The Case for Ed Oliver at Nose

[gonzo1105]

28 minutes ago, EmotionallyUnstable said:

@HoofHearted looking at how Buffalo tried to attack Denver D I pulled a couple clips and was curious if you could comment on how you see the strengths/weakensses or the Tite Front play out in the clips posted.

 

Stength: 5 man front requires interior guys to get hands on the Ends, leaving the nose 1v1 and hopefully the LBs clean. 
 

 

Weakness: can be exposed on the edges, as @gonzo1105 references like in this crack toss, making a DB get into the action. 
 

 

Trying to sort through all of this in my head - getting a picture of what we might look like on D and where our potential strengths or weaknesses may be.  

 

In the first clip they are working inside zone but unlike the diagrams and banter the Bills are running it to the weakside of the formation. It’s kind of in reverse of what we talked about though in this thread. Brown gets his hands on the 5 tech while getting to the 2nd level but the Tight End isn’t quick enough on the reach block and the defender gets across his face to make the play. McGovern and Torrence admire doubling the Nose to the front side Linebacker and initially looks good but Torrence gets his lunch ate by the NT after the double 

 

 

The 2nd clip isn’t a buck sweep but a variation of what I’m talking about. It’s again to the weakside but the Broncos are in an under front here . Bills run a “crack” play where the WR takes the OLB. Torrence and Edwards both have huge reach steps and you can see them both get depth in their reach steps. Torrence on what looks to be a 4 tech and Edwards on the 1 Teach. McGovern immediately goes to the backer and Dawkins reaches what looks to be a 4 tech as well. Maybe I didn’t describe it well in my earlier posts but this is what I means on the outside zone play. Brown and McGovern place their hands on the defenders but don’t actively double the lineman before Torrence and Edwards reach them. Knox leads around on the CB who is in the formation due to Samuel being closer to the OL. 
 

Looks like the Bills in these clips attacked the Broncos on the weakside of their formation. At least in these two examples they had more success on the outside run play because they got leverage on the end player like I described. On the first play it looked like they had a big hole initially but the combination of the TE letting the defender cross his face and Torrence getting beaten by the Nose kept play 1 to a minimal gain

[EmotionallyUnstable]

30 minutes ago, gonzo1105 said:

In the first clip they are working inside zone but unlike the diagrams and banter the Bills are running it to the weakside of the formation. It’s kind of in reverse of what we talked about though in this thread. Brown gets his hands on the 5 tech while getting to the 2nd level but the Tight End isn’t quick enough on the reach block and the defender gets across his face to make the play. McGovern and Torrence admire doubling the Nose to the front side Linebacker and initially looks good but Torrence gets his lunch ate by the NT after the double 

 

 

The 2nd clip isn’t a buck sweep but a variation of what I’m talking about. It’s again to the weakside but the Broncos are in an under front here . Bills run a “crack” play where the WR takes the OLB. Torrence and Edwards both have huge reach steps and you can see them both get depth in their reach steps. Torrence on what looks to be a 4 tech and Edwards on the 1 Teach. McGovern immediately goes to the backer and Dawkins reaches what looks to be a 4 tech as well. Maybe I didn’t describe it well in my earlier posts but this is what I means on the outside zone play. Brown and McGovern place their hands on the defenders but don’t actively double the lineman before Torrence and Edwards reach them. Knox leads around on the CB who is in the formation due to Samuel being closer to the OL. 
 

Looks like the Bills in these clips attacked the Broncos on the weakside of their formation. At least in these two examples they had more success on the outside run play because they got leverage on the end player like I described. On the first play it looked like they had a big hole initially but the combination of the TE letting the defender cross his face and Torrence getting beaten by the Nose kept play 1 to a minimal gain

I think the greater theme her is the susceptibility can be the edges and leverages teams can use vs the benefit from potential gaining 1v1 battles on the LOS.

