I'll come back to the Buffalo bread podcast.
This is a postmortem for the corpse of the once mighty Buffalo Bills who fell before the
onslaught of the murder of Ravens this past Sunday night.
Dan, I'm going to start this pod with a public apology.
I think it was my fault.
I started the game wearing a Josh Allen away jersey and a charging buffalo hat, blue charging
Buffalo logo hat, and they absolutely look like trash.
And then at the half, I switched to a great Russo home jersey with a standing Buffalo,
you know, throwback hat.
And they still look like trash.
So I just can only assume I don't have the proper jersey and hat combo in my war chest
in order to have pulled this one out for Bill's mafia.
And for that, I'm very sorry.
I don't blame you.
I blame Joe Brady.
No, I'm just kidding.
It's week four.
We're not doing that stuff yet.
I mean, JJ, it was, listen, we're going to get into it and we're going to break it down
to the best of our ability.
The simplest summary that I can come up with for that game was that they were bigger, faster
and stronger than we were.
And they did what up until that point no one else had done, which is challenge the Buffalo
bills defensively in all the areas we knew that they were weak.
They came out with a varied offensive game plan.
And we'll get into this as we get into the breakdown.
They had some very specific targets they wanted to pick on them, both the run and the pass
game.
And they executed to great efficacy.
It was beat down.
We were outplayed.
We were outmatched.
And there's nothing you can really do but tip your cap and move on.
Though I will say I see a lot of bills mafia on Twitter being like, yeah, they got the
best of us, but we'll see them in January.
I don't ever want to see that team again.
Don't ever want to play that team again.
Sure.
Yeah.
And I mean, we need to start.
I'm looking forward to getting into it too, even though I'm still reeling from that defeat.
The top story though is kind of the breaking news that just came out this afternoon.
Von Miller has been suspended by the NFL for violating the personal conduct policy.
We can only presume that this is in connection to the domestic violence allegations from
last year that came through.
And it's likely that the NFL has concluded their investigation into the matter and rendered
this judgment.
That means he won't be available till after the Buffalo Bills return from their trip
to play the Seattle Seahawks.
What's your opinion of this whole situation and what it means for the bills?
Personal conduct, particularly around issues of domestic violence are something that the
league has suffered a lot of criticism around for many, many years.
And I think, setting aside the Buffalo Bills gear, you've got to respect the finding of
the league.
I'm sure, and I've already seen it.
There's some grumblings with how long the process took.
The timeline JJ doesn't bother me.
I think take as much time as you need to get sensitive and serious issues like this correct.
And if the league feels like they got this correct, I have no issues with the timing
either.
Because if even half of the allegations are true, Vom's should be sitting.
We talked about this last season as well, how weird it was that the Bills just kind
of ran him out there at the height of this thing.
And that there should be some things personally, professionally that are simply bigger than
football as an organization.
So to me, I have no qualms with this, though I'm sure there will be criticisms about the
timing around this.
That's off the field.
On the field, like it hurts, but not as much I think as people think.
Von played nine snaps against the Ravens.
And that is because he is what we thought he would be when we signed him, which is a
third down, pass rush specialist.
They no longer trust him to negate anything off the edge in the run game.
So it is what it is.
We'll have to make up for it, but it is not the loss that it would have been maybe two
or three years ago.
Sure.
I think that's very aptly put in both football terms and human terms.
I don't have any more notes on it other than I am frustrated with the league in terms of
how long it takes these things.
But I think you know, you make a really good point, which is you want to get it right.
You want to be thorough and you want to be sensitive to all the parties involved.
So you know, it is what it is.
We'll see, you know, if he has an impact when he returns after the suspension, and we'll
also see what this, you know, what the bills in a tactical football sense do on those third
downs with the different pressure packages, they want to they want to roll out to replace
this because I do think that he's been having a decent season in those limited snaps.
Still, I agree with you, he's a liability to hold the edge in, especially in a physical
smash mouth rushing attack.
It is now Casey to Hill season, my friend.
And that is where we are at with this.
Boohia.
Well, I mean, they've got Devon or Dewan Smoot back, but he's been playing a lot more inside,
which I'm surprised by.
Yeah.
I don't think they love their depth of defensive tackle.
We kind of felt this coming into the season.
