Category: Current Bills

OK. I would first like to rescind some of the certainty with which I previously stated that pre-season and training camp are worthless. Having heard some remarks from the very coach I was quoting in support of a shorter (or non-existent?) pre-season, as well as some of his players, I know that there certainly is a place for training camp, and even pre-season games. (I still contend that a tad more contact in camp might be beneficial, but, that’s not my point here.)

Nonetheless, might I point to the first three games of the pre-season as reasons why pre-season is COMPLETELY meaningless?

The Bills played rather poorly – sloppy was the word I chose – in their pre-season opener, and yet, pulled out the victory. They held the Saints to only 10 points. One week later, they had improved some, making several big plays, only to lose in the end by the reverse score from the previous week – 13-10. And then tonight they racked up 399 yards of offense, making some fantastic big plays, and lose 28-17.

Obviously, the outcome is not directly related to the level of play in pre-season. 🙂

And although we have seen our Bills in three “games” so far this year, I still maintain that we do not know that much about how this team will do until we see them play a game that matters. If they look like this in the regular season, we’re in trouble! But I don’t think they will. They players do not seem very worried at all. Nor do the coaches. I think it’s because they know that pre-season is not where you gauge what a team will do. You can gauge players… but not a team.

And yet… I watch the games. I even go to the games. What can I say? I’m a BIG Bills fan!!! 🙂

There were some bright spots tonight, but let me quickly highlight the things that do concern me a tad – even though I am trying hard to remember that pre-season is NOT a good indicator of what the regular season will bring…

• Penalties and Turnovers
  Two things you do NOT want to see a lot of, and we had our share tonight. As the BTN announcers were quick (and frequent) to point out, several of the calls were pretty picky. Really, they were just bad calls. And even some non-calls. Still, 7 penalties for 60 yards… that’ll hurt. And it would have been more, but the Titans refused several calls due to a better situation resulting from their good play against our D.

  One penalty even brought back a fantastic Roscoe Parrish punt return for TD. That was bad timing.

  Turnovers were a bit of a problem, too. Should have been much worse. I counted three passes that Titan DBs dropped. Definitely should have been INTs. As it was there were two turnovers, could have been five. Ouch. The defense didn’t get any this week. Minus two is not where you want to be in this column.

• JP Losman
  The reason JP is here is just that he’s scaring me a bit with how crazy erratic he is here this pre-season. He throws 3 horrible passes for every 2 good passes. Just super inconsistent. But man, when he’s good… he’s good. His pass to Evans was right on – from about 60 yards. He was hitting some great passes to Price tonight, too. But when he hit one long pass to Price, he didn’t seem to care that much about getting down the field to set up for the next play.

  I’m hoping it’s just that his head is not in the game in pre-season. Again, I must say, it’s just pre-season. You can’t judge a player or a team based on what you see in pre-season. You just can’t. And yet… I do not much like his inconsistency…

• Defense, Where Art Thou?
  Bend but don’t break, yes. But tonight we broke. Four times. And there was plenty of bending, too. We were the recipients of two missed FG gifts. But really, that didn’t matter. The run defense would make 1 or 2 great plays at the line, and then they would let the back rip off a 15-20 yard carry. The pass rush was pretty ineffective against Young for sure, sort of the same against Collins. The defensive backs had some trouble covering. And, I know Young is hard to bring down, but the tackling looked pretty sloppy.

  You’ve got to wrap up. Got to.

  Can someone please remind me that pre-season is not really a good indicator of what we’ll see in the regular season? Please?? 🙂

Despite an 11-point loss, and an overall sloppy game with poor tackling, turnovers, and penalties… there were some really great things, too! Check these out:

• Evans, Price, and Parrish
  Three of our best WRs had some great numbers tonight. Peerless Price looked great. He hasn’t, so that was nice to see. Made some great catches – including one on the sideline, and that long one down the middle that I mentioned earlier. Price ended with 78 yards receiving, Evans with 100 yards and a 64-yard TD. Parrish ended with 26 yards on 2 catches. Combined, the three had 204 yards receiving in the first half! Not bad for half a day’s work!

  I really think Roscoe is going to be fun to watch this year. It will be fun to see how they work him into the offense a bit more.

