69 replies to this topic

[lithos2003]

So because of a labor dispute with the refs, the league should stop enforcing any rules having to do with the game's integrity?

Hah. While I appreciate the snark - I do believe he means that they undermined the game's integrity anyway with the replacement refs. Makes it all look a bit hypocritical if you ask me.

[soxfan121]

How long until Gailey/Wannstedt get fired? Old Ralph spent a lot of money and the defense is historically bad - the 49ers set some franchise records today after the Pats set a few NFL records last weekend.

[jsinger121]

How long until Gailey/Wannstedt get fired? Old Ralph spent a lot of money and the defense is historically bad - the 49ers set some franchise records today after the Pats set a few NFL records last weekend.

They have consistently cheapened out when it comes to coaches. Hiring a loser in Chan Gailey was going to do nothing for that franchise. Spend the money and try to sway a Bill Cowher out of retirement.

[Curtis Pride]

Total yards allowed:
vs. New England: 580
vs. San Francisco: 621

Total points allowed:
vs. New England: 52
vs. San Francisco: 45

What jumped out for me was the 311 yards rushing for SF today. The Bills just can't stop the run at all.

[jsinger121]

Buffalo Bills ‏@buffalobills
#Bills DE Mark Anderson is out indefinitely with a knee injury

[tims4wins]

Letting Anderson and BJGE walk were great decisions this offseason.

[Alternate34]

They have consistently cheapened out when it comes to coaches. Hiring a loser in Chan Gailey was going to do nothing for that franchise. Spend the money and try to sway a Bill Cowher out of retirement.

It's interesting. On the one hand, it seems that coaches do not want to come to Buffalo for a number of reasons. For a while, the team was just fine staying way below the cap, so coaches wouldn't be able to add the talent they wanted. On top of this was Ralph's questionable health and decision making (though for the last couple of years, i would suggest that it was other FO decision making). Another problem may be that they have had their biggest success in franchise history with Marv, effectively a retread coach. Their PR leaks indicate that they tried to get Sean Payton, Bill Cowher, both Marty and Bryan Schottenheimer and other names, just no one wants to go.

For example this little rumor was around at some point:

http://gridironfans....bills-head.html

Apparently when they pursued Cowher, he told them he was not interested but said Gailey was an excellent choice. On the other hand, this could just be the Bills blowing smoke up everyone's ass.

Gailey is OK as an OC, though I think he overestimates what he can do with shitty personnel, but he clearly has no defensive acumen whatsoever, and it is destroying the team. His "hands off" approach is ridiculous. Wannstedt is not a defensive luminary.

The signing of Mario Williams should have been immediately followed by a new coach. Perhaps the Bills could have used his presence to woo a good one. However, as it stands now, the defense is a joke and the offense is so under-talented and injured that they can't make up for it.

[Alternate34]

http://www.footballo...th-beaten-bills

Good article that describes the Bills D-Line and general defensive problems. Quick hits:

(1) Mario is not a threat to rush wide, so O-Linemen cheat inside.

(2) Picks out a play where Dareus fails to maintain contain (zone blitz, Anderson drops back, Dareus has to get outside and doesn't). I suspect that the Bills have consistently failed in gap responsibility.

(3) Notes that last week, notes that nickel formation did not play aggressively against the run. I suspect a lot this was Scott, but this article is about Bills-49ers. It could also be about Byrd, Wilson and other extra DBs.

[Alternate34]

Is the loss to the Titans the end to the Bills playoff hopes? Probably. After the bye, they go on the road against the Texans and the Pats. 4-5 is only one game better but it still looks better than 3-6 and a win against the Titans would at least give reason to believe that the Bills could beat the mediocre teams on their schedule, most of whom they play at home. Onto a quick review of the game:

The quick story:

The Bills, on the verge of a bye, needed a home win to stay in playoff contention. The Titans seemed to be the perfect team to follow up a strong defensive showing against the Cardinals. Tennessee is mediocre. If the Bills defense performed as they did against Arizona, the Bills would most likely win, especially if the offense could avoid sucking, which happens sometimes. Well, the defense immediately looked unsuited to the task. The vaunted Titans offense marched down the field on their first drive without reaching 3rd down. The second drive, the Titan Chris Johnson ran down the field 83 yards for another TD. However, the Bills had hope, as their offense came to play, most notably Freddy Jackson. At the half, the Bills were down 21-20, but this was a home game and they had the ball coming back to them.