We thought Smoot would definitely be kind of like a rotational piece on both the edge
and the inside, but they've been using him to spell both Oliver and Dequan Jones at a
rate that so I think they're trying to kind of patch this thing together along the defensive
front as they move along.
Yeah, I think that's that's true.
Speaking of the defensive front, the Derek Henry made his daddy on Sunday night or made
his children.
He is our daddy.
It was it.
Oh, it was pitiful.
It was absolutely pitiful watching the bill's defensive front, which I thought I thought
was looking excellent through three games being totally manhandled.
And whether it was Derek Henry or who was there the run back that was spelling him Justice
Hill.
Yeah, Justice Hill and like maybe the only time in Chris Collins were Collinsworth's entire
broadcasting career.
He said something that I found humorous, which was Justice Hill, where I think that the Supreme
Court should be should be found.
I was like, that's that's actually pretty good.
Okay, um, keep your politics out of the Booth Collinsworth.
That's funny.
It's also fun.
You guys are just both crushing it.
No, but Justice Hill, you know, a scat back a little bit of a jitterbug.
He was untouched until about four or five yards almost every time he ran the ball.
And the bills had no rush lane discipline.
They looked like they were playing afraid to get beat, which they should have been after
the first play from scrimmage for the Ravens was a Derek Henry house call.
That was the moment in the game where, you know, with 30 seconds in or one bill's three
and out in, I was like, Oh, no.
And I don't know, I think a lot of bills, mafia felt that way.
I immediately went into a meditative state after that Derek Henry run because I just
I knew where the rest of the game was going to go.
And dude, they ran it right at Rousseau.
Allegedly our best edge defender when I'm supplying.
They were they were just like strength on strength, man.
Yeah, they ran it right at Rousseau.
And I mean, the lane that Henry had to burst through unbelievable.
And you know, it's interesting because as you look at you look at what his run paths
were on each of his handoffs compared to what they have been in the previous few weeks.
This really mirrored the Dallas game in some interesting ways, but most for most for the
most part, they started to get Henry more running through the tackles and outside the
tackles, which was always his strength in Tennessee.
Like because he is so big, people think, Oh yeah, just run him up the gut.
That's what you do with Henry.
And that was lending itself to some predictability in the first few weeks of the ball.
To more run game, because that's effectively how they had pigeonholed him.
But starting with the Dallas game and then moving on to our game against the bills, they
started to find some of that that run path success he had had in Tennessee.
And dude, it really paid dividends.
And he had good reminder.
He's not just big.
He is insanely almost inhumanly fast.
Like I'm sure you saw all that stuff online comparing his top speed on that run versus
Xavier Worthies.
The fastest man in the history of the combine, his top speed on that 52 yard TD reception
he had from the homes.
Like someone like Henry should not be running that fast, but props to Todd Monk and for
finally figuring out that you can use Henry more than just running him into a heavy box
up the middle.
I mean, yeah.
And I think that, you know, I'm going to throw some flowers down at the feet of the
mountain, Daniel, Mount filet, Lea, because that dude is 380 pounds.
And he was the person I saw the most when the, when the Ravens wanted to run, they ran
right off that right side.
It was either grew so or at Oliver, who usually line up on the right side, both of them light.
So is not light for the position, but he's light because of his height.
And then it Oliver's undersized in every possible way.
And so just, you know, the fact that they had filet, Lea, who was almost four, four
bills, um, road grading in that direction was, and it created a situation where like
how many times did they pass it like nine times or something?
It was not, not, it was not a pass of a game.
I think Lamar had, I think Lamar had 17 total dropbacks.
Yeah.
I think it was 17.
So it was, they would just control the game script from top to bottom and they just did
what they wanted to.
The two bills had two or three stops, one on a turnover and then two kind of, you know,
where they forced to punt and it just, oh man, it was, it was so bad.
It was, it's, and it's hard to put into any more rational terms than that, but it was
just domination start to finish.
And they, I mean, Baltimore knew who they wanted to pick on and they knew they were
going to run right at Oliver, right at Russo.
And this has been a standing issue for the Buffalo bills when they go up against bigger
offensive lines.
Can they dominate offensive lines like Jacksonville where they've got some more athletic pieces
like a Mitch Morris and win with technique?
Absolutely.
