Buffalo Bills Week 17: New York Jets (4-11) at Buffalo (12-3), 12/29, 1:00 PM, CBS

[Djp]

Side note, Elam has had a good game. For whatever reason they are calling any sort of touching, which is his game. The not looking back is something he will need to fix

One call it was on both. Its was garbage call. They both grabbed each other.

 

[Der Jaeger]

I hope McDermott considers working in the old Jim Bates defensive looks. 2 big NT type DTs inside. Beane would need to acquire those guys but it’s a very good variation of what McDermott plays.

 

[Reddawg]

I hope McDermott considers working in the old Jim Bates defensive looks. 2 big NT type DTs inside. Beane would need to acquire those guys but it’s a very good variation of what McDermott plays.

We should see if Jeff Wright is busy

 

[buffalowing88]

I'm starting to get concerned about Keon Coleman and his ability to gain the slightest amount of separation.

 

[ValJamesDuex]

We should see if Jeff Wright is busy

Smerlas might do it even though he's a Chowderhead

 

[zenthusiast]

Divisional games are weird. Late season divisional games more so. Not any more or less confident than before, but Josh probably needs two strong performances to get MVP

 

[misterchainsaw]

It certainly isn't uncommon for teams to have. a let down after a big win.

However, I think this game was a valuable wakeup call to the defense. If the patriots can drive down the field on us, anyone can.

I get there are injuries, but this is the 3rd week in a row teams have known where the open guy is going to be. How many plays did we get to drake maye early and he was able to find the open man with his first read? I think McVeigh may have exposed something pretty glaring in our defense and we haven't fixed it yet.

I think this is a little bit of a weird take considering how the game played out.

First of all, New England's offense has been much improved under Maye. They're not the limited/borderline terrible offense they were a year or two ago. I saw a stat coming in that they were something like 4th in offensive success rate since Maye came back from his injury in week 10. The kid can play. They still don't score a lot because a)Mayo is extremely conservative by nature (something he bucked a little bit today in a nothing to lose spot) and because b) Maye still makes some rookie mistakes (which he did today and was frankly the reason the Bills won today).

There's obviously no denying that the Bills defense came out slowly today. But they still made the Pats throw the absolute perfect throw and catch (difficulty level extremely high on both ends of the play) to get into the end zone from outside the red zone on 3rd down on the first possession, and frankly were an uncalled intentional grounding away from probably stopping them on the 2nd possession (not to mention an extremely iffy pass interference call.)

From there, though, the defense went six straight possessions (not counting the end of half possession where Maye racked up 50 meaningless passing yards) until the garbage time touchdown where the Pats used too much time for it to be effective (and the refs were hell-bent on getting the Pats into the endzone) not allowing a single point, and basically creating 10 themselves. They got two stops on a single possession when the punt rushers got caved in and they allowed a fake punt up the middle.

If anything, I'm worried more about the offense coming out of this game. Similar to how this isn't last year's Pats offense - this isn't the crushing Patriots defense of 2-4 years ago either. This isn't a great defense, and the Bills basically had 2 good possessions on offense all night. And it wasn't really from missed throws or dropped passes - the Pats pretty much clamped down on the Bills passing game - they kept Josh in the pocket and even when he got out they contained his running and didn't allow receivers to break free. When Josh tried to go deep he threw into double coverage far too often. The Bills ran the ball well, but maybe didn't do it enough and I'm still worried in a big game teams can get the Bills away from that - and their biggest offensive strength is creating 2nd and short and medium and absolutely killing defenses when they have to defend both the run and the pass.

The fact is the Bills defense was a bigger reason they won this game than the offense, despite the fact that the defense was missing basically their entire spine (starting MLB and both safeties among a couple of others) and everyone on the offense was at least healthy enough to play. And further, schematically speaking, I thought Babich got the better of Maye/Van Pelt when it was all said and done, while NE's DC got the better of Brady/Allen overall. Maye was able to make a couple of plays against the blitz, sure, but eventually the pressure told on the two back-breaking plays for NE's offense (the INT in the endzone and the lateral screen that Rousseau blew up into a TD)

 

[Husko]

I hope McDermott considers working in the old Jim Bates defensive looks. 2 big NT type DTs inside. Beane would need to acquire those guys but it’s a very good variation of what McDermott plays.

