By Mark Weiler

September 26th, 2006

This week’s post-game piece will forego the usual format. In being perfectly honest, there already appears to be a "Ground Hog Day" like trend to the season making it mundane in once again reporting following games. While some may be raving about the coaching, the Wysman has not seen anything that is even remotely convincing enough to suggest that this staff won’t be run out of town on a rail after two seasons. Either way, performing these analyses becomes mundane and routine when little alters itself from week to week much less from season to season given the tendencies of the Bills in recent seasons and the perpetual trying the same things yet a different way.

The Bills lost for one reason and one reason only. They simply could not execute in the red zone much less in goal-to-go situations. They went 1-for-4 and 0-for-1 there respectively while the Jets went 3-for-3 in both.

OK, so why couldn’t the Bills perform well, on either side of the ball in the red zone then Weiler?

Again, very simple, it’s because they do not have strong lines. We’ve been over this ad tedium and ad nauseum, yet, the more things change the more they remain the same. The defensive line, in addition to being undersized, simply doesn’t have the talent to outperform even a weak Jets offensive line that started two rookies and a second-year man with even less experience than Duke Preston!

Just as during the Bledsoe years, the team had quite a few yards but disintegrated once they got into the red zone. So too this team had no difficulty putting up yards vs. a well below average Jets squad, yet crumbled in the red zone and struggled to even get into it. Is there a Bills fan out there that is not now aware that the Bills set a record by being the first team ever to amass 300 passing yards combined with 150 rushing and lose. Once again, the lesson, that it’s not yards that win games, it’s crossing the goal line. As of now the Bills do not have one offensive weapon that has a history of doing that.

Defensively, if the Bills couldn’t stop Kevan Barlow and Cedric Houston from getting back-to-back-to-back runs of 7, 5, and 5 yards for a TD in the 4th quarter to essentially ice the game under the circumstances that this game was played, then it is indeed going to be a very, very long season. Had the Bills held, the Jets’ lead would have only been a very reasonable seven, yet, they simply couldn’t get it done to the tune of a yard-per-carry average of 5.7 yards in a zone in which defenses are supposed to tighten up making acquiring yardage there much more difficult to obtain, not easier to obtain. As well, that’s when the game was over, when Houston powered in behind a pounding, yet young, Jets’ OL to put the Jets up 21-10. Those three rushing plays were clinic football.

The Bills were 1-for-4 in red zone and 0-for-1 in goal-to-go putting up pathetic performances for both in addition to barely being able to get into the red zone to begin with.

On the flip side, the Jets were a perfect 3-for-3 in both with lines that quite frankly should not be as strong as the Bills two lines when looked at empirically.

The coaches are being "too smart by half." Guys flying all over the field may look great and tickle fans, but the reality of it is that the Jets, AHEM…, the first team to show up with a QB playing like an NFL QB for a full four quarters, just played around that. The defense as such is nearly identical to Greg Williams’ D which also had players flying in every direction, stunting, etc. while trying to overcome a serious talent differential with a "system." It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now under the Ivy League Dynamic Duo.

What matters is the outcome, not how well anyone looks doing it. Much as Flutie made gaining six yards look exciting, a six-yard gain is a six-yard gain whether Flutie ran a total 80 yards laterally in doing so or whether Antowain Smith ran it up the gut for six. The net result is six yards. So too, allowing x-number of rushing yards is allowing x-number of rushing yards regardless of what the players do on the play to "make it look good."

Meanwhile, the Bills have shown anything but a propensity on the part of players to simply out-execute the players lined up across from them. If anything they have only shown a complete inadequacy in that way, on both sides of the ball.

Rotating players to keep players fresh is one thing. But when that and stunts making the Cirque Du Soleil La Nouba look like a static display of inertia are the primary strategy for execution, then your team’s in trouble. Indeed these Bills are in trouble going forward if they could not put the nails into the coffin for a win against the Jets on Sunday. There probably will not be another game this season with the energy and fan support that the Bills had on Sunday.