[gonzo1105]

1 minute ago, EmotionallyUnstable said:

I think the greater theme her is the susceptibility can be the edges and leverages teams can use vs the benefit from potential gaining 1v1 battles on the LOS.

 

Yea, I said it it’s the edges that are the weakness, the front does make it tough on offensive lineman because their actions have to be quick and concise in reaches. The weakside looks like it can be exploited but I would need a deeper dive 

[Old Coot]

6 hours ago, TheyCallMeAndy said:

My only hold up is expecting the run defense to improve while keeping all the same guys. Oliver (290) Bernard (224) and Williams (230) give us a very light middle, and I don't think Bills will trade either guy.

This. I'm an amateur when it comes to Xs & Os but Oliver seems light for a NT.

 

Wouldn't a competent OC run the ball down our throat as the Giants did to our 3-4 in our first SB?

[TheyCallMeAndy]

28 minutes ago, Old Coot said:

This. I'm an amateur when it comes to Xs & Os but Oliver seems light for a NT.

 

Wouldn't a competent OC run the ball down our throat as the Giants did to our 3-4 in our first SB?

I won't pretend to know anything more than Madden level football IQ, but I am super curious to see how that would work. I kind of like having our best penetrating DT in the middle of the line, it'll be interesting, but creates an issue. 
 

I would think highly athletic pass coverage ILBs with Edge rushers like Groot and Heocht would be critically important since they will very rarely drop into coverage. That's Williams and Bernard for us, who are legit good coverage LBers. A NT the size of Oliver may need bigger (235-245) sized ILBs, but you may sacrifice coverage range and athletic ability potentially. 
 

It's a pickle, can't wait to see how they approach it. 

[HoofHearted]

1 hour ago, EmotionallyUnstable said:

I think the greater theme her is the susceptibility can be the edges and leverages teams can use vs the benefit from potential gaining 1v1 battles on the LOS.

That’ll be the case of any defense. That’s why teams run all of these condensed sets in the nfl. To force corners to tackle.

[BeyondTheProcess]

yeah, seems like this is not your grandfather's 3-4, so now that I see it, all the same rosters issues exist (Rousseau and AJ are not dynamic enough, Ed, Walker, Hoecht, Bernard should be fine shooting gaps, etc.   So all good, we have most of the right guys it seems.  should be fun

Edited February 8 by BeyondTheProcess

[Magox]

When Jim Leonard was the defensive coordinator for Wisconsin his starting NT in 2017 and 2018 was Olive Sagapolu who was 6’2 345 lbs and in 2019-2022 it was Keeanu Benton who was 6’4 317 lbs

 

This doesn’t track with defenses he’s led.

 

 

[nuklz2594]

are you trying to basically have Oliver be Aaron Donald?

[BearNorth]

11 hours ago, Old Coot said:

This. I'm an amateur when it comes to Xs & Os but Oliver seems light for a NT.

 

Wouldn't a competent OC run the ball down our throat as the Giants did to our 3-4 in our first SB?

Esp since our run D last year sucked and unless we upgrade our ILB's; will continue to do so with 220# LB's. Did I mention we have an expensive QB? which affects how much we can spend elsewhere.

[HoofHearted]

59 minutes ago, nuklz2594 said:

are you trying to basically have Oliver be Aaron Donald?

No. He's not Aaron Donald. What he is, however, is our most athletic defensive lineman on the roster. It'd be a missed opportunity if we didn't move him around to take advantage of mismatches. If JL is everything he says he is - I think we'll see more movement upfront to take advantage of those mismatches.

1 hour ago, Magox said:

When Jim Leonard was the defensive coordinator for Wisconsin his starting NT in 2017 and 2018 was Olive Sagapolu who was 6’2 345 lbs and in 2019-2022 it was Keeanu Benton who was 6’4 317 lbs

 

This doesn’t track with defenses he’s led.

 

 

JL played with a true 0 at Wisconsin. I really doubt we see the static 4-0-4 front he ran while there. It'll look a lot more like the under type fronts you're seeing across the league from all these guys in the Fangio tree.