The second half started and the Fitz fumbled away to the Titans who took the opportunity to score a TD. The Bills answered with 2 TDs, taking the lead for the first time in the game, 34-28. They were stopping the Titans offense. Everything seemed so dandy and sweet, but unlike Biz Markie, the Bills fans knew they were in for a treat. Even I knew, and I don't have the same ingrained fatalism that these depressing bastards have. On a 3rd and 7 with 3:03 left in the game, Fitz threw an INT to the right side, putting the Titans at their own 48. The Titans drove down the field to score, with some twist to the knife in the form of an unrecovered fumble batted out of bounds, a 27 yard run up the middle by Chris Johnson on the following 3rd and 1, a dropped INT by the Bills (LITERALLY RIGHT IN THE FUCKING CHEST OF GEORGE WILSON!!!!!!!!), and the inevitable game winning touchdown coming on a 4th and 9 on the Bills 15. Holy Christ was that depressing.

Positives:

(1) Running backs. You can legitimately argue that this is the best tandem in the league. C.J. has demonstrated amazing speed and an adjustment to style that emphasizes moving forward more than moving laterally. Some of Freddy's runs this game were ridiculous. He does such a good job running after contact. They both are factors in the passing game as well. Freddy had 7.8 yards per carry, Spiller 5.8 yard per carry. That is fantastic running.

(2) O-Line. They have absorbed injuries and have more than done their job. In the passing game they are average, especially considering Fitz gets rid of the ball so quickly so he rarely gets sacked. However, they devoured the Titans with their run blocking. This is without Cordy Glenn who is a better run blocker than Hairston. Good day for them.

(3) Receivers. In general, they did a solid job. Not a standout performance, but a good performance.

(4) Kick returners. Brad Smith ran one back for a TD. McKelvin failed to win a guy a truck with a return to about the 50. They did well.

Negatives

(1) Fitzpatrick. This is a bit tough maybe, but when you throw an INT that sets up the other team's game winning TD drive, you deserve some shit. Making a terrible attempt to engineer a 1 minute FG drive with 2 timeouts left ices it. The offense did do well enough to score 34 points, so Fitz obviously did a lot of good. However, his limitations prevent him from being effective late and close. I hinted at this in the Pats second half collapse thread, but you just don't know a bad 4th quarter offense until you watch the Bills. Fitz cannot throw sideline to sideline. He both lacks arm strength and accuracy to both sides of the field. His INT was a sideline pass a yard behind his receiver Donald Jones when it needed to be a yard or two ahead of him.

(2) D-Line. This time, the entire D-Line did not show up. The worst was Marcel Dareus, who may be playing injured and is still recovering from the loss of his brother. He could not get pressure on the QB and he does not maintain gap discipline. Running backs have taken note and take advantage. Probably equally as bad was Kelsay who is filling in for Mark Anderson. Kelsay had a wider variation in quality of play. He had a key sack in one of the defense's few stops, but he looked much MUCH worse than Anderson against the run, something I did not think possible. Mario Williams continued to be a non-factor as a pass rusher though he generally wasn't abused against the run. Kyle got a sack, but failed to be as disruptive as he normally is. The corpse of Shawne Merriman made an appearance. He actually had a really good play, bull rushing the RT and pushing him into Hasselbeck but that was the extent of his impact.

(3) Secondary. Stephon Gilmore looks better. Everyone else looks worse. George Wilson dropped a game icing INT on 2nd and goal at the end of the game. The safeties in general receded back into their typical play style, displaying no ability to react to the ball out of the QB's hands. I could go on but why? Matt Hasselbeck just tooled the Bills. Destroyed them.

