Bills are stalled in twilight zone
By Mark Gaughan
NEWS SPORTS REPORTER
Updated: November 08, 2009, 10:56 PM / 24 comments
The cold, sobering reality for the Buffalo Bills and their fans is there is no quick fix for their offensive problems at the midway point of the 2009 season.
There is no magic potion that is going to pull them out of their woeful offensive slump.
Defenses are forcing the Bills to make long marches down the field. They're saying: Prove to us you can go 11 or 12 plays without making a couple of mistakes that derail the drive.
The answer through eight games is resounding: The Bills can't do it.
The Bills are on pace for their second worst yardage total ever in a 16-game season. They're on pace for their second lowest passing yards total and their fewest first downs since the league went to 16 games 32 years ago.
Lee Evans and Terrell Owens are on pace for just 46 catches each, which would be the worst in Evans' six-year career and the second-worst in Owens' 14-year career. Even in 2005, when Owens played only seven games for Philadelphia, he caught 47 passes.
The Bills are seeing mostly zone pass coverage from opponents. Sometimes it's a straight Cover 2 with two deep safeties. Sometimes defenses slide their coverage in either Evans' direction or Owens' direction after the snap of the ball. Both safeties and a cornerback will cover the deep part of the field in what's called a cloud coverage. Sometimes one safety takes half the field and two defensive backs each take a deep quarter on the other side.
Owens caught a lot of passes in Dallas on crossing routes where he got the ball in stride, broke an arm tackle and sprinted up the field for a big gainer. But that pattern works against man coverage. Now when Owens goes over the middle, he has to "sit down" in a hole in the zone, catch a 6-yard pass, get tackled and go to the next play.
The Bills aren't forcing anyone into frequent man coverage because they're not efficient in marching down the field piecemeal, and defenses too often are getting pressure with four or five rushers.
The problems at offensive tackle, which have been well documented, are a big part of the reason. The Bills have allowed 23 sacks. Ten of them, by The News' count, have come around Brad Butler, Jonathan Scott or Jamon Meredith. The early season loss of Butler at right tackle presumably was costly. We didn't see enough of him to know for sure.
Lack of pass protection hinders the Bills' ability to flood the zones. Of the 23 sacks allowed, 17 have come in the three-wideout formation. (But only six of the 17 came in third-and-long, when you would expect the most sacks.) The more players you have to keep in to block, the fewer are in pass patterns.
The Bills have played a four-wideout grouping on only 14 plays all year. Granted, most teams don't use four wides a lot. But it was an effective grouping for a while a couple of years ago with Josh Reed and Roscoe Parrish in the slots. It's just not an option this year.
You simply can't start four newcomers on an offensive line and expect rock-solid coordination of who's blocking whom against blitzes and stunts.
Motion is limited
Then there's the issue of stagnant formations. In the interest of simplifying the attack, the Bills have used almost no motion and don't vary formations from snap to snap as much as many teams. They started using a bit of motion against Houston last week.
Evans doesn't move at all from his split end spot. The Bills do move Owens around from the flanker to the slot positions.
The Bills very rarely cluster the wide receivers on one side of the field to make it easier to get a free release off the line and to try to get the defensive backs to make a false step. They don't stack two receivers at the line.
The timing of the passing game needs to be crisp in order to mount 10-play drives. It would be good if quarterbacks Trent Edwards and Ryan Fitzpatrick bought a bit more time by sliding in the pocket and making more plays under duress. That's not easy, but that's what Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger does behind suspect protection.
Edwards probably needs to pull the trigger a little more quickly on some routes, such as when the Bills try to hit the dead spot in the Cover 2 behind the cornerback and in front of the safety. That's a point radio analyst Mark Kelso has made in recent weeks.
The Bills could try to expand the offense more. But it's not easy to insert a lot of new shifts and alignments in the middle of the season without the benefit of working on them all spring and summer.
At this point, a significant expansion of the game plan probably isn't the answer. The Bills need to get more proficient at running the plays they did work on during all of their organized team activity workouts and training camp.
They need to get better at the three-step drop passing game, because that's killing them on third-and-short situations.
Somehow, the coaches should be able to find a way for the offense to improve the second half of the season. There's nowhere to go but up.
Defense is gassed
The Bills' defense is allowing 173.6 rushing yards a game, a pace that would be the most in the NFL in 26 years. Bills opponents are getting 5.1 yards a carry, which would be the 14th worst allowed in NFL history.
Yet, given the lack of support from the offense, the defense is doing a pretty good job. The Bills have been in position to win in the fourth quarter every game except for the loss at Miami.
Against New Orleans, the Bills' defense got the offense the ball twice in the fourth quarter trailing by only 10-7. Against Houston, the offense did nothing with the ball and the lead twice in the third quarter and had one shot down by seven in the fourth.
Yes, the Bills rank 25th in yards allowed, but they're still only 16th in points allowed. They're 15th on third downs. They have been on the field the most plays in the league (14 plays a game more than the league average).
The Bills have 18 takeaways, 15 of them interceptions. Last year they had 10 interceptions all season. The Bills are fifth in the league in takeaways per game.
The Bills are ahead of only Oakland in time of possession (27:19). That would rank as the worst in the 28 years the Bills have kept that statistic.
Can the defense duplicate its effort and keep the offense in contention into the fourth quarter in seven of the next eight games? Probably not if the offense keeps hurrying off the field.
Another ominous sign for the run defense: The Bills face four more teams that rank in the top 10 in rushing and a fifth (Atlanta) that ranked second in rushing last year.
Running uphill
The Bills' running game ranks 19th in yards per carry, with a 4.0 average. That's not too bad given the woeful state of the passing game.
The Bills run pretty well out of the two-tight end personnel group, averaging 4.7 yards a carry on first down. You would like the first down runs out of the three-wide set to be a little better (they're averaging 3.4 a carry), given the amount of Cover-2 defense the Bills face.
Just like last year, the Bills aren't too productive running out of a "regular" personnel group, with two receivers and a true fullback in the game. They used it against the Jets and Carolina and averaged just 2.8 yards a carry on 24 attempts out of that group.
If the Bills could improve their third-and-short conversions, it would give them a better chance to run teams out of the Cover-2 defense. The run stats could get better: Seven of the next eight foes rank 14th or worse against the run.