12 hours ago, Old Coot said:

This. I'm an amateur when it comes to Xs & Os but Oliver seems light for a NT.

 

Wouldn't a competent OC run the ball down our throat as the Giants did to our 3-4 in our first SB?

That's the beauty of the 5 down front, there's rarely doubles, the angles are terrible for OL to get to second level defenders. It allows our backers to flow largely untouched until they get to the LoS.

16 hours ago, hondo in seattle said:

@HoofHearted, your knowledge of defensive football is impressive.  But defenses don't exist in a vacuum.  Defenders need to intimately understand offenses in order to stop them.  With that in mind, I'm guessing you have a pretty good offensive IQ too.

 

So if you want to start another thread about Carmichael and what Sean Payton-esque concepts he might bring over to the Bills, I for one would read it with great interest.  

 

Here's more specifically what I'm wondering about.  Payton and Carmichael helped Drew Brees to a few 5,000-yard seasons.  Will we see Josh throw downfield more - maybe to the tune of 5,000 yards?  Or have defenses caught up to Payton's offensive concepts?   Or, worse, are aerial fireworks more or less a thing of the past with defenses in nickel & dime most of the time, and two-high shells, and all that?  

Sure, if I get time to draw some stuff up I will.

[NastyNateSoldiers]

22 hours ago, HoofHearted said:

This is what excites me most about this new brand of defensive football we are about to experience in Buffalo. The 3 down front opens up so many possibilities for us to win matchups up front, constantly changing and shifting our personnel to dictate to the offense. In another thread I posted a couple diagrams of how we can easily bring a fourth rusher from the field or boundary in this new structure, but since it's buried I will share those here as well.

 

TITE FIELD 3

TITE BOUNDARY 3

 

These are simple 4 man rushes playing Cover 3 behind, but the structure of the defense is what allows us to be able to consistently and easily bring edge pressure from wherever we want and keep an offense guessing. The structure of the 3 down front is what allows this to happen because it's a balanced set. What I mean by this is we have 5 defenders to field and 5 defenders to the boundary with our final defender (the 1t) in a position to move and manipulate protections as we see fit. Due to this threat, especially when we start getting into actual pressure packages where we bring double edge pressure or two off edge, teams will need to make adjustments to how they protect up front.

 

 

 

Continued on the next post...

 

I've been dreaming about packages where we use him like when he was in college blitzing from multiple positions including MLB and OLB! 😂 

[TheyCallMeAndy]

Oliver is 290, but he'd be flanked by Walker (330) and Sanders (300). Wouldn't be shocked if vet competition was brought in as well. 
 

We've see. Kyle Williams (303) at NT twice (2010 and 2011), year one he made the PB I think, year two he got injured. 2016 he lined up at LE and was just as effective statistically as he was at NT. 

[T master]

I've always thought because of his quick first step they should have TRIED once in a while not all the time !! Lining him up on the edge as a pass rushed in the DE position ...

[BearNorth]

Ed is not slow for his size, could he perhaps drop a bit of weight and become another ILB the size of Hoecht- who is supposedly 270. Put a Big NT in front of him.

[Buffalo Bills Fan]

Hey @HoofHearted thanks for everything 🙏.

 

The underrated part McDermott used lots of rotations not talked about for d-line and such.. Starter's possibility play lots more in defense.Just wondering need backups as well. 

 

 Just wondering your thoughts.

Edited February 9 by Buffalo Bills Fan

[Buffalo716]

3 hours ago, BearNorth said:

Ed is not slow for his size, could he perhaps drop a bit of weight and become another ILB the size of Hoecht- who is supposedly 270. Put a Big NT in front of him.

