Allen and sacks this season

[JohnNord]

24 minutes ago, dave mcbride said:

Sacks are really bad. Usually, they are drive killers. Luckily for the Bills, Josh Allen is really good at avoiding sacks. Like, REALLY good. And it's not as if he's lost a step. Yet he is being sacked at a very high rate this season: 7.1 percent, his highest rate since 2019. His offensive line is both very good and healthy, so I'm not blaming either him or the line. At any rate, note the rates in the last column below. He led the league in 2023 with the lowest sack rate, yet was even better last year: a ridiculously low 2.82 percent. Derek Carr was somehow the league leader but he missed nearly half the season, so I'm giving the crown to Allen. That means he basically led the league two years in a row at being the best QB in avoiding sacks. His sack rate this year is perhaps the strongest indictment there is of wide receiver talent and passing game design. Jeff Ulbrich taught the league that you can relentlessly blitz Allen (which the Dolphins did yesterday) without a ton of fear given the wide receiver talent and (possibly; I don't know enough) the passing game scheme. With regard to scheme, is Allen not being given answers in blitz situations? He used to absolutely DESTROY blitzes. Not this year.

 

It’s not the OL.  Josh is not getting rid of the football - likely because his receivers aren’t open and when they are he doesn’t trust them.  
 

Josh was pressured 17 times yesterday.  His average time to throw was as high as it’s been since 2018.  He’s either not seeing answers or he doesn’t have answers

[Sweats]

This means nothing until McD reviews all of the tape and the FO tells me how i should feel about it.

[HereComesTheReignAgain]

24 minutes ago, Generic_Bills_Fan said:

The oline has been absolutely terrible in each of the losses it is so bizarre…very Jekyll and Hyde from those guys.  there’s been a few misdiagnosing blitzes type situations too but every qb has a few of those 

Allen had an average of 3.5 seconds to throw on Sunday.  The line was far from "absolutely terrible".

[T.E.]

59 minutes ago, BillMafia716ix said:

 
Means absolutely nothing. They’ve turned him into game managing QB who just deeks and dunks down the field. 

What McDermott doesn't get is that an interception here and there, particularly on longer throws, doesn't matter if the offense is keeping the opposing defense on its heels.

 

He built a defense that works best when the other team is behind and has to throw, and paired it with an offense that doesn't complement that strategy in any way. But we're talking about the same guy who thinks that the best offense for Josh Allen is one made for Chad Pennington.

Edited 1 hour ago by T.E.

[Blackbeard]

QB takes sacks waiting for receivers to get open.  That's been a challenge this year, hence Allen's sacks.

[Gregg]

1 minute ago, Blackbeard said:

QB takes sacks waiting for receivers to get open.  That's been a challenge this year, hence Allen's sacks.

 

What's the over/under on how many the blitz happy Bucs get.  I will say 6.

[nedboy7]

He was playing against backup DEs yesterday. And a depleted secondary. 

[Jerome007]

36 minutes ago, Billz4ever said:

Dawkins got cooked on a few plays yesterday that were pretty ugly. Miami doesn't have a good pass rush to begin with, were near the bottom of the league in sacks, and were playing without Chop Robinson and just traded Jaelan Phillips.

It's like as if nothing yesterday made any logical sense!

 

Same with the Bills run offense. The Fish had ben awful in run D. They stopped Cook bette than anyne so far.

 

WT H yesterday?

 

There's been quite a few heart breaking losses in the JA17 era. Yesterday was more like a real depressing one. We've seen the Bills go from SB favorites to barely being playoff caliber. 

[Billz4ever]

1 minute ago, Jerome007 said:

It's like as if nothing yesterday made any logical sense!

 

Same with the Bills run offense. The Fish had ben awful in run D. They stopped Cook bette than anyne so far.

 

WT H yesterday?

 

There's been quite a few heart breaking losses in the JA17 era. Yesterday was more like a real depressing one. We've seen the Bills go from SB favorites to barely being playoff caliber. 

 

Miami was stacking the box and selling out to stop the run. They were daring our WRs to beat their mid secondary and the bums we have in the WR room couldn't do it.

 

That will be the blueprint to stopping the Bills until they can prove they can effectively throw the ball when the run is getting stopped. Kincaid probably missing time is going to make it even easier for opposing Ds.

[Jerome007]

Just now, Billz4ever said:

Kincaid probably missing time is going to make it even easier for opposing Ds.

I've said it before, and I'll say again: use the TEs and RBs to run deeper routes. They are a mismatch for those covering them. Our WRs are bad, we all know it. But they won't put a DB with Ty Johnson, Cook or Kincaid. Just do it! The Bills  need to stretch the field in whatever ways that works. If they do it, WRs will get more open, yes, they will, and the running game can break some big ones. They actually did this against KC. 

[Sojourner]

29 minutes ago, JohnNord said:

It’s not the OL.  Josh is not getting rid of the football - likely because his receivers aren’t open and when they are he doesn’t trust them.  
 

