Let’s start with the good. The Bills came back to win a game that they appeared to have lost and which they probably should have. It just goes to show that when you have Josh Allen anything is possible. Over 400 yards in offense and four touchdowns in what may have been his best regular season game ever. He consistently avoided sacks, prolonged plays and found receivers for huge plays. He was absolutely amazing.
In addition, Keon Coleman, Josh Palmer, Dalton Kincaid and Khalil Shakir showed why this year’s receiver crew, at least for one game, is leaps and bounds better that Josh’s previous targets. Coleman made big catch after big catch to keep drives alive. His diving touchdown reception off of a tipped ball in and of itself saved the game. It was fourth and two and had he not caught that errant throw the Bills would have been down 40-25 with Baltimore having the ball-game over. Instead, he makes the huge play and the comeback was alive. In addition, Palmer, after being practically ignored for a half, made some huge catches to go along with causing a defensive pass interference penalty on a huge 4th down which kept the Bills second touchdown drive alive in the third quarter. Kincaid and Shakir also came up big in crucial situations to help the comeback.
Now let’s look at the bad:
1. Joe Brady’s offensive play calling: I know some people will criticize me for calling out Brady after his offense scored 41 points. That said, this game was a lot like games last year when you left the game scratching your head over his offensive play calls and schemes. For example, after Josh led the Bills down the field for a touchdown on their first possession Brady got extremely conservative on the next two. The second possession started with a nine yard Cook run up the middle. Faced with a second and short Brady went conservative on two successive plays with Cook getting stuffed both times and forcing the Bills to punt. On the third possession, now down 10-7, Brady went to his often used (are rarely successful) passes behind the line of scrimmage, both of which gained zero yards. What is Brady’s obsession with trying these wide receiver screens? How many time did we see these plays not work last year? What is it with his schemes? How many times did we see Lamar Jackson throw balls to wide open receivers last night? How many times did Josh have guys wide open-not many. It seems that Josh needs to make these high level perfect throws because his receivers (at least in the first half last night) failed to get separation. Is that the receivers fault or is to the routes that they run under Brady’s system. Why did Brady wait until the game was almost out of reach before allowing Josh to be Josh? Down 17-7 Brady did use some ingenuity by calling for and inside run by Elijah Moore which gained 8 yards. On this drive the Bills moved the ball to the Ravens 12 yard line where the drive stalled. Short pass-incomplete, 2 yard run, 3 yard pass and a field goal. Not once did Josh look into the endzone. Both pass plays were short yardage plays. It was almost like Brady was afraid to throw into the endzone in fear of a turnover.
Now lets go to the two point conversion attempts (criticism of choice to follow):
1st: pass to Coleman incomplete
2nd: pass to Coleman intercepted
3rd: pass to Coleman incomplete
Notice a trend there? On none of the 2 point attempts was there an open receiver (other than the broken play where Coleman was pushed out of the back of the end zone with no illegal contact call, only to come back in bounds to catch the ball illegally). On none of the two point attempts was there any type of deception. Just look at the comment Tony Romo made when the Bills were lining up for the two-point conversion down 40-38 late in the game: Romo said “here is where the Bills will come up with a play that they’ve been working on all season just for a time like this when they need 3 yards”. What was the play? An extremely difficult pass to Coleman in the corner of the endzone which was well defended. Where was the deception? Where was the ingenuity? Think about how Andy Reid has called those types of situations. Night and day difference.
My point here with Brady is he stifles Allen way too much. Let Josh be Josh. When he finally started calling for downfield throws Josh was tremendous. Those downfield completions also allowed the center of the field to open up for big gains. Josh Allen is phenomenal: don’t put handcuffs on him.
2. McDermott: I’ve been overly critical of McDermott’s in game decisions over the past few years. Last night was no different. As a complement, he did use his time outs almost perfectly at the end of the first half as well as at the end of the game. My criticisms are as follows:
a. Two point conversions: Down 27-13 the Bills score and kick the extra point to go down 27-20. On the extra point the Ravens had too many men on the field so McDermott took the 1 point off the board and decided to go for two-WHY? You are down 7 if you miss you are down 8 and chasing points. That is exactly what happened here. Because he chased the extra point early in the third quarter he was then forced to continually go for two to try and get those lost points back. Hindsight is always 20-20 but just think how the game would have been different had he kept the one point conversion and kicked extra points (rather than going for two) the rest of the game. Those three added points could have been the difference had they lost. In addition, and as set forth above, the play-calling on the three two-point attempts was abysmal.
b. On what may be his biggest blunder was when McDermott failed to challenge the spot when Josh ran and slid for what was clearly a first down. Replays showed his slide starter well beyond the first down maker. This should have been an easy challenge. Instead, McDermott looked like a deer in the headlights arguing with the official about the ball placement. They were down 40-25 at this point. They hadn’t been able to stop the Raven’s offense. It was an easy call and he choked. Over the past five years McDermott has the worst challenge success rate of any coach in the league. He’s at around 25% when the league average is above 40%. The Bills hired a former official last year to help Sean. In spite of that they were successful on only 20% last year. Why???? Instead of challenging to play the bills chose to hand the next play off to Ray Davis who was stuffed for a two yard loss (great play call Brady) and eventually punted.
3. Defense: can you say putrid? Other than Ed Oliver the Bills defense was brutal in every respect. Safeties constantly out of position and unable to make tackles and continuously taking bad routes to a ball carrier. The linebackers were invisible. The corners were adequate-It’s tough to blame Benford for the Hopkins one-handed TD. Bad reads by Bosa, missed tackles, wide open receivers… Just a terrible display. We got very lucky that the Raven’s coach Harbaugh got conservative late trying to protect a 15 point lead or else they probably would have scored more points. Oliver’s sack of Jackson on Raven’s first drive and strip of Henry in fourth quarter saved the Bill defense for even more humiliation.
This gets me to my next point: What has Brandon Beane done to shore up a bad set of safeties and a poor defense against the run? Last year we went the entire year with Damar Hamlin and Rapp. Cole Bishop couldn’t beat out a bad Hamlin last year but we did nothing in the offseason to solidify that position other than to hope Bishop got better. Earth to Bean and McDermott: he hasn’t. Something needs to be done. The next five games should be easy wins for the Bills. After that the two Free Agent D-Linemen come off of suspension. Hopefully by then our first round pick will be stating at CB. All of those areas have help coming. We need safety help badly.
4. Special teams: again, two costly penalties on returns cost valuable yardage. In addition our punter continues to kick short punts. Our kick-off coverage was also not very good.
5. Ty Johnson’s huge drop: perfectly thrown TD pass that he dropped. Two years ago we went away from Cook as a third down back because he dropped so many balls. Josh claims that Ty is the best third down back in the league. He needs to make that catch.
Outlook: Schedule looks good for next month and a half and Bills should get a bunch of guys back by the time they play KC after the bye week. Brady needs to open up the offense and McDermott needs to either make better in game decisions or otherwise leave those decisions up to someone else. We are 1-0 and atop the division. Lots of work to do but you are never out of it with Josh Allen as your QB. GO Bills!!!