I normally don’t rant after a Bills bye week but watching this weekend’s games so upset me that I have to post. The absolute ineptitude of our two coordinators, and possibly our head coach McDermott, was on full display.
Lets get to Babich first: In the Atlanta loss we were unable to stop the Falcon’s offense the entire first half. But for Drake London’s foot stepping out of bounds at the Bills one yard line as time expired in the first half we would have been down 28-7. That’s three touchdowns and one “shoulda been” touchdown in ONE HALF against the Bills defense. Excuses abound last week: we were without Milano, we have a depleted secondary, etc… The fact is that we played bend but don’t break zone defense against a team that was missing one of its top receivers in Mooney, yet couldn’t stop London from catching 10 passes for 158 yards. The Falcons threw the ball 18 times to their wide receivers that game. 16 of the 18 passes went to London. They completed ZERO passes to any wide receiver not named Drake London. They didn’t have Darnell Mooney, yet London torched us. How does that happen?
I watched this same Atlanta team on Sunday play the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers defense was depleted due to injuries. Their best player Warner was out. Two defensive backs were in due to injuries. The Falcons had BOTH Mooney and London in their lineup. The 49ers had to deal with all of this along with Bijan Robinson running and catching the ball out of the backfield. What happened? The Falcons scored 10 Fucking points. London caught four passes for 42 yards and Mooney had three for 68. Neither scored a TD. How does a decimated and poor San Fran defense (they’d been torched the week before by Baker Mayfield in a 30-19 point loss) hold the Falcons to 10 points while the Bills can’t stop the injury depleted Falcons the week before? It just makes no sense whatsoever unless you look to coaching. The Bills zone defense was destroyed by a veteran like London who merely sat down in empty areas and caught pass after pass. This defense which seems to be designed to not give up the big play isn’t working (21 yd TD run by Atlanta’s Allgeier, Robinson’s 81 yard TD, Derrick Henry’s 30 and 46 yard TDs, Hopkins 29 yard TD reception, and Ze Flowers 23 yard TD reception). That’s six big play TD’s the Babich defense has given up all the while playing two deep zone coverage. Why in the Hell wouldn’t you put Christian Benford on Drake London and play man coverage when the Falcons weren’t throwing the ball to any other wide receiver all game? The defense is bad and it’s only partly due to injuries and inexperience. Good defensive coordinators like the 49ers one make adjustments. Babich is brutal.
Now let’s get to Brady: Watching the past few weeks and observing how good offensive coordinators use their best weapons and then comparing Brady’s usage, or lack thereof, of James Cook is mind-boggling. James Cook has 14 targets in six games and only one in the past two losses. He has 89 yards receiving in six games. Did anyone watch the Lions game last night and see how an offensive coordinator with a fucking brain uses Jahmyr Gibbs? Three catches for 82 yards. He has 26 catches this year for 194 yards to go along with his 526 yards rushing. How about the 49ers game? Christian McCaffery had seven catches for 72 yards against that “vaunted” Falcons defense that “held” James Cook to zero catches on zero targets for zero yards the week before. McCaffery, who has played almost the entire year as the 49ers sole offensive threat (Jennings and Pearsall have been out almost the entire season) has 53 catches for 516 yards and three TDs to go along with his 466 yards rushing. Maybe Gibbs and McCaffery are outliers, right? Well lets see what Bijon has done: 6 catches for 52 yards Sunday v the 49ers, 6 for 68 against the Bills and 30 catches for 390 yards this season to date. Every other top running back in the league has more targets, more catches and more yardage than Cook. When we drafter Cook he was billed as a pass catching back. In his rookie year we saw how explosive he could be in the passing game. In his second year he caught 44 passes for 445 yards and four TDs. Yes he dropped four passes that year but he clearly made up for it with his production. Why, when you have such an asset, the type of which other teams seem to be able to use successfully, would you throw him the ball one Fucking time in the past two games, which, not coincidentally, were losses? Where is the wheel route out of the backfield that we saw in 2023? Where is the swing pass that we saw completed ad nauseum to Bijon against us last week? Where is the play were the running back sneaks out of the backfield and catches the ball over the middle in space like McCaffery does every week?
To put it bluntly, Joe Brady is in way over his head. Instead of using his best player not named Josh Allen, he has designed n offense where Cook was on the field for one play in the last 11 minutes of the Falcons game. The same guy who didn’t have Cook on the field during the Bills failed last drive in the AFC Championship game last year against the Chiefs. The same guy who has, on five separate occasions this year in short-yardage situations, decided to run a wide-receiver or tight end on gadget plays (none of which were successful) instead of Cook who is averaging five yards per carry. Think about this for a minute: your best non-QB offensive player not used in the passing game, not given the ball in short yardage situations, and not even on the field in most of the fourth quarter in a close game which they lost…WHY?
Brady has shown a stubbornness (Josh with the tush push to the left last year v. KC when it had failed three of the prior four times he’d tried it) along with a cuteness that makes him a poor OC. It’s almost like he is trying to show everyone how smart he is by trying the same play, time after time, in hopes that it will eventually work and thus justify his usage of it in the first place. This offense is in shambles. His receivers are rarely open, his running backs aren’t used in the pass game, his play-calling is abominable. We deserve better. Josh Allen deserves better.
Get rid of Brady and get rid of Babich. Let McDermott run the defense since all he seems to do is clap ion the sidelines and not make correct challenges. Let someone else call the plays as it cannot get worse than it is right now.