If McGahee and other players are so tired that they cannot function well, then it’s time for new players. If not, then why are they yanked at critical times as has been the pattern now on the season! "Fresh players" has an upside, but so does continuity and consistency. It is not at all being suggested that McGahee was just to clarify. To the contrary in fact. Even more so, what is the coaching staff thinking here? The same applies to a slew of mediocre or sub-par defenders.

With the Bills leading by seven midway through the 1st quarter, following a Jet offside penalty and a Losman incompletion to who else but moneybags Price, setting up a 2nd-and-5 at the Jets’ 20-yard line, one would think that the next call would be to McGahee with the belief that he could in fact gain five yards in two tries. Nope! Enter Anthony Thomas and his big-play abilities over the years. Read on when the laughter subsides.

Also, up by seven early in the game, with the wind advantage, not allowing a strong kicking Lindell on the season to attempt to put the lead at 10 was yet another coaching shortcoming. The Bills do not have the talent on this team on the offensive line to make it worth the risks in going for it on 4th-and-short, or to try trick or gadget plays on field goals, etc. It is foolish for this team to not take whatever points are offered when they are offered.

As to the offense generally speaking, so this is it! This is "what Fairchild brings," eh?

They could not convert 3rd-downs going 2-for-11 over the first 57 or so minutes of the game logging their third conversion on that second to last series against a Jet prevent D.

The players that the Bills brought on for the big bucks are only contributing to vet-minimum levels if even that. Robert Royal has barely done anything all season with equal negative contributions to the positive ones. Peerless Price looks less and less like a seasoned vet and more like some third-rate WR with every passing game. What a waste of money and future cap space his signing was. Apparently everyone but Levy and Jauron were right on Price with those two way off. But hey, that’s the problem when you make your decisions in an informational vacuum without any obvious due diligence and with only nostalgia as a basis for hope. It appears to be very Donahoe-esque in this way already.

Larry Tripplett looks extremely mediocre and has done absolutely nothing dominant as one of the highest paid players on the team. Is this a surprise? After all, he did nothing of a dominating nature in Indianapolis. One really has to reach to explain why the Bills absolutely had to trade away a top pick simply to move up to get McCargo who has done anything but remind fans that he’s even on the roster.

If you’re going to win games you simply cannot expend money on players to get what the Bills are getting from their moneymen. Meanwhile, consider the opportunity costs!

The Bills simply are not a good team fundamentally. This has been entirely predictable. They have two weak lines contrary to yet another bill-of-goods that the fans have been sold. Their lines do not dominate the run and thus far, except vs. the Jets and their cadre of third-rate RBs, have not shown the ability to hold opponents to respectable rushing tallies in terms of yards-per-carry, and even vs. the Jets have not shown that they can stop RBs with the chips on the line.

Coverage was once again sloppy by the Bills. At times it was good but at others receivers were wide open often with the closest defender no closer than 5 or 10 yards away. On numerous Jets’ players’ catches the defenders were beaten.

The Bills are in trouble down the line. At no time this season will, or should, the energy from the 12th man at the Ralph be what it was on Sunday. If the Bills lose another three or perhaps all four games prior to the bye week, then hopes for help there dwindle even further as the day of the $5 game ticket in the lots reappears. Yet, the team could not compete vs. the Jets in fundamental football.

The team and its fans can fully expect to see more solid QB play down the line beginning next week vs. Minnesota who also brings a decent rushing game. Brad Johnson is no spring chicken, but he knows the game and has been one of the more underrated QBs in recent NFL history. The Wysman smells more trouble.

Meanwhile, what Bills fans established as a key victory last week over the Dolphins is now turning into a far less impressive win after the Fins appear to be this season’s version of last season’s Packers.

Either way, is that what fans are in store for down the road, namely a handful of essentially meaningless wins over the league’s dregs, once again, such as Tennessee, Green Bay, Detroit, and Miami with perhaps one inexplicable upset thrown in there? It appears to be exactly what this team is headed for.

On a side note, regular readers please e-mail me and provide me with your thoughts on post-game content. I once again find it to be a relatively repetitive exercise and quite honestly am not sure that I am up for yet another season of this "Ground Hog Day" variety explaining of futility as such. The analyses do take considerable time and with so many other things vying for this analyst’s time I have considered abbreviating what appears to be yet another season of re-explaining the same things each week all due to a team without a vision and without a firm understanding of the fundamentals, once again obviously from the top down.

