Buffalo Bills Review

Losman sucks.

Full article coming.

Won’t be a whole lot longer though.

Might be something like “Losman really sucks.”

Have to give props to the defense.

Need to cool off now.

Losman sucks.

-The John

1. Yes, Bills fans we are that bad…
2. If JP continues to play this bad and especially next week we will start to hear rumblings of playing Edwards… I was really hoping JP would turn his poor play around, but alas he has not. It looked like the same guy we saw two years ago. He holds the ball to long and makes poor decisions. No Int’s, which is good but we need to see consistent play from JP.
3. Our defense has to stop teams and force 3 and outs Pittsburgh punted once. They have to help themselves. Our defense was so tired to start the 3rd quarter. These guys are going to be in great shape by the end of the season…
4. It is a shame that Lynch has to play on such a bad offensive team. All his yards he earns himself. He is not getting much help from the multi-million dollar o-line. Yes, our offense is that bad.
5. Again our offense play calling in the first half was boring. We opened up the 3rd quarter with some nice play but no one seemed to have enough juice in the tanks to keep it flowing. Note to Dick you need to start a game this way…
6. I really don’t think if we had been healthy on defense the outcome would have been any different.
7. Leonhard is on target for 16 int’s and a probowl appearance 🙂
8. Expect another blowout next week. New England will convert redzone possessions into TD’s.
9. It is going to be a long year. We may want to start lowering our expectations and start rooting for a #1 pick.

I want to start off by saying that my heart goes out to Kevin Everett and his family. Nobody should have to go through what he is going through. It is a terrible tragedy and hopefully something that the team can rally behind. That being said, all the injury coverage has made Bills vs Steelers coverage hard to come by, so I am going to try to stick to the football. Kevin our prayers are with you.

Week one did not go as planned for the Buffalo Bills. Not only did they play poorly in many aspects of the game, but they also suffered 4 major injuries. Besides the well publicized injury to 2nd Tight End Kevin Everett, the Bills lost Ko Simpson for the season at Free Safety, Coy Wire is out indefinitely at backup linebacker and Jason Webster is out potentially for the whole season at Corner Back. Its never good when a team suffers that many serious injuries, but it could have been worse.

Ko Simpson is really the only significant loss in the group and his loss was lessened by the outstanding play of Jim Leonard in his stead. Leonard finished the first game with a team leading 13 tackles and an Interception. You can’t ask for much more than that. If Leonard can continue with that type of play, the Bills will have no trouble weathering Simpson’s injury. Simpson being out for the season will be more damaging next season as the team was hoping to see some magic between Donte Whitner and Ko Simpson develop this year. Maybe Whitner and Leonard will be the tandem the Bills are looking for instead? It remains to be seen.

Coy Wire is an emotional player that brings a lot to the table especially on special teams. It will hurt the team not having him on the field, but he will likely be back later in the season depending on the severity of his knee sprain. Wire was already filling in for Keith Ellison who may be back before Wire. The Bills appear to have decided to play undrafted free agent John DiGiorgio on the weak side in his place. With DiGiorgio, Posluszny and Crowell, the Bills have a fast and fairly talented linebacking corps. They are inexperienced except for Crowell however so they will probably make some mistakes as the season progresses. Posluszny had a great first game as a starter, picking up 9 tackles. He made some mistakes too, but Poz seems like the kind of player that doesn’t make the same mistake twice. He will just get better and better as the year progresses and he started off pretty strong.

Jason Webster looked a lot better in practice than he did in preseason games or in week 1. His injury forces the Bills to start Ashton Youboty. Youboty was drafted in 2006 to replace Nate Clements. He didn’t play much last year due to the death of his mother. His development is a little behind, but he will probably improve a lot more rapidly by seeing more playing time. He is bound to make mistakes, but Webster wasn’t exactly getting the job done, so I don’t see any fall off here. There could end up being significant improvement depending on how Youboty does. Youboty gets a bit of a break in that he will mostly be covering Santonio Holmes on Sunday when they face the Steelers. Holmes is a solid receiver, but he is also a former teammate of Youboty’s from Ohio State. Youboty is very familiar with Holmes and it will make his assignment a bit easier than it would be otherwise. I’m not saying Youboty will shut down Holmes, but he ought to be able to do respectably against a player he knows so well.

Going into week 2, the rest of the Bills need to step up their play. Week 1 was a sloppy performance, but it was sloppy for Denver too. Bills fans shouldn’t give up on their team based on week 1. First of all, J.P. Losman had a bad game. This doesn’t mean he regressed. It means he had a bad game. Thats all. If you actually go back and look at the film, Losman didn’t make that many mistakes. The weather was wet which seems to effect Losman more than it should. Despite that, Losman completed 67% of his passes. That means he was on target. He wasn’t throwing up lame ducks, the Denver cornerbacks (easily the best in the league) shut down the Bills’ receivers. Losman took what he could get, which wasn’t much. The ugly interception was the result of Denver grabbing the facemask of the intended receiver and getting away with it. Losman was not “crisp”, which seems to be his goal, but he wasn’t as bad as the numbers indicate. In week 1 all teams are still getting the wrinkles out, and the Broncos were able to get a jump on a Bills offense that needed a little more time together.

The Bills offensive line showed a lot of promise although they were inconsistent. At times they did a great job protecting Losman, especially in the first series. They also blocked for Marshawn Lynch well on several occassions. But there were also times when they looked confused and allowed the pass rush to come right through or did not get any blocks in for Lynch. These times will become less and less frequent as the season goes on and the Bills revamped line has more time to get comfortable playing together. The sooner the better, but it will probably be a few weeks before they are really in sync.

