Let Mike Cook: Buffalo Bills Preview
We have clarity around the QB position, so let's look forward to Sunday's game against Buffalo.
🗽Good morning Jets fans and happy Friday. It’s that time of the week where we look ahead to Sunday’s opponents. This week it’s the Buffalo Bills riding into town on the back of an upset loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. I don’t like the idea that the Jags have poked the bear and now that bear is pretty angry and looking for someone to take it out on. Anyway, enough about bears, let’s talk Bills.
🏈 Game Day 🏈
Who: Buffalo Bills @ New York Jets
Where: Metlife Stadium, New Jersey
When: 6:00pm EST - Sunday 14th of November.
Head to Head: 121 games, 56 wins, 65 losses
Offensive Ranking:
Points (Jets 29th, Bills 8th)
Total Yards (Jets 26th, Bills 12th)
Passing (Jets 19th, Bills 9th)
Rushing (Jets 32nd, Bills 16th)
Defensive Ranking:
Points (Jets 31st, Bills 1st)
Total Yards (Jets 26th, Bills 1st)
Passing (Jets 22nd, Bills 1st)
Rushing (Jets 23rd, Bills 3rd)
Turnovers:
Differential (Jets -12, Bills +11)
Defensive Interceptions (Jets 1, Bills 11)
Offensive interceptions (Jets 14, Bills 5)
Expert Picks
Injuries
The Bills Offense
🏈 This Bills offense may have been restricted to just 6 points against the Jacksonville Jaguars, but don’t let that fool you, this is one of the best offenses in football. It’s well balanced between passing and rushing, but their bread and butter come from the QB making plays. They have difference makers across the offense and the Jets are going to have to be at their absolute best to limit them. The Jets defense is trending in the wrong direction at the moment, so if that trend continues, it’s going to be a long afternoon.
Passing
🏈 Like most modern offenses, the Bills attack starts with the passing game and their QB Josh Allen. Buffalo’s QB has thrown 17 touchdowns to just 5 interceptions this year while completing 65% of his passes. Allen does a great job extending plays, and the offense is built around that explosive element.
The problem with defending the Buffalo passing game is that they have multiple options. They absolutely will beat you with Stefon Diggs (588 yards, 3 TD) if you don’t pay him the attention his talent deserves, but they also have Emmanuel Sanders (478 yards, 4 TD), Cole Beasley (446 yards, 1 TD) and tight end Dawson Knox (286 yards, 5 TD). If you do manage to blanket the receivers on a drop back, Josh Allen can hurt you with his legs, he has 319 yards and 3 touchdowns on the ground and is currently averaging 5.6 yards a carry.
Buffalo use 5 receiver sets more than any team in the league and they’re also among the league leaders in using 4 receiver sets as well. They use 4 wide receivers on 12% of their offensive plays which is significantly higher than the league average of 2%, and only trails Arizona who use it on 25% of plays. What this does is force the defense into more sub-packages, opening space and opportunity in the running game and spreading the defense out.
The Jets defensive backs are a young and inexperienced unit, and that inexperience was amplified with the loss of Marcus Maye to a season-ending Achilles injury. This will be their biggest test of the season, purely because of the way the Bills play, more of them will be on the field and for longer. We’re going to learn a lot about these rookies.
The evolution of the Buffalo offense has been evident to see and the true buy in to the spread has helped Josh Allen and the Bills put up significant performances, it wasn’t something that Allen was used to at Wyoming, that Cowboys team was a punch you in the face, use 12 personnel type team, but he’s adapted well.
One of the key aspects to the Bills offense and for any offense that runs a spread system, is that it usually forces the defense to tip their hand early. By spreading the receivers out, it usually becomes obvious if the defense is in man or zone coverage, because they’ll often have to move a safety out to cover the spread. That allows Allen to get a head start (pre-snap) on if he’s aiming for a soft spot in zone or if he’s going with the best match-up that’s likely already been revealed.
The Bills use a lot of play-action in their offense, and once that was the downfall of Allen. Now it’s one of his greatest strengths. Allen has thrown 8 touchdowns to 1 interception on play-action this year, but as this chart from PFF documents, it’s between 10-19 yards where he really can hurt you:
Rushing
🏈 Arguably you could say that the best rusher on the Bills offense is Josh Allen, but we’ve spoken about him enough, so lets focus in on the two running backs that the Bills have utilised the most in 2021, Devin Singletary and Zack Moss.
Singletary is a multi-threat back out of the backfield, he’s currently ticking along at 4.9 yards per carry on 73 attempts, and he’s caught 21 passes for 3.9 yards per reception. Devin shares the backfield work with Moss, but it’s Moss that leads the duo in terms of snap share, despite Moss running at a clip of 3.6 yards a carry.
The trade-off for a spread offense is that it can sometimes be more difficult to find those big gains on the ground if you’re playing a big active front like the Steelers, but watching Buffalo play, they don’t really care. The name of the game for Daboll is to get as many wide receivers on the field, give them as much space to work with and if your rushing game suffers as a result, who cares it’s a passing league.
But here’s the kicker, this spread system can also open things up for the run game. It creates space, a lot of teams need to play deep cover-2 to prevent the big plays, and we saw the Bills run right by the Chiefs, Texans and Dolphins. It’s the very definition of picking your poison, but I’d rather make Zack Moss and Devin Singeltary beat us than allow Josh Allen and his receivers the pleasure.
Offensive Line
🏈 The Bills offensive line is coming off a difficult game against the Jaguars. Jacksonville was able to generate 23 pressures and 4 sacks against Josh Allen. Statistically, Buffalo’s offensive line is one of the best pass-protecting units in football, they’ve allowed just 12 sacks through 8 games, good for the 2nd best mark in the league.