(4) Linebackers. CJ2K is back because of the defense. With the D-Line playing the way they did, the LBs had little chance and they booted that little chance. They are blocked out of every play and allow the center of the field to be exploited at all times. Kelvin Sheppard should at least be good against the run and be able to take on blocker because he is so slow. He can't. Barnett should be smart and savvy as a veteran OLB, reading plays and using those developed instincts to minimize damage. He doesn't. They are just not good enough.

(5) Punter. The special teams coach Bruce DeHavens looked like a genius when the Bills return game gave them excellent field position. He looked like a fool when new punter Shawn Powell shanked a few kicks, assuring the already ailing Bills defense a short field to defend. The Moorman cut looks pretty bad. Moorman may have been losing it, but he was better than Powell.

Edited by Alternate34, 22 October 2012 - 08:12 PM.

[Alternate34]

http://espn.go.com/n...ennessee-titans

Kelsay popped off, but failed to mention any specific player but himself. He certainly deserves mention.

Obviously, Mario Williams is going to take the brunt of the criticism. He does deserve criticism. While he probably draws the most double teams and chips, it hasn't been constant and teams like the 49ers shifted to stopping Kyle Williams first rather than Mario. However, the whole line is deserving of criticism. Kyle Williams is probably least deserving, but he still gets stood up a lot and damned if I know his role in run defense. It is astoundingly difficult to be this bad against the run and not have a complete system failure. It is part of the reason why I think Wannstedt needs to be canned and that Chan needs to be canned if he can't take Wannstedt out.

I am not really sympathetic with the players, I am just not sympathetic with anyone in that situation. In general, I suspect that Wannstedt is more the problem because there are talented players on the line. Dareus looked good last year. Kyle Williams has looked good several times. Mario when healthy has looked great in previous years. Kelsay and Anderson are liabilities against the run, but they are the fourth linemen. They have enough marketable skills to be a quality rotation. There are a lot of assertions as to how Wannstedt is fucking up. Some say his coverages are vanilla (probably true). Some say he doesn't blitz enough (he does not blitz a lot, but I would suspect the line he has should not need that). I think he is terrible at communicating whatever gap responsibilities players are supposed to have in particular plays. He may have problems holding players accountable. I would want to see what film review day is like. Is he getting on Dareus for biting on RB moves rather than maintaining discipline? Is he telling Mario he need to attack outside more?

I mean, Kelsay is calling out players for lack of effort, but he demonstrates such a "high motor" that he takes himself way out of running plays. Click on Chris Johnson highlights on nfl.com. On the first TD, you can see Kelsay run way outside opening the huge gap to the outside. Watch the second TD run, the 83 yarder. Kelsay is right there, battling for position and releases toward the QB, exactly the opposite way that Johnson is going. It doesn't help that all the LBs bit on the counter action rather than maintain their gap discipline and that the DTs did not keep their LBs clean to do so. I mean complete clusterfuck, but hey, effort. Oh, and the safeties read the play like Forrest Gump reads books.

Edited by Alternate34, 23 October 2012 - 12:17 AM.

[Nuf Ced]

The Houston Texans' defensive coordinator Wade Phillips gave the rest of the league an obvious blueprint for beating the Bills last week: commit the front seven to stopping the run and dare Buffalo to beat them with the passing game. Since Ryan Fitzgerald can't throw consistently with any accuracy beyond ten yards, it was a recipe for disaster for Buffalo.

Unfortunately, Chan Gailey either subbornly decided to take what the defense gave them or didn't have the imagination to change the game plan at half time to get the ball into CJ Spiller and Fred Jackson's hands. Either way it's an indictment of his game planning.

It's too bad because all considered, the Bills defense played better than they have of late. But their linebacking corp is still suspect, and Tom Brady must be licking his chops at the news that Leodis McKelvin will be replacing the injured Aaron Williams at CB.

[Alternate34]

The Houston Texans' defensive coordinator Wade Phillips gave the rest of the league an obvious blueprint for beating the Bills last week: commit the front seven to stopping the run and dare Buffalo to beat them with the passing game. Since Ryan Fitzgerald can't throw consistently with any accuracy beyond ten yards, it was a recipe for disaster for Buffalo.