Marshawn Lynch looked outstanding in his debut. He came right out and had 3 back to back solid gainers in the first series. His only major error came on that first series when he blew a block that caused the 14 yard loss on the sack. Bills fans have got to be really excited about this kid. especially considering how unreliable the blocking was in this game. If the line can play just a little better this week than they did in week 1, Lynch will be well over 100 yards. My biggest complaint regarding Lynch was that the coaches only gave him 19 carries. After reviewing tape, it should be obvious that he will get nearly every carry in week 2. He looked that good. He also made at least 6 plays that were of the sort that we never saw from Willis McGahee. The 23 yard TD where he broke tackles and dragged a defender into the end zone would not have happened with Willis carrying the rock. Also the 4th and 1 play where Lynch got the first down with sheer will and determination was not typical of McGahee.

The Steelers are heavily favored over the Bills mostly because Losman had a terrible week 1 and Roethlisberger had a great week 1. But look at the opponents. Denver made a push for the playoffs last year and is expected to make a push this year as well. Cleveland went 4-12 last season and has been selected by many to come in dead last in the NFL this season. They are so bad that they fired their starting quarterback after week 1. Roethlisberger threw more interceptions last season than any other quarterback in the league. If the Bills can bring pressure on the quarterback with Schobel and Kelsay, they can count on some turnovers coming their way. Is Big Ben back? Maybe. Pounding on the worst team in the league isn’t enough to convince me. Lets look a little deeper at Big Ben’s performance last week. Yes he had 4 passing TD’s but they were all short passes in the red zone. Overall he had 161 yards in the air. Nothing to get excited about. His completion percentage was 52% (compared to Losman’s 67%).

No it wasn’t Roethlisberger that won the game for them, it was their backs. The Steelers had 206 yards rushing. This looks like their Super Bowl formula. Rush the ball and only have Roethlisbereger pass when he has to. It worked against the worst team in the league. The Bills are a lot better than they looked in week 1, even with the defensive injuries. The Bills will still struggle against the run, but need to slow it up just enough to force the Steelers to the air. Roethlisberger is not what the Bills should be afraid of. Willie Parker is the player that can kill the Bills. If Losman can play well and get the offense rolling (which he should be able to do against a more forgiving Steelers secondary) the Bills have a chance in this game. The Bills defense needs to keep the Steelers out of the end zone and take field goals as they did in week 1. If they can do this, the Bills will be able to pull out an upset. It is critical that the Bills get an early lead. They have a slight advantage in that the world still hasn’t seen the Bills offense functioning as it was designed. A few surprises get the Bills a much needed confidence boosting win in honor of their fallen comrade. Bills 21 Steelers 17. (either way you should pick the Bills against a 10 point spread, thats way too large for this early in the season)

Season record so far:
0-1
1-0 versus the spread

There has been some discussion lately over my former facebook profile picture. The short story is we were talking about German food in an email discussion revolving around our BBR game day coming up. Well I thought since we were talking about German food at a Bills’ game, why not Bills related German clothing? Since I’m an American, I’m stereotypically a culture ignoramus, and the only article of German clothing I could think of was a lederhosen, so I found a pic on the internet and photoshopped it to look like this:

There you have it, also those who have corrected us in saying Heineken was a Dutch beer are correct. Sadly, most Americans don’t even know they are two different countries and if they did, certainly could not point to either on a map.

Let’s hope she’s a Panther’s fan.

Well Bills fans we definitely got some answers this week. Some things thought during the preseason turned out to be wrong, others right. I’m just going to do a quick run down because we mentioned most of this on the show.

DEFENSE: Well POS has some big shoes to fill, but for his first time out I was really happy. I’m an outspoken POS fan and I’m looking for big things from him this year, he was worth the trade up. I know injuries are never something to cheer about (unless you’re a Jet’s fan) or ever something to laugh at, but you have to see the humor in Jason Webster. The Bills took a chance on a guy who has a reputation for getting hurt, and he goes out for most of the season during the first game.

During the preseason the Bills defense was criticized for being soft, they played about as soft as it gets, the only real aggression I saw today was from POS, Schobel , and McGee (although he had the hands of a Tyrannosaurus Rex). I’m not a coach, but I had the idea that if you actually tackled opposing teams, you would have a better chance.

OFFENSE: Talk about your lame-dash-oh. This offense is predictable, poorly planned, and ever more poorly executed. That said, Lynch is awesome, he alone was worth the price of admission. I know it’s only been one game, but he looks a lot like Thurman Thomas.

Champ Baily actually laughed when we went deep on the 4th quarter 3rd and 5 that lost us the game, as I’m sure God did too. “Silly Buffalo” said God, “Watching them run that play was like watching Britney Spears apply for Mother of the Year.”

Back to Lynch, would somebody explain the logic of “running back by committee?” I feel like Lynch is Paul Simon and Thomas is Art Garfunkel, how long until we shed the dead weight?

SPECIAL TEAMS: With Captian (and Master of the Universe) Brian Moorman at the helm, you can’t go wrong, if only Brad Butler knew the snap count. I’ve always thought Rosco as one of the most exciting players in the NFL and he proves it again.

Finally, I want to talk about Kevin Everett (or Keverett as I affectionately call him). The team prayer was one of the most inspiring things I have seen in professional sports. This injury is why mothers don’t let their sons play football. That said, this is going to be a major distraction, my only hope is the team uses this to band that much more together. Kevin, the millions of us Bills fans are praying and pulling for you, God bless.

-The John