Tale of Two Halves

[CoudyBills]

11 hours ago, dreadlox said:

According to teamrankings.com, the Bills were 10th in 1st quarter scoring 5.0 ppg. 2nd quarter they were 18th at 7.1 ppg. 3rd quarter they rose to 2nd scoring 6.8 ppg and in the 4th 2nd again with 9.4 ppg.

 

The defense was 18th in the 1st with 4.5 ppg. 26th in the 2nd with 8.6 ppg. Ranked 1st in the 3rd quarter with just 2.6 ppg. In the 4th they were 17th with 6.4 ppg.

 

Other stats I checked out were scoring offense and defense. O finished 3rd at 28.3 ppg. D was 12th with 22.2 ppg.

The team was 12th in penalties with 5.9 per game.

And holy hell they were 30th on D in yds per rush at 5.1. I knew it was bad but 5.1 yards per rush given up. Only Cincy and the giants were worse.

 

Anyways after scoring first drive TDs in their first four games the Bill’s offense wasn’t exactly great in the first half, but the defense performed much worse. If you look at the disparity between the two units in the 4th quarter that is pretty damning evidence against McDermott’s defensive scheme during crunch time. 

Perhaps evidence that the defensive front 7 suck.

[boater]

14 hours ago, BuffaloBillsGospel2014 said:

I'm only looking ahead from here on out. 

 

As the metaphor goes:

 

"The windscreen is bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason—because what's in front of you is so much more important than what's behind."

[Arkady Renko]

5 hours ago, boyst said:

That's about all there is to it. Demarco Murray helped orchestrate an offense team meeting because many were talking about being unhappy. They voted to list Dorsey. Went to mcd about it. He didn't want to make the move. Players played mnf against the broncos and just didn't give a hoot

What precisely was their beef with Dorsey? Where did you hear this? Doesn’t seem in keeping with Josh Allen’s persona. 

[NoSaint]

 

6 hours ago, Simon said:

 

It was so regular and so stark throughout the course of the season that the little conspiracy theorist in my head wanted to convince me that it was by design. As if they wanted to save their best stuff for the second half so that opponents didn't have that halftime break to reassess and talk it over and would only be able to deal with it on the fly. But that's clearly too stupid to consider seriously.

I've been harping on this staff about being slow to adjust and stubborn about sticking to their gameplan and I'd guess that refusal (or inability) to make changes in real time, combined with being a veteran team that tends to go through some motions until they sense they're in danger, with maybe a pinch of we don't need to put everything on film hubris were the primary ingredients in that recipe.

Or maybe their shaman was up all night playing video games with Keon and and the native folks buried under the stadium were free to play havoc with the team until he could get out of bed and bring the cowrie shells to work.

Who knows? After 40 years of "what the hell is going on out there", I've pretty much just thrown my hands in the air and accepted the inevitable peculiarity.

I feel like it got lost in the shuffle with the controversial calls at the end and then McDermott firing… 

 

but as we unpack the season, as you note, it was weirdly consistent and stark. 
 

I almost thought it was going to be a Brady thing out of the gate with his preference to impose his will? Telegraphing runs vs passes, and that sometimes that just flopped while in the second half we would just get it done but it really seems particularly defensive fluctuation and flat first half defenses seems like 1 of 2 things… getting beat in prep work, or McDermott getting more involved at the turn (which I think we saw a few times) 

Edited January 24 by NoSaint

[boyst]

31 minutes ago, Arkady Renko said:

What precisely was their beef with Dorsey? Where did you hear this? Doesn’t seem in keeping with Josh Allen’s persona. 

I heard it from a homeless man down in Topeka who heard from a friend who heard from a friend who heard from another my best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who told me.