goal block, and at the end of the day we didn’t execute it. It’s inexcusable,” he said." 
   1. This commentary is wrong on two levels.  One it is the wrong assignment of blame.  The Bills knew for three plays, that the broncos were scrambling to set up the FG and were no longer advancing the ball.  We wasted two time outs on second and third down.  Its inconceivable that a coaching staff would not use those time outs to make sure the players were 100% aware of their assignments on the scramble play.  If the coach thought "we practiced that earlier this week, in the calm of a practice, I am sure everybody knows what they are doing", that is insane.  The proper comment was "I had another end of game brain cramp. I didn't get the player assignments for the scramble repeated twice during the timeout. I simply ASSumed that we were ready"
   2. Even if this was not another coaching blunder this is not an appropriate comment for public consumption.  A lame "we need to review what happened" would have been 1000x better comment in this situation.  McDermott seems to be completely burned out and losing it at this point.  This is actually understandable. Hi stress job. Tons of pressure.  He needs someone above him to address this burnout situation.  We can't have a head coach calling out the players over and over to blame his poor clock management and end of game management on.

 

This as well. McD is a great motivator but not a great tactician, decision maker or strategist. We are a terrible end of game defense -5 years running 

[Nuncha]

The Ugly:  After the first TD drive which consisted of RUNNING the ball for most of it, why did our genius play caller go back to passing on every down?  He then went back to running on the go-ahead TD drive.  The horrid play calling, and all the bone headed turn overs, makes this offense infuriating to watch.

Edited November 14, 2023 by Nuncha

[Robert Paulson]

4 minutes ago, Avisan said:

This has nothing to do with calling the timeouts, either a coach or a player screwed up inexcusably with respect to the field goal defense unit in a way that simply should not happen at the professional level.  Ultimate accountability falls on the head coach, but the timeouts themselves were objectively correct and nobody is questioning them if we have any number fewer than 12 on the field for the FG attempt.

We were looking to score at the end of the first, the clock management was perfect to attempt that.  Clock management didn't throw an interception.

not with this dysfunctional offense as can be seen by the results- i'll pat myself on the back and say i called that this will bite us and it did.

1 minute ago, Nuncha said:

The Ugly:  After the first TD drive which consisted of RUNNING the ball for most of it, why did our genius play caller go back to passing on every down?  He then went back to running on the go-ahead TD drive.  The horrid play calling, and all the bone headed turn overs, makes this offense is infuriating to watch.

agreed -the D was set up to take away the passing and spy Josh-the run was open

 

we don't know how much was Josh but when we went 5 wide it was pretty obviously a pass call from Daboll oops whatever the current OC about to be fired name is