Unfortunately, Chan Gailey either subbornly decided to take what the defense gave them or didn't have the imagination to change the game plan at half time to get the ball into CJ Spiller and Fred Jackson's hands. Either way it's an indictment of his game planning.

It's too bad because all considered, the Bills defense played better than they have of late. But their linebacking corp is still suspect, and Tom Brady must be licking his chops at the news that Leodis McKelvin will be replacing the injured Aaron Williams at CB.

Ehn, I don't know if it is a blueprint. There aren't that many teams that have the personnel to consistently shut the Bills down because a team does need a good front 7 to do it. The Pats however, have been pretty solid against the run so they should do a pretty good job. The Bills can beat bad teams who do not have solid personnel in the front 7 or who are poorly coached, but the Texans and the Pats are not those teams. As for McKelvin v. Williams at CB, there is really not much of a difference. Yeah, Williams is better in press coverage, but McKelvin has better speed. They both get burned a lot because of poor instincts. I think Brady was licking his chops anyway considering how the last game turned out.

[Nuf Ced]

Beat a few bad teams. Lose to good ones. Sounds like another year of struggling to reach mediocrity.

[Alternate34]

Quick post. Basically, all that the Bills needed to happen to have a chance at the wild card happened except for one crucial problem: they could not beat the Colts.

Pittsburgh lost, Jets lost, Seattle's CBs were suspended. 5-6 would set them up for a potential run because of their relatively easy schedule. 4 out 5 games are home games. They face the Jaguars, St. Louis, and Seattle. They face an embarrassment of a Jets team. They face a Dolphins team they beat. The playoffs would not be guaranteed, but it would be possible. However, the Colts stopped them.

Of the 3 units, both the offense and special teams disappointed. Before this week, the Colts defense was ranked dead last by Football Outsiders DVOA metric. Yes, worse than the Bills. They ranked 26th in Yards per Drive, 28th in Points per Drive, and 32nd in Turnovers Forced per Drive. They managed this against the AFC South, which includes the awesome Texans and the awful Titans and Jaguars. If there was a team that the Bills should score against it was this one. The special teams story is simpler. The Bills let up a punt return TD which ended up being the margin of victory.

What happened? First impression is that the offense ran way too many screens that were blown up. The screen game has been generally effective for the Bills because they have two awesome running backs and some WRs that have good speed (T.J. Graham has little else but speed actually). The line has also been pretty disciplined and stout when executing a screen. My eyes saw a line failing to get in position and block. Additionally, the line looked bad pass blocking in general. Fitz was inaccurate, but there were a lot of passes thrown under pressure. Overall, a bad showing by the offense.

The defense played pretty well, getting pressure on Andrew Luck at times, and stalling a lot of drive of Indy around midfield. Mario Williams showed up with 3 sacks, giving him 8.5 on the year. The defensive line did a good job maintaining gap discipline in general (well a better job). However, the linebackers had some really poor showings when trying to seal the edge, allowing Donald Brown and Vick Ballard some easy gains when they got to the outside. The Bills defense could have been better on third down.

In short, bleh. Bills fans agan encounter the final squander of the season, but get an easy enough schedule so that they will secure a draft pick outside the top 10. They could even out perform the Jets or Dolphins and have an 8-8 record, the bane of any team without a QB and some aging talent on defense. Fan-fucking-tastic.

[Alternate34]

Bills beat the Jaguars, demonstrating once again that their solidly mediocre rather than terrible. Not much else to say. When they lose to Seattle, their playoff hopes will be completely dashed, but they will win a few more games with their easy schedule and prevent themselves from grabbing a sweet draft pick.

[Mystic Merlin]

Sucks to see Freddy Jackson catch another bad break (or, well, tear). Dude's one of my favorite non-Patriots, up there with London Fletcher.