0 chance lol

 

Off ball linebackers are developed at the off ball linebacker position or even safety since high school 

 

Ed Oliver cannot drop and cover consistently let alone cover a tight end or a running back in man to man out the backfield 

 

Sure he could be a linebacker in high school football not the NFL 

 

Modern NFL linebackers have so much coverage responsibility that's not even possible

Edited February 9 by Buffalo716

[Ethan in Cleveland]

On 2/7/2026 at 1:03 PM, HoofHearted said:

They're both very different philosophies and both can be very successful in today's NFL. McDermott's defense ran it's course because it MUST be able to get home with 4 rushers. Well when you pick 25th+ in the draft every year those guys are already gone and teams rarely let those guys hit the free agent market in their prime. Anyone who says his system is flawed, broken, or figured out don't understand what they are looking at or talking about. Just go take a look at Houston's defense this year. They do essentially the same stuff we did with McDermott, but they have the dudes up front to make it go. JL's defense is all about pressure and making QBs uncomfortable. Where McDermott's defense was about disguising coverages, Leonhard's will be about disguising pressures. A total flip from looking complicated in the back end to looking complicated on the front end. There's give and take to all of this. The pressure system JL wants to employ puts a ton of stress on the backend of his defense.

Yes, but this defense will not employ a traditional 2 gapping nose. In fact, based on the front structure, the nose will rarely even see double teams because we're playing with 5 at the line.

I respectfully disagree about McDermott defense. 

He confused bad QBs and padded stats against terrible teams. 

His defense got torched by the really good QBs. The run defense would get gashed a few games each year. Started with Saints in his first year here and still happening in his last year here with teh Falcons game. 

And let's for a moment say you are correct about the need to get home with four. Well if you can't then you need to try something else. 

It is not to say the defense made no plays with McDermott.  You can make an argument the Taron Johnson pick 6 is a top 3 play in franchise history and the Hyde INT against the Pats was a thing of beauty.  

[Buffalo716]

16 minutes ago, Ethan in Cleveland said:

I respectfully disagree about McDermott defense. 

He confused bad QBs and padded stats against terrible teams. 

His defense got torched by the really good QBs. The run defense would get gashed a few games each year. Started with Saints in his first year here and still happening in his last year here with teh Falcons game. 

And let's for a moment say you are correct about the need to get home with four. Well if you can't then you need to try something else. 

It is not to say the defense made no plays with McDermott.  You can make an argument the Taron Johnson pick 6 is a top 3 play in franchise history and the Hyde INT against the Pats was a thing of beauty.  

 

That's not historically true 

 

Sean McDermott has held Andy Reid and Patrick mahomes to 21, 21, 17, 20, 20 

 

He has held Lamar Jackson to 3 in the playoffs 

 

The biggest reason for defensive lack of success is having 7 guys on the injury report for most of the last three+ seasons lol playing without your starting middle linebacker and number one corner and the starting safety .. dinged up defensive line

 

Is much bigger in a game of inches with it all on the line

 

Without the five Buffalo Bills turnovers the Denver broncos don't score 30 in regulation.. they're probably under 21

Edited February 9 by Buffalo716

[HoofHearted]

10 hours ago, Ethan in Cleveland said:

I respectfully disagree about McDermott defense. 

He confused bad QBs and padded stats against terrible teams. 

His defense got torched by the really good QBs. The run defense would get gashed a few games each year. Started with Saints in his first year here and still happening in his last year here with teh Falcons game. 

And let's for a moment say you are correct about the need to get home with four. Well if you can't then you need to try something else. 

It is not to say the defense made no plays with McDermott.  You can make an argument the Taron Johnson pick 6 is a top 3 play in franchise history and the Hyde INT against the Pats was a thing of beauty.  

That’s a fun narrative that spread. Houston runs essentially the same defense we did under McDermott and they didn’t seem to have any issues. Why? Because they can get home with 4.

 

As far as McDermott needing to try something else… did you watch this year? We were a totally different defense this year than we have been. We went from a primarily two high shell team to a MOFC team overnight to address the issues. Played more Cover 3 and Man than we have since McDermotts first year here.