Can they do that against just a dumpster fire or an offensive line in Miami?
Absolutely.
But when you put a, even a semi well coached offensive line that has some size up against
this defensive line of the bills, they disappear time and time and time again.
And they didn't get much help JJ in the secondary either or from the linebacker core because
Baltimore figured out, oh, Matt Milano isn't in fact playing.
Jarell Bernard also not in fact playing.
Taryn Johnson not on the field.
So let's just go after all of his replacements, which they did not just in the run game and
the design QB run game, but they did it intentionally in the past game too.
Out of some of those 17 dropbacks, 12 targets that Lamar Jackson had in that game were targeted
to a nearest defender of either Dorian Williams or Cam Lewis.
QB rating on throws to Dorian, that went at Dorian Williams was a 118.
Cam Lewis was a 107 and all targets were completed.
Nail inspector only got targeted once, but he had his lunch handed to him in the design
QB run game against Lamar too.
Listen, I mean, again, I would love to come up with something revelatory about why the
bills lost this game, but they had a lot of their backups in and the Baltimore Ravens
decided they were going to exploit those backups and they did it and they did it well and they
deserve to win that game.
Again, I'm not sure that Taryn Johnson, Matt Milano and Troll Bernard make up 25 points
in that game, which means that there were some issues with the Buffalo Bills offense
that we need to flip the script to because should we make it to January and should we
somehow face this team again, it is not going to be the defense that has the recipe to stop
this Baltimore offense.
It's got to be the bills offense is going to carry them through the day.
And there were some real issues on that side of the ball as well.
Yeah, I agree completely.
It's just it is just literally a matchup of Superman and Kryptonite in terms of this,
the way that the Ravens offense is built and the way that the bills philosophically play
defense, they are going to get beat.
So it really I agree completely.
It comes down to Josh Allen.
It comes down to the same way that the bills have tried to manage the Patrick Mahomes lead
chiefs is to just keep Patrick Mahomes off the field as much as possible, right?
Control the grip game script.
The way that the New York Giants shut down the high powered bills offense in Super Bowl.
What was that?
24 which one?
The Giants bills.
Wide right.
Oh, wide right.
That was 1990.
Wasn't it?
Yeah.
Oh, God.
I don't remember.
But I do know that Bill Belichick came into that game and his entire plan was to, you know,
control the bills offense by not facing them.
Essentially, take the air out of the ball.
We're just going to run the ball and they're going to get four or five possessions.
That's it.
So like this bill's defense is not built to stop the Ravens.
The offense has to agree.
And I also hope that they get knocked off by somebody on their route on their road to
the playoffs because again, I do not.
I can imagine a game with this Ravens team in either Baltimore or Buffalo in January
with a weather factor being an equally terrible, drubbing, even if Milano and Johnson are back.
Absolutely.
And when you factor in weather, you've got a factor in the Baltimore defense and their
sustained ability to stop the run game.
And I think that's a good opportunity to flip it over to the offensive side of the ball
because there's a there's a lot to unpack there.
I want to start with a positive though.
And that is the maturity that I saw in Allen in this game.
The minute Henry busted off that big run at the beginning of the game, I'm like, oh, damn,
Josh is going to go try to score an 18 point touchdown just to just to recalibrate the offense.
But Josh played within the scheme.
He played within what the defense was giving him.
It just wasn't a lot.
And there were some heroics that he pulled out, but he never ultimately put the ball
in danger through the air.
Granted, he had that one fumble on that atrocious trick play that we will absolutely get into.
And Brady has already admitted it was just a bad play call.
But from word go, the bills seem to be unsettled.
Not just on the field, but with the play sequencing, which is something that Brady is usually so
good at the play sequencing and some of the personnel packages, especially right off in
that first drive, were really, really confusing.
JJ, where do you want to start?
You want to start with the in ineffectiveness of the run game?
Or do you want to talk about the pass game?
Because there's some interesting nuggets to pull from both, I think.
Yeah, let's talk about the bills pass game, because I think that's been the story of their
success.
You know, the run game, I think is good, but the run game has really just sort of been
a foundation which sets up reasonable down in distance for the pass game to deliver through
the first three weeks.
And I think that the story here for me on the Ravens defense versus the bills offense
pass game is just about pressure.