• Fred Jackson
  What can you say about this guy? Is he for real? On the fourth quarter drive that ended with his rushing TD, he amassed well over 50 yards rushing and receiving. He ended with 31 yards rushing and 80 yards receiving. Nice work, Fred! I’m still trying to figure out if he just looks good because he is playing against inexperienced players who will soon be cut from the opposition’s rosters. I really don’t know yet. To me he looks great. He’s big and powerful, always moving forward, yet he has some great moves that help him avoid tackles. He has incredible balance – never gets knocked down the first time. I don’t see how the Bills cut this guy, but I’m not really sure what role he plays on the team, either. Will be interesting to see how they use him (or not?) this year.
• Aaron Schobel in the Endzone
  First of all, it was cool enough that Schobel was in pass coverage. But add to that the smart, athletic play he made to save a TD (at least on that play) was definitely worth mention. On a great play fake, the Titans had a receiver wide open in the endzone. Young floated the ball to him, which he caught in his hands. The TE failed to account for Aaron’s speed and cleverness though. Schobel seeing the ball hit the receiver’s hands instantly swatted at the ball, knocking it loose… knocking away a TD!! Great play!

As I keep saying… it’s just pre-season. If the Bills looked fantastic, I would hope I would still temper my excitement with that phrase. Because I think it’s true. We’re not seeing the real Bills yet. The players remain confident in any interviews I hear/see…/give. 🙂 But that is admittedly hard to do, when we look pretty bad.

I will continue to reserve final judgment until we see 60 minutes of football against the visiting Denver Broncos. If we don’t see a well-oiled machine scoring lots of points, and a defense that doesn’t look completely inept that day, then we may be in trouble.

But we’re not yet. Just about two more weeks until we get to find out what we really have. Can’t wait!

Being in attendance at a game is definitely different than watching it on TV. In most ways it is far superior. It’s fun to watch it with so many other people cheering on your team. It’s great to get to see the whole field, watching plays develop live is way better than the limited TV version. The whole experience is just a lot more fun. And so, even for a pre-season contest, a great time was had by all.

Yes, the Bills lost the contest 13-10, giving up a late fourth quarter TD right down in front of us. Penalties helped the end of the drive a bit (more on that later…) but overall it was a good effort by our Bills, and again, it’s just pre-season.

Some thoughts from the game:

The New HD Screens!
This year, one of the more impressive things at The Ralph is going to be the amazing new high-definition display. It sits at the opposite end of the stadium from our seats and it’s incredible. Wow! It just blows away anything I’ve seen in a stadium before this. We found ourselves being drawn to watch the TV more than the real thing!! Too funny!

The only negative thing I could say about the new gigantic display was that the video would sometimes drop out, freeze up or just get choppy. In fact, on a replay of a pass to Peerless Price. It was a well-timed defensive play to break up a good pass from Losman, but it could have also been pass interference. The crowd watched the replay to see if a wave of disapproval needed to fall on the ears of the officials, but right at the very moment that the ball was reaching its target, the screen went blank, reappearing shortly after the play was over again. That drew a large moan from the crowd! 🙂

They also installed those ribbon boards around the walls of the stadium. They stretch across the long sides of the stadium, just above the 200-level seats. There’s always something going on those as well, whether an ad, or a graphic to get the crowd cheering, or just the scores from another game. Overall, definitely enhanced the experience at the game.

Marshawn Lynch
I was actually super surprised to see Lynch’s stats at the end of the game. He had 7 carries for only 19 yards. I am not looking at them now, so I don’t know what (if any) his receiving stats were, but 9 of his 19 yards came on one play (his first carry), so that leaves 6 carries for the other 10 yards. From what I saw of Marshawn, it seemed like more. He was aggressively hitting the line of scrimmage, seemed to be pretty good at finding/hitting the hole (though, by his own admission in a post-game interview, he would have liked to have done that better) and he’s shifty and powerful at the same time. I liked what I saw, even if it was brief.

Defense Came Up Big
You can look at the final drive, or you can look at the yards allowed, and say, “Wow, the defense is in for a long season!” Or, you can look at three take-aways, and again, only allowing the first team to score 6 points. It’s still pre-season, so I think our defense was caught out of position a few times again. The TD to win the game (yes, scrubs on scrubs) fooled not only the players but everyone else in the stadium I think! Great play fake.