I don’t think McDermott is interested in even one traditional NT type, much less two.

 

[Husko]

I missed most of the game, but is Smiley the most dead man walking coordinator on team history? McDermott just throwing him under the bus on the reg lately

 

[Deep Blue Metallic]

Maye is going to be a beauty. Aren't we allowed to say that?

The Bills' defense is relentlessly resilient. Injuries, 1st half failures. Doesn't seem to matter. Somehow in the 2nd half, it comes together. Big credit to the coaching staff.

Fingers crossed for whatever elbow/hand/stinger problem was hampering Josh. It's over without our MVP favorite.

 

[Zman5778]

I missed most of the game, but is Smiley the most dead man walking coordinator on team history?

I sure as hell hope so.

 

[Zman5778]

Maye is going to be a beauty. Aren't we allowed to say that?

We'll see. Today, I saw a guy who looks very much like a more running-capable Tua. He was good when on schedule, but didn't handle getting off schedule very well.

 

[Deep Blue Metallic]

We'll see. Today, I saw a guy who looks very much like a more running-capable Tua. He was good when on schedule, but didn't handle getting off schedule very well.

Tua - 26, 5th season.
Drake - 22, rookie.

Agree with you on "we'll see".

 

[misterchainsaw]

We'll see. Today, I saw a guy who looks very much like a more running-capable Tua. He was good when on schedule, but didn't handle getting off schedule very well.

Mac Jones looked great for a year too, and then the Patriots lack of offensive talent and poor coaching threw that out the window and now look at him.

On the same topic, if Sam Darnold isn't the poster child for "coaching/organizational structure and surrounding talent matters", I don't know who is.

 

[Jim Bob]

We'll see. Today, I saw a guy who looks very much like a more running-capable Tua. He was good when on schedule, but didn't handle getting off schedule very well.

It will all come down can they improve the three Ps around him:

- Protection - their OL is trash
- Playmakers - Their WRs are trash
- Playcaller - AVP is a little antiquated and has not been calling plays to emphasize the things that make Maye a unique QB prospect, IMO

 

[Dubi Doo]

Made it to the finals of my FF league. I thought for sure the Browns were going to screw me, but Njoku and Ford did well for me. Gibbs and Cook were game wreckers. I played it smart noticing the guy i was playing had Chubb out, so I picked up tge best RB availabe to make it tougher on him, and that turned out to be a 10 pt swing.

Big dubs!

 

[Der Jaeger]

We should see if Jeff Wright is busy

I could talk to someone all day about how Jeff Wright was simultaneously a good DT and a bad NT.

I don’t think McDermott is interested in even one traditional NT type, much less two.

I know and it sucks.

Not making any statement about Coleman in any way, but I really wanted Sweat in the draft. You put a kid like that at 1DT and then Jones at 3DT on run downs, and they’d eat up the G-C-G. It’d let everyone else just fly to the ball, and save Oliver to rush the passer.

 

[Jim Bob]

 

[Dubi Doo]

All I want for Christmas is Allen's throwing arm to be 100% healthy

 

[Zman5778]

The one big weakness for every Super Bowl contender: Barnwell on what could stop the Eagles, Lions, Chiefs, Bills

Every Super Bowl LIX favorite has a flaw. The Eagles depend too much on big plays, and the Chiefs can't throw deep. Who could take advantage?

www.espn.com

Achilles' heel: Getting off the field on third down

I'll start by suggesting that the recent panic about the Bills' defense being a sieve is likely overblown. Through Week 13, the Bills ranked eighth in the league in EPA per play and points allowed per possession on defense, and nobody seemed to be too concerned with what coach Sean McDermott was doing then. Buffalo ranks 31st in both metrics since then. Although the Bills didn't allow 40 points for the third consecutive week in Sunday's win over the Patriots, Drake Maye and a limited New England offense still managed to rack up 379 net yards on 10 drives.