Josh Allen in games that he's been the least successful.
And this makes them, I mean, this is like an obvious thing.
This is this is the NFL in general in the games where he conducts himself the least successfully.
He looks like he's running for his life and under pressure constantly.
That's what the Ravens did.
And they did it in a very particular way, a way that I hope the Buffalo Bills are prepared
to see again, because I can bet you that the Texans are looking at this tape and going
to, you know, scheme up ways to twist, stunt and delay their blitzes on Josh Allen.
So we saw the Ravens who have excellent linebackers and who have a very solid run front and pass
rush front, basically just trying to confuse the assignments and protection of the line.
And they rarely sent, you know, they rarely sent like full jailbreak blitzes, but they
did send an extra fifth rusher often.
And they made that person be a different, you know, character from time to time based
on the front and based on the looks that the bills were giving them.
It was occasionally defensive backs.
Kyle Hamilton had an excellent game.
It was occasionally a linebacker.
Roquan Smith, I mean, is like probably he's an all pro.
He's one of the best in the league.
So they were actually sending more than four quite often.
And when they did, it was from unexpected angles or unexpected timing.
I think that was the other piece is they had studied the bills offense well enough to know
how the routes develop.
And they knew when Josh Allen likes to get the ball out.
They knew it was quick, but they still did some stutters to allow the line to spread
apart a little bit.
So you know, Roquan Smith can close the distance from that like seven or eight yards away from
Josh Allen in less than a second and a half if he has to, just by letting the center and
the guard slip to their right to cover up a slide and then shoot in the gap.
Sorry, could not find the unmute button there.
JJ, it's a great breakdown from the Baltimore side of things.
From the bill side of things, I, this was the first game where I felt like Brady was
a first time full time play caller, I think for sure.
We had seen some nice adjustments from him in the first three weeks of the season, but
he did not have a lot of answers in the playbook.
And you know, JJ, I'm just, I continue to be perplexed by the snap share that the Buffalo
Bills are giving, distributing to their wide receiver room.
Mack Hollins for the second time this season, out snapped Khalil Shakir by one snap.
Like Khalil Shakir is very clearly their best wide receiver.
He's arguably their best playmaker.
There's not a world where Mack Hollins is great as Mack Hollins is as a leader should
ever be out snapping Khalil Shakir.
Add to that, Hollins also ran the same amount of routes that Shakir ran.
So it's not even like they're keeping Hollins out there and run only situations.
But JJ, his, his target percentage is low, but then his catch percentage is under 33
percent as well.
So the limited times they do target him, he's not bringing the ball in and he's not generating
separation.
Those are snaps in the second half to me that should have exclusively gone to Keon Coleman.
I know Coleman had that drop in the early portions of the third, third quarter that they
needed, but dude, those two sideline catches that he made with a defender draped all over
him, that's the type of playmaking the bills needed.
Not a lot of people were getting separation in that wide receiver core.
And Coleman to me is Josh's most trusted asset when opposing defenses are guarding this wide
receiver group very, very closely playing that sticky coverage that a lot of teams like
to play on the Buffalo Bills.
It remains a mystery to me what the bills coaching staff is seeing in this personnel
grouping in the wide receiver room.
Because to me, it's pretty clear you've got Shakir, then Coleman's your number two, then
it should be Curtis Samuel who again, I think his snap share is limited because he's still
recovering from that toe injury.
But there is no reason for my money that Mack Hollins should be out there running as many
routes as Khalil Shakir given his in an efficacy overall in the past game.
When he is targeted, he's not catching things.
He's out there basically is like an empty route most times like I just I don't understand
it.
I don't understand the personnel groupings.
I need someone smarter than me to explain it to me why your most talented wide receiver
and Shakir is not getting your largest snap share and why a guy like Coleman isn't taking
snaps from Mack, Mack Hollins at this point.
I'm here to tell you exactly why in the most logical way possible.
Joe Brady is being a dumb, dumb dude.
Okay, somebody else explained it.
No, continue, please go ahead.
I mean, I'm I'm a flabbergasted.
You are I don't actually have an answer.
It's crazy.
Like I had to check the stats twice, but like it's it's wild.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.
The only thing I can guess, at least in the Coleman part of things is like he's got some
rookie growing pains going on.