Despite the few blunders, the Bills managed to have a great goal-line stand in the first quarter, and Terrence McGee and Anthony Hargrove had interceptions, while Coy Wire forced a fumble with a bone-crushing hit on Atlanta RB Jason Snelling. Jabari Greer had some nice pass break-ups, and overall played well again. Poz got in on several tackles (again, not looking at stats here) and looks like he is going to be a force in the defense for years to come!

Our defense against the run wasn’t too bad overall. Had some nice plays for little to no gain. They did give up some big plays, too, though. So still not sure what we’re going to get in that area. Won’t know until they start playing football for real.

Fred Jackson and Dwayne Wright
I don’t know how Shaud Williams will make the team this year. It’s odd, since they just gave him a decent contract extension. Perhaps they weren’t counting on acquiring two excellent running backs in the draft? And they did know what they had in Fred Jackson, but perhaps he is exceeding their expectations in the pre-season? Coach Jauron specifically said that he is not (because they knew what they had), but he certainly is exceeding fan expectations! The guy runs really hard, has great balance, and just seems to move the ball forward. A lot. Dwayne Wright, our fourth round pick this year, seems to be a similar running back. He looks really good out there.

The only thing Shaud has going for him is that he’s different. He’s so small, quick, and has some great hands. He can do that for sure. And, he does have experience. Perhaps, due to lack of experience, Jackson or Wright gets cut, and the other makes the practice squad… but my vote now is that we cut Shaud. I really like what I see from these two guys.

No Turnovers
In two weeks of pre-season play, the Bills have not turned the ball over once. Not even once. They have taken it away 5 times. Plus five ain’t bad! Could be just getting lucky, but you gotta like that stat. You have a much better chance of winning when you don’t turn the ball over – and even more when you do take it away!

Trent Edwards
I have to say, this guy looks very impressive for a rookie. I know he’s playing against backups, but he’s also playing with backups! And he makes them look good! His TD pass to Roscoe Parrish was very, very impressive. It was improvised, as he was forced out of the pocket. He avoided the sack, got free enough to let a pass go as he was running left, and squeezed it in past two defenders! Great catch by Roscoe, too. I’d say from what we’ve seen so far, we will be just fine if JP is ever knocked out of a game or two this year. Great stuff from the rookie!

Negatives…

• Penalties:
  Last week we had one penalty for 10 yards. Last night we had a lot more. And they were drive killers. In the fourth quarter, the defense was called for holding, giving the Falcons a first and goal when I believe it was at least 3rd down, maybe even fourth. Also, I heard on the post-game show (while sitting in traffic) that there were two penalties on our centers for false starts. The CENTER? That’s pretty bad.
• Sloppiness
  I know, I know. It’s just pre-season. They’re supposed to be sloppy. But to the badly timed penalties, add a few bad snaps (one was jumped on by Lynch, the other was brought under control by Losman) and a few bad throws from JP… just sloppy. In fact, there was one throw to the endzone to Price that most definitely should have gone for a TD, but was either underthrown, or mis-read or something. It is definitely just pre-season, but most of the players said in interviews after the game that they felt sloppy. They were right.
• The Outcome
  OK, that’s not really a negative, but it is always more fun to win. 🙂 Overall, it felt like it could have been. The Bills played well, had some good stops on defense, and made a few good plays on offense. But, it’s still more fun to win!

The game will be televised in the WNY area again tonight. If you didn’t see it, you can catch it from Erie, PA to Syracuse, NY on your local channel (check the Buffalo Bills website for details). We may tune in to catch the plays we missed at the very beginning of the game.

We have lots of photos and a fun video from the game. If I have the time here this weekend I’ll post them from my remote location. Otherwise look for several photo slideshows and a video or two from Bills training camp, and the pre-season home opener – right here at BuffaloBillsReview.com!

Two more pre-season contests to go. These get a bit more interesting as the starters will play a good deal more in the next game, and then the final game against the Lions will give the new guys the lions share of the snaps, letting the coaches make the tough final cuts just a few days later.

We’re almost to the good stuff! Bring on the Broncos!
Go Bills!

If I were to condense my thoughts on tonight’s first pre-season game into two words, they would probably be “sloppy” and “promise”.

It’s Pre-season…
Let’s get “sloppy” out of the way first. The first series or two especially were glaring examples of why pre-season tickets should not be priced the same as regular season tickets. We all expect it, but you hope it’s sort of like riding a bike. You can’t ever forget how to do it. But what I saw was first, giving credit where credit is due, an amazing sharp Drew Brees running an amazingly sharp New Orleans offense, against an amazingly out of position Bills defense. Yes, we held eventually, only allowing two FG attempts, and the interception in the end zone, but man did they have their way with our defense.