[Alternate34]

So there were no updates since the Jaguars game. Real quick, the Bills lost the next three against St. Louis, Seattle, and Miami, but finished the season with a win against the Jets. They got a sweeter draft pick than I thought they would (I though the Bills would beat St. Louis or Miami) but they still are in the bottom of the top 10 at number 8. However, the "draftniks" don't think that QBs will be flying off like hotcakes as compared to other years because it is a relatively weak class. The Bills may be able to snag their QB if they have a particular preference for one, though who know who they do like. Generally, my sources (my wife who stays in contact with the GMs son and a few other people in the organization) indicate that they like Glennon. Of course, the Bills have liked a lot of QBs but had them graded as high second round, while teams took them in the first or just before the Bills in the second (Ponder, Dalton), or so it is rumored. They desperately need a QB as Fitzpatrick has shown incurable accuracy problems and difficulty making throws to each sideline.

I've kind of buried the lead here. The Bills cleaned the coaching staff house. It makes perfect sense as the team failed to improve under Chan Gailey after the team spent money on the free agent market to acquire Mario Williams and Mark Anderson for the D-Line and the young talent on offense had another year under Chan's system. Perhaps even bigger is the news the old man Wilson has handed over control to the now team president and CEO Russ Brandon. Apparently, Russ has final say over all decisions with no meddling from Ralph. It's hard to know how much influence Ralph has had over decisions. He probably was not pulling a full Al Davis but there were some murmurs that he was stirring the pot of the awesome battle of midgets QB controversy between Trent Edwards and J.P. Losman. Russ publicly states that he will take a more hands off approach, letting the football people do their job. Additionally, he has proposed a new department of "football analytics." He has likened it to Moneyball stuff but for football. There are many things it could be from a way to determine where to spend money, to helping distinguish between good and bad players, to a way to objectively analyze how well they do when scouting. Russ is being vague, and probably purposefully.

The most important decision that the new FO will make is hiring a head coach. The list of interviewees includes: Oregon coach Chip Kelly, former Bears coach Lovie Smith, Syracuse coach Doug Marrone, former Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt, Broncos OC Mike McCoy, Cardinals DC Ray Horton, former Raiders coach and current Bengals secondary coach Hue Jackson, and Montreal Allouettes coach Mark Tressman. Russ is again vague as to his criteria, but he is confident that the Bills are a far more desirable coaching position as compared to 3 years ago, citing the talent they have accrued and the promise to let the coach get a QB they want. We'll see I suppose.

[tims4wins]

Maybe this belongs in 2013 thread, but the Bills hired former Jets DC Mike Pettine - I think this is a good move for the Bills, should help get more out of that D, which has some talent.

http://espn.go.com/n...d-buffalo-bills

[Bucknahs Bum Ankle]

Most significantly, they hired Doug Marrone as head coach. From what I can tell, Marrone was doing a pretty good job turning the Syracuse football program around. In the four years he was there, Syracuse went 4-8, 8-5 (won the Pinstripe Bowl), 5-7, and 8-5 (won the Pinstripe Bowl) for a 25-25 record overall during his tenure. However, during the 4 previous years under Greg Robinson they had gone 10-37 and became the laughing stock of the Big East. That Marrone took them to two bowl appearances in his four years there is quite an accomplishment. Marrone was previously the OC of the Saints from 2006-2008. IMO, he's about as good of a candidate as the Bills were realistically going to be able to hire and likely a significant upgrade from Gailey. I don't think Chip Kelly or Lovie Smith were ever realistic targets.

[Tony C]

Both of those are great hires, I think. Marrone's not sexy but has a great mix of experience and the programs he's been associated with have very forward thinking approaches. And I don't know how to disentangle Ryan from Pettine, but clearly the Jets had a great program on that side of the ball, too, and wanted him back -- and it speaks well of Pettine that he wanted no part of it.

The OC out there that I hope the Jets don't hire is Hue Jackson. He'd be a great hire for the Bills, too, and I hope they snag him before Rex does. Presumably the Jets won't hire an OC until they get a new GM? And presumably a new GM won't want an OC who has close ties to Ryan and has a past history of overstepping his authority. Hope that's the case because, even though Jackson dug his own grave, he's still very good at his job.

edit: so Hackett is the OC. Still hope the Jets don't nab Jackson.