The fact that he was benched for the first quarter against the Jaguar Jaguars is like,
you know, for showing up late to meetings.
That's kind of a that tells me that they're not going to tell you the story, but maybe
he's having a hard transition to the league a little bit with the work ethic, not me,
not work ethic.
He's he's been reported as a hard worker, but maybe just the transition to the league
of being a professional.
And I think that can be difficult for first, you know, first year players.
And that might be part of it.
Because I mean, Mack Hollins is looked to as a big time leader in that room and on the
on the team and like a character guy and a glue guy.
So there's some of that.
But and I think that actually is my that's my explanation.
That's what I'm going to land on because we've seen this year for years.
Sean McDermott, Brandon Bean, who's not really making those decisions, but Sean McDermott
certainly and his coordinators, who he sets the tone for tend to overvalue leadership
in the face of talent.
That goes for, you know, choices that they made all the way back when Sean McDermott
first arrived with who's who's the running back in the backfield when Devin Singletary
was a rookie and out out snapping out earning Frank Gore almost every play, but yet they
still line Frank Gore up on second and 10 and, you know, because there's the components
of the of the player beyond talent and athleticism that they value that will get that that player
on the field over somebody else.
And I think that's probably the answer here, specifically with Mack Hollins.
I don't know why Mack Hollins over Khalil Shakir because everything that we've heard
is that Khalil Shakir is like, you know, celebrated in the building as a as a leader amongst
the guys as you still young Claire.
But that may be a body type issue as well.
I I'm just gonna I got I've got to run these numbers by you because listen, your explanation
is one that is rational.
But the bills cannot continue to operate with this level of subjectivity when it comes to
playing their young players.
Here it is Mack Hollins total routes run on the season 82.
Khalil Shakir 81 his target percentage remains low at 13%.
But Keon Coleman's is only 14%.
They've basically each been targeted 11 times on Josh's dropbacks.
Here to me is lock and key.
Why you put Coleman out there over Mack Hollins catch percentage catch percentage on those
11 targets for Hollins the season 36% catch percentage for Khalil Shakir or I'm sorry
for Keon Coleman 72.7% catch rate above expectation plus 23.8% for Coleman, which means he's doing
what we expected him to do.
He's catching stuff that really no one else can.
Mack Hollins catch rate over its expectation minus 20.3%, which says he should at least
based on separation based on position of defender based on route run, which is how they compile
the algorithm for catch rate over expected.
He should be catching at least 56% of his targets and he's not.
He's not.
That to me is the objective rational reason why Keon Coleman needs to be getting these
targets, especially in situations like they were in in Baltimore where they needed some
juice and they needed to complete a high degree of difficulty in their past game and they
needed to execute at that degree of difficulty.
Keon Coleman should be their guy at this point.
Would you draft him for?
Hey, you know, I feel at this point after having seen the way that this team has been
run that you're we're just shouting into the void because that I mean this is this is how
they do it right like, oh, my trusted veteran, my precious.
And then you got those who could be helping you in critical moments.
Just cooling his heels on the sideline because you don't believe in his character leadership
yet.
I'm using air quotes there.
Yeah, so just wild.
I get it.
I just I get it.
Everyone's going to eat, but like, let your hunters get to the table first.
Yeah.
And your hunters are Shakir, Cuncade, Samuel and Coleman.
Let them get to the table first.
Yeah.
No, that's a astute observation, my friend.
Do you want to do you want to talk at all about the running running game for the bills
or not?
It went as expected.
I will tell you, I am not we saying the praises of Aaron Kroemer and this offensive line for
three straight weeks.
I am not ready to backtrack on that.
But it is a little concerning that this was the first competent defensive line that offensive
line faced and they could get no push in the run game and they couldn't protect Josh at
all pressure rate on Josh not just from Blitz's 44.1 percent, his highest of the season by
a country mile almost double what his average pressure had been heading into this game.
It was a failure on a lot of different levels.
They have another really big test coming up in Houston, which we'll talk about later on
this week on the pod.
And then they'll face granted a depleted but it's still a well coached New York Jets defensive
line.
I think we're going to find out a lot about how real this offensive line is JJ after this
three game road stretch.
And this team is four and two, three and three.
And the offensive line is a big reason why they didn't come away with more.