And offense wasn’t much better. For all the beef we gained on the offensive line, you couldn’t tell it. It looked like most of the RBs were running hard, but there was just nowhere to go.

But I’d say most of the sloppiness was on defense. The DBs were completely out of position on several plays. Jabari Greer might be competing for the starting CB slot, rather than the main nickel CB. I know Jason Webster has been impressive in camp, but man… he was getting smoked! Meanwhile, Greer had two obviously great plays on the two INTs. Actually, I noticed Ashton Youboty several times as well.

And, let’s not forget… several of the times our defense looked silly it was at the hands of Drew Brees and/or Reggie Bush. There was a reason the Saints had the number one offense in 2006.

Bright Spots
There were several bright spots. First of all, how about a round of applause for the Bills second round draft pick, “POZ”??? (The announcers thought that Posluszny might be nick-named “PUZ”… but, that’s par for the course with football commentators…) Nine tackles, and a sack. He looked ready to play and definitely attacked the play more than what I remember Fletcher doing. I’m sure he was made to look silly on several occasions, but I don’t remember them. Poz was definitely a bright spot.

Then there was the entire Special Teams. Someone posted the following on the Buffalo Bills Message Boards during the game:

Bobby April = God

And, while I do not agree with the theology of that statement, I completely agree with the sentiment. 🙂 Our special teams is going to keep us in several games this season, and very likely could win a game or two. They are that good. Two punts… TWO PUNTS downed inside the FIVE??!?! Not the twenty. The five. Moorman is insane. The kick coverage is phenomenal. They are right there, and sure tacklers. And dare we forget to pay homage to our favorite Bills’ kicker, Rian “Who You Callin’ No Foot” Lindell?? A 54 yard FG?? And RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE. My goodness. McGee added a nice return as well. This unit is incredible. Even in the first pre-season game!

My wife noticed a cool stat that deserves “bright spot” mention as well. Our Buffalo Bills only committed a single penalty in the entire sixty minute game. One. That’s impressive, especially for the first pre-season game.

Of course, you have to give some love to our rookie QB, Trent Edwards. His stats weren’t that impressive – and he did look pretty green at times – but 10-11 ain’t bad. And he had some nice completions to Fred Jackson, Roscoe Parrish, and Sam Aiken. Not bad for his first day on the job, even if it was against third and fourth stringers. 😉

But how about our veteran QB? Even though I started getting a little scared, saying out loud to my TV, “Get dowwwwn… Get DOWN!”, that was quite a scramble by Losman. He does have some “good wheels”, as the saying goes. Perhaps, just save those “wheels” for the games that matter… 🙂

Langston Walker did not impress me on the offensive line (when you’re 6’8″ and 365… blow some guys off the line, mister!) but he did block a field goal on his first attempt. Guess he was pretty good at that in Oakland (several last season) and perhaps that will be a secret weapon for the Bills this season.

Surprises

• I was surprised at how out of position Jason Webster was. He looked decent to me at camp, and I have heard nothing but praise for him. So… that was a surprise.
• Who was that guy wearing #23? I thought he was speedy, powerful, hits the hole hard, and a very confident, sure-handed running back? He was nowhere in the passing game… and carried just 2 times for 3 yards. That was definitely a surprise as I thought I read at BuffaloBills.com that he would be getting a good number of carries tonight.
• Fred Jackson was conversely a nice surprise at RB. He ran hard, and smart. Knew where the hole was and hit it. He also showed some great balance and strength, fighting through tackles. And, it doesn’t hurt that he scored our only TD.
• Oh yeah… don’t forget the best surprise of all… we’re undefeated! The Bills came out with the win. Well deserved. Good work, lads!

Overall… we won… and got some good performances from a few young guys (and our special teams!) but in the end, it’s just the first pre-season game. 🙂 Long way to go (for which I am very thankful!!) and it will hopefully start getting a bit more crisp from here on. I’m concerned (obviously) about our secondary. But if we can get some pressure on the QB (as they were toward the end) then we can take some pressure off the DBs. That would be a wise move, I think.

Bring on the real stuff! Less than four weeks!

Go Bills!

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For Reference:
Game Stats from NFL.com
Game Summary from BuffaloBills.com