Been a while since I've had the time to comment on the Bills and far too much has happened so I'll give you my two on yesterday's incredibly forgettable home opener.
OK, secret's out, our offense sucks. That news is almost as surprising to me as Turk Schonert's play calling. The big surprise however was the lack of a run game or even an attempt at a run game. The offense ran 14 times for a combined 38 yards (excluding Trent's 2 scrambles for 12 yards). For those of you who haven't heard of numbers, that's an average of 2.7 yards per carry. So, I admit that the few run plays we ran were not productive.
One reason for that could be the fact that Buffalo ran over 3/4 of it's plays out of the shotgun. Seemed like with the O line set up to run block in a passing formation as much as they were, the Miami defense was able to cut through blockers with ease and make it into the backfield often before the ball was even in the hands of the runner. Newsflash, our offensive line is not set up to pass block very well (as evidenced by the 3 sacks we allowed and numerous times Trent was flushed out of the pocket) and run blocking from a pass blocking stance did not seem to work for our porous line. Certainly this also contributed to the lack of a passing game as well as Trent rarely ever had time to sit back and throw. I'm not trying to excuse those plays where he obviously had time and made bad throws, but there were more than a few were he was not afforded the time to make an accurate read.
Heading into next week vs. Green Bay I'm looking for the offensive line to (hopefully) jell a little bit more and for Gailey to wake up and smell the run game. That is the strength of our offense if he so chooses to use it and with a defense poised to defend the run, the passing game can be much more effective.
Defensively the Bills looked sharp. It was a relief to see the secondary completely take the passing game away after a quarter and a half and to see our front seven able to get to the QB a few times and to adjust to the run game and even put a stop to it. That's something I haven't seen in a while: a Bills team that can stop a potent rushing attack like Miami's.
The injury to Poz certainly hurts us as we will face some pretty tough opponents these next 3 weeks. It's exacerbated tough with Kawika sitting out another long season. Ellison did pretty well of the bench last year but he won't be able to fill the shoes of someone like Poz. I'm crossing my fingers that the defense continues to play hard and be as dominant as they were this week in the coming weeks. The only real relief we have is that Grant has been ruled out of next week's game so we'll be going up against a 2nd-stringer at RB.
Historically, and I'm specifically referencing last year's loss to the Texans, it didn't matter the runner, the defense wasn't there to stop them. This year it's too early to tell, but we have reason to believe that Buffalo has figured out that running backs typically carry the ball towards them with the intent of getting past them (it's a tough concept to grasp, but against Miami they looked like they understood that it was not good to allow that to happen; Miami's dynamic running backs were held to less than 4 yards per attempt).
As I read today, Buffalo's offense vows to improve next week versus Green Bay, and that shouldn't be hard. With the showing against Miami they could double their production and still not be very good. I'm hoping that Gailey's gameplan works more from under center where Trent is comfortable and where we can get the ball to the ball-carriers faster giving them the opportunity to make our offensive line look good. Play-action can also then be a much more viable option with Trent under center and could hopefully open up the passing game like we saw in the preseason.
By no means do I predict a win versus Green Bay, but if we can at least play like a team and make noticeable improvements at the very least on the offensive side of the ball, then I can be happy. This loss to Miami could easily have been a win, and that actually says a lot about this team; it could just as easily have been a blowout in the first quarter. I want to see Gailey take what happened on the field and, unlike recent coaches, make some improvements.
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