Remember this is a Jacksonville defense that got torn apart by Geno Smith, but they played a fast and physical brand of football that the Bills struggled to handle, with center Mitch Morse the only offensive lineman not to concede a sack.
Buffalo can’t have star power at every position, and there are no big names here but tackles Dion Dawkins (LT) and Daryl Williams (RT) do a relatively good job, there is the potential of overwhelming the guards inside, and here’s where you hope Quiennen Williams and Sheldon Rankins come into their own.
Offensive Coordinator: Brian Daboll
🏈 There’s a reason Brian Daboll was getting significant buzz in head coaching circles last season. The former Alabama coordinator has nurtured one of the games best QB’s from a rocky start to MVP potential. He’s also built one of the games most devastating attacks largely from the ground-up. When Daboll took over, the Bills had one of the worst passing attacks in the league, they now have one of the best.
One thing I love about Daboll is his adaptability. We saw that against the Chiefs where he switched up the Bills philosophy to confuse Kansas City, he’s moved away from what he was familiar with at Alabama and if he doesn’t get a head coaching gig this off-season, questions have to be asked.
Daboll did spend two seasons with the Jets in 2007 and 2008 coaching QB’s Chad Pennington and Brett Favre, Daboll followed Mangini to Cleveland.
The Bills Defense 🧱
🏈 Where do you start with a defense that is as good as the Bills? 1st in points, 1st in yards, 1st in passing yards and 3rd in rushing yards. What that basically says is you can’t throw the ball, you can’t run the ball, you can’t move the ball and you certainly can’t score.
Imagine being that Buffalo defense last year, you hold an opponent to 9 points, and you still lose. That’s tough to take. This unit has top-quality talent from front to back and I’m going to try and keep this short, but all 11 starters and some require attention and appreciation.
Passing defense
🏈 The Buffalo defense consists of one of the best secondaries in football. Consisting of CB’s Tredarious White, Taron Johnson, Levi Wallace and safeties Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer and Siran Neal, they lock down opposing passing attacks on a weekly basis. They stay patient and disciplined and force you to take what they give you.
Teams are completing just 57.9% of their passes against Buffalo which is the 2nd best mark in the league behind Denver. They’ve given up just 1416 yards through the air which is over 150 less than the 2nd best LA Chargers. They intercept a pass on 4.1% of dropbacks, which is the best mark in the league. I could go on and on and on about how good this passing defense is, but I think you get the point.
The Bills don’t blitz a huge amount, they only blitz on 21.8% of dropbacks which is 23rd in the league. Leslie Frazier relies on rushing his front 4 and then playing tight on the back-end. The best way to move the ball against this team is to take what’s given underneath and then rely on YAC to pick up chunks.
Taron Johnson in the slot has been one of the best draft picks for the Bills in recent memory. Taken in the 4th round of the 2018 NFL draft out of Weber State, the former Wildcat is among PFF’s highest-graded corners in the league. Johnson has been targeted 36 times, allowing a completion percentage of just 50% into his coverage, and although he’s yet to record an INT, he does have 5 pass break-ups.
One of the keys to success is the consistency of personnel. Hyde, Poyer and White all joined the Bills in 2017 and Levi Wallace joined a year later. The Bills lead the league in takeaways since 2017 as well as leading the league in fewest 20+ Yard plays. Its the best secondary in the NFL.
Run defense
🏈 Technically, the run defense is the weakest area of this defense. But, it’s still a top 5 unit in the league so we may need to hold off on any planned celebrations.
The Bills have shut down almost every rushing attack in the league this year outside Tennessee and Derrick Henry who gassed them for 120 yards and 3 TD’s on just 20 carries.
Outside of the defensive line that hosts the likes of Ed Oliver, Justin Zimmer, Jerry Hughes, Gregory Rousseau, Mario Addison, and Star Lotulelei they also have two of the very best run defending linebackers in the league in Matt Milano and Tremaine Edmunds.
Overall the Bills are allowing 3.8 yards per attempt and 85.6 yards per game. The Jets are going to have to get physical upfront like the Titans did if they hope to move the ball on the ground, of course, it helps to Have Henry.
Defensive coordinator: Leslie Frazier
🏈 Frazier once spoke about a fondness and respect for Tony Dungy and how he watched his defensive philosophy evolve. in 2021, the Buffalo Bills have been in constant attack mode, and that’s not in terms of attack the QB through exotic blitzes, but attack the ball in the air. They do that as well as any team in the NFL.
The scheme that Buffalo runs was imported from Carolina when McDermott took over as the head coach, but Frazier has consistently got the best out of the unit. They play a lot of zone coverage which suits the likes of White, and the bend but don’t break mentality is evident from Frazier and his unit.
🌟 Star Player 🌟
Josh Allen - QB
After his rookie season, a lot of people were questioning Josh Allen. That’s what happens when you’re a top 10 pick in the draft and you throw more interceptions than touchdowns.
The Bills did a lot to support Josh, front changing their personnel groupings to bringing in an influx of talent and the rewards have been plentiful.
Allen threw for 37 touchdowns against 10 INT last season and this year he’s on track to do similar with 17 touchdowns and 5 INT through 8 games.
Allen worked a lot with Jordan Palmer on his accuracy and his mechanics, and when you pair that with his cannon of an arm and his ability to pick up yardage on the ground, you have one of the more dangerous QB’s in the league.
That’ll do it for today’s preview. Thank you as always for reading and please so share the Jets Way with your fellow Jet nuts. I’ll be back on Monday with the game recap and every day next week with more Jets content. Have a great weekend!