Ranking 31st is bad, but I'm willing to chalk up at least some of that to missing personnel in the secondary, including cornerback Rasul Douglas and starting safeties Damar Hamlin and Taylor Rapp, all of whom were out Sunday. Linebacker Matt Milano was also out against the Pats. All four should be back in January, when the Bills hopefully won't be calling on Kaiir Elam and Cole Bishop for regular work.

The biggest issue for this defense all season, even before the recent struggles, has been on third down. Buffalo is allowing teams to convert more than 44% of their third downs into first downs, which is tied for the third-worst rate this season. Over the past three games, that has jumped to 60%, with the Patriots going 7-of-12 on third down and 2-for-2 on fourth down as they tried to extend drives against the Bills.

Let's try to break down where the issues lay by starting where they're not. The average third down against the Bills comes with 7.2 yards to go, which is just above the league average of 7.1. A lack of pass pressure on what is typically a passing down can cause problems, but that hasn't been the case for McDermott's defense. It has a 9% sack rate on third downs, which is just below league average but hardly cause for concern. The Bills actually create quick pressures (within 2.5 seconds of the snap) at the sixth-highest rate of any defense on third downs. The issue has been finishing the job: Buffalo has 10 unblocked pressures this season on third down, but none has produced a sack. The rest of the league has converted about 19% of those unblocked pressures to takedowns.

A more plausible case is the Bills are too passive on third down and aren't quite as sticky as they were in coverage on third downs in previous seasons. Buffalo's philosophy on third down is relatively predictable: It rushes exactly four at the league's fifth-highest rate, blitzing at one of the lowest rates. It also plays zone coverage at the fifth-highest rate, as a relatively inexperienced secondary plays man coverage on third down only about 33% of the time.

It's tough to create narrow windows for quarterbacks when defenses play heavy zone coverage, and the Bills haven't done that this season. Just 11.3% of throws from opposing quarterbacks on third downs have gone into tight windows against them, the third-lowest rate for any defense. The Bears, Dolphins and Buccaneers, three of the league's most zone-heavy defenses, also rank in the top five in the same category.

NFL Next Gen Stats characterizes tight-window throws as passes that arrive with less than 1 yard of separation between the receiver and the closest defender. The Bills don't allow a lot of wide-open throws -- they're well below league average on the percentage of throws that arrive with 3 or more yards of separation -- but they're allowing more throws with moderate amounts of separation, throws in that 1-to-3-yard range, than any other team.

Receivers are simply squeezing into those spaces and picking up first downs. The Bills have allowed 91 more yards after catch than would be expected by the Next Gen Stats model on third downs this season, the eighth-most of any defense. With Buffalo playing split-safety coverages at one of the highest rates in the league on third downs, there's space to operate underneath. There's no one single glaring issue, but this team is just a little worse than it would like to be rushing the passer, allowing opposing offenses a little too much space before the catch, and hasn't been quick enough to bring players down afterward. The combination of those factors has led to a difficult time on third downs.

The hope has to be that a healthy Milano will fix some of those issues with his tackling and instincts for reading route concepts, but the linebacker being healthy is hardly a guarantee after he missed 22 consecutive regular-season games with various injuries. His return to the lineup in the snow-day victory over the 49ers was also followed up by two of the worst Buffalo defensive performances of the season, after which he missed the Patriots game with a groin injury. I wonder if the Bills might have just shut their star linebacker down for the rest of the regular season in the hopes of having him on the field come the postseason. With Baylon Spector suffering a calf injury against the Patriots, though, McDermott likely will need Milano down the stretch.

Team to avoid: Kansas City Chiefs. I know the Bills beat the Chiefs earlier this season, but I'm also sure Buffalo fans don't need to be reminded of how things can be different when these two teams play in the postseason. Even in that victory last month, Kansas City managed to go 5-for-10 on third down. Over the full season, the Chiefs have converted on a league-high 51% of their third downs.


Just eight teams have converted more than 50% of their third downs during the regular season since 2000, including the 2021 Chiefs. While that Kansas City team didn't make it to the Super Bowl, it went 8-for-13 on third down in a legendary 42-36 divisional round victory over the Bills.