I do think it's fair game again after weeks this six to start to call into question the
strategy around the roster build for the offensive line.
But I'm not ready to do it yet because I've got an opportunity to kind of rebound against
Houston.
So we'll see.
Yeah.
And I think that calling the roster build into question on the offensive line, it can't
be done really in a vacuum.
It has to be done in terms of like what the options or like turn downs that they had were
because I'll tell you after watching the Mitch Morris with the Jags against these bills.
And then having seen Ryan Bates with the with the Bears a little bit.
I I don't know that anybody that they kind of gave up on shipped away or let walk in
free agency was a major loss.
You know what I mean?
Like it's the the line the bills have, I don't know, could be marked.
That's fair.
Could be markedly better with the pieces that they that they sent away.
So you know, it could be better, you know, if they would have been, I'll entertain the
argument that they could have invested in free agency on a different guard or center
that they could have gone after kind of like big game hunting in the draft a little bit,
you know, higher in the rounds.
There's pieces there that they could have, you know, attended to.
But but yeah, if we're just talking about who they let walk and who they kept, I still
think they kept the right people.
That's a fair and sober analysis, right?
And again, I'm not there yet.
Let's wait and see what it looks like after they face the stretch.
It could very well be that this Ravens defensive line is the best line they're going to face
all season.
That's not outside of the realm of possibility.
So and again, at every level, it was just a bad matchup for the bills.
You said it, Crypt Superman versus Kryptonite, like everything offensively and defensively
that the Ravens like to do and the personnel matchups they have against the bills.
I mean, they are just so finely tuned to beat a roster and beat a scheme that the bills
roll out there.
Like it could just be one bad game, which is why I'm reserving judgment on the offensive
line because they put three near perfect performances granted against subpar competition, but three
near perfect games behind them in the first three weeks of the season.
So it jury is still out.
But again, they're operating with a lot of my credit, my my confidence, at least still
heading into Houston.
Yeah.
Same.
I'm not going to like, you know, I'm not going to write them off based on this one game.
And so it's going to be interesting to see where things go from here.
I have one note kind of before we put the Ravens game to bed.
I don't think it's an I don't think it's out of hand for Bill's mafia to be calling for
Tyler Bass to potentially be be shelled.
He's got he's got a 75% field goal made percentage, which is the lowest in his career.
And I know it's just through four games and the season is long.
They are putting a lot of faith in him working through it and it costs them money to cut
him so it's not like there's any financial incentive to like switching that up.
And I get the argument that that's, you know, there's no 100% field goal kicker sitting
on on the street right now.
It's likely you'd be getting same or worse, right?
But I will say, you know, I'm not I'm not completely opposed to like finding a undrafted
free agent who needs a chance in the league just for the sake of putting a kicker we know
is wildly inconsistent and has been for the past, you know, four games this season last
four games the last season on the shelf.
Yeah, I, you know, and this is it was interesting that they did not attend to this a little
bit more aggressively in the off season.
And I think a lot of the reason is is kind of the emotional attachment we talked about.
They have to some of their rostered leaders and they had jettisoned so many veterans this
off season doing so to Tyler Bass, who has spent a staple of this team all through the
McDermott era pretty much.
I can see emotionally why that would be hard.
I can see from a, from a team chemistry reason why they'd have issues with it, especially
the way the team rallied around him after that Kansas City game and the division around
and the way the fan base rallied around him.
Pragmatically, you're probably right.
And I think the only reason they haven't done it more aggressively is the money.
I think they're in a cap situation right now where they do not want to eat $7 million in
dead cap space while they're also taking their Stefan Diggs medicine for a kicker, for a
kicker, for a kicker.
Right.
Exactly.
So we're a story worth keeping an eye on.
If he, listen, this Houston game, man, we're going to get into it later in the week.
Stefan Diggs revenge game, if it comes down to a Tyler Bass field goal and he misses a
lot of these simmering from Bill's mafia are going to reach a loud, loud alarm like level
for rolling boil.
Oh my God, man.
Crazy, crazy.
Yeah.
But yeah, no, I am ready to bury this rabies game in the ground and never revisit it again.
But JJ is always good emotionally unpacking this stuff with you.
Very therapeutic for me.
For all of you listening at home, like, share and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts,
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And as always, go bills.
Go bills.