Josh was pressured 17 times yesterday.  His average time to throw was as high as it’s been since 2018.  He’s either not seeing answers or he doesn’t have answers

Can’t disagree. After watching the replays, the line hasn’t been as bad as many are making out to be. They’ve had some poor moments but every line gets beat a few times again, heck Von Miller was giving Penei Sewell some trouble last night lol

 

Is it Josh entirely? No. The guys not getting open consistently is part of the issue too. Mix that with some bad play design and you have a problem where it appears Josh is second guessing himself, the players or what he’s seeing. 
 

Plenty of instances yesterday where he had 3 sometimes even 5 seconds to throw the ball. Usually if there wasn’t a guy open Josh was off on the run. From what it seemed like yesterday, and I’d have to go back and watch to be absolutely sure, there wasn’t very much times the Fish were deploying a dedicated spy on Josh. 

[dave mcbride]

Further update:

The trend has gotten progressively worse as the season has gone on. And yesterday, any normal QB would have been sacked more than three times given Miami's 17 pressures. He escaped a few that would have resulted in sacks for most others.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by dave mcbride

[TheyCallMeAndy]

Lots of free rushers, Allen also seems to bail quick. 
 

 

[90sBills]

32 minutes ago, Sweats said:

This means nothing until McD reviews all of the tape and the FO tells me how i should feel about it.

‘There’s a process involved and we ask that you trust it’ - Sean McDermott 

[Jerome007]

Just now, Sojourner said:

there wasn’t very much times the Fish were deploying a dedicated spy on Josh. 

And in the past, JA17 had ran all over them. Why take that away from his game?

[GoBills808]

40 minutes ago, Artful Dodger said:

 

But did the Bills have any more wide receiver talent last year than they do this year?  They lost the guy who liked to play in bare feet and eat with his hands and picked up a couple of JAG's, but other than that, it's pretty much the same.  

Imo it's more instructive to look at last season as an aberration than the norm

 

We had an unheard of negative play avoidance rate last yr. Now that it's come back down to earth we are experiencing more typical offensive production wrt our personnel/scheme

[Billz4ever]

1 minute ago, Jerome007 said:

I've said it before, and I'll say again: use the TEs and RBs to run deeper routes. They are a mismatch for those covering them. Our WRs are bad, we all know it. But they won't put a DB with Ty Johnson, Cook or Kincaid. Just do it! The Bills  need to stretch the field in whatever ways that works. If they do it, WRs will get more open, yes, they will, and the running game can break some big ones. They actually did this against KC. 

 

I think Brady went into this game thinking our WRs were going to be able to beat Miami's mid secondary playing without Rasul Douglas.  He should've figure out very quickly he was wrong and went back to passing out of heavy sets, which they started doing in the 2nd half, but it was too late at that point.

[mjt328]

When Joe Brady first came around, his scheme was the polar opposite of Ken Dorsey.  This took some time for defenses to adjust.  Now that we are two years in, coordinators are realizing that Brady's entire passing playbook is screens, swing passes and checkdowns.  

 

They have also figured out that our outside WRs are incapable of consistently separating down the field.  So not only are we mostly uninterested in attacking downfield on early downs, we are also horrible at completing passes over 5-6 yards when we are in 3rd-Long situations.  

 

My theory is that both of these problems... along with a coaching staff pushing him to avoid turnovers... has pretty much wrecked Josh Allen's ability to properly react on the football field.  He's caught between his weird place of being hesitant to pull the trigger quick enough, and also knowing he's got no choice but to force passes into coverage.  His trust in the receivers is gone.  His brain isn't sure where he can go with the ball.

 

Not to mention, when defenses are focused on stopping the run and defending short passes - there is much less space for a QB to scramble and run around.  It's almost created a natural spy for the defense.  

 

[Sojourner]

Just now, Jerome007 said:

And in the past, JA17 had ran all over them. Why take that away from his game?

Your guess is as good as mine. He’s getting older and he’s absolutely essentially for any future success. Limiting as much of that as possible might be the reason?

 

Who knows if that’s something the coaches have even asked him not to do? We’ve seen less designed runs for Josh but a large portion of his best was always scrambles. This year the scrambles are more often than not too late and getting wrapped up as he’s about to get out of the pocket or he’s extending it for a potential pass downfield. 

[Yobogoya!]

1 minute ago, Sojourner said:

Can’t disagree. After watching the replays, the line hasn’t been as bad as many are making out to be. They’ve had some poor moments but every line gets beat a few times again, heck Von Miller was giving Penei Sewell some trouble last night lol

 

Is it Josh entirely? No. The guys not getting open consistently is part of the issue too. Mix that with some bad play design and you have a problem where it appears Josh is second guessing himself, the players or what he’s seeing. 
 

Plenty of instances yesterday where he had 3 sometimes even 5 seconds to throw the ball. Usually if there wasn’t a guy open Josh was off on the run. From what it seemed like yesterday, and I’d have to go back and watch to be absolutely sure, there wasn’t very much times the Fish were deploying a dedicated spy on Josh. 

 

The play where he ran around for about 100 yards and 20 seconds like a madman behind the line of scrimmage before throwing the ball seemed like the culmination of him being pretty sick and tired of no one being open, lol.