I received quite a few e-mails last week essentially telling me what a moron I was in one form or another all based on an odd win over a team that now appears to not be very good as the basis for talk of a winning season and playoffs. My response across the board was to suggest that I simply cannot see the team performing much beyond my "dismal" predictions in spite of what may have happened in week 2. Week 3 should have altered that perception on the parts of many.

Either way, I will produce what readers enjoy and want. I simply find however that I have less and less mental and emotional energy for a team that only seems to take and rarely give in that way. I write as a fan, albeit an objective one, and not simply to cover the team via the pep-rally approach and I strive to provide the direct and hard-hitting realities that many sources will not provide until it smacks them across the forehead. From an analysis perspective it is the proverbial equivalent of the shooting of the ducks in a pond. It truly is not difficult. It simply requires some basic analysis and an awareness of what makes good teams in the NFL good.

From a fan perspective, it is like watching the same movie a dozen times when it’s not even one’s favorite movie or anything close.

For those wanting grades, I’ll grade the offense a C-. Lots of yards but a sheer and utter ineffectiveness in getting into the red zone as well as for doing anything once inside. The only two TDs put up by the offense were a 10-yard pass to Parrish taking it the additional 41 for a 51-yard big play, and a TD vs. a prevent D late in the game. Once again there was absolutely no demonstration of a team being able to put itself into the red zone much less do much once inside. This is the theme of the Bills offensively.

Losman, as explained prior, needs work on his short game if he is to become a viable NFL QB. If he can do that then he’ll start for a decade or more somewhere. If not, then he’ll be relegated to the heap of QBs with a strong arm but an inability to effectively run a short game, which is critical for success in the NFL.

No one can blame McGahee for much in his game, but it is obvious that once again the team thinks little of McGahee’s ability to get the short yards in critical situations as they used Thomas on perhaps the most critical rushing play of the game and as they appear to prefer to pass even on 3rd’s-and-short.

Defensively one can only give out a D or worse. The Jets did not amass a lot of yards, although 256 net yards is probably more than they should have been able to get under the circumstances if in fact the Bills are as good as many seem to have believed. The Bills were utterly ineffective in stopping the Jets on the biggest drive of the game not only allowing a score, but allowing a completely lackluster rushing tandem, Kevan Barlow and Cedric Houston, to plow over them for the touchdown to effectively end the game. As well, contrary to my detractors’ implications after last week’s games, apparently the Bills are not about to shatter the ’84 Bears record of 72 sacks anytime soon.

The hype on this team and how it can continue to be run in such a manner is incredible and quite frankly getting very, very old and now again this season.

The Bills money players by and large are not stepping up. The red zone offense stinks again. The Bills can’t stop a run when it matters most. Coverage is terrible. Oh yeah, there are hits, but after opposing players make a catch.

Both lines. The Bills could not dominate in this game vs. anything but a top tier Jet DL and an OL of half rookies. That doesn’t say much for what the team’s biggest, and apparently still unresolved, weaknesses are. Also, it is not saying much for the assurances of the Ivy League Dynamic Duo in this way. But it is what it is.

Coaching has become an issue so soon in a young season. Coverage issues were masked until Sunday due to poor QB play on the part of Brady for a half and Culpepper throughout the game. Pennington also didn’t have any sort of "name" WR cast to work with after Coles who entered the game questionable with an injury.

The Vikes are up next and they bring both rushing and passing. The energy for that game on Sunday will not be any greater than it was this past week. It should be highly concerning if the Bills cannot pull out a win on Sunday as they prepare for two more road games.

There’s not a lot to these Bills that is shaping up to be any different than those of the Donahoe era. The highest paid acquisitions are not putting up according to their contracts making their hype far greater than the realities of their play. I.e, there’s no sizzle on the steak as it were. In fact, the steak is only luke warm as it hits the table.  It may end up being cold midway through the meal. 

In the most important indicators for measuring a good football team, 3rd-down-conversions, red zone performance both O and D, line play particularly in the most critical of circumstances, getting some onfield leadership from some players, any players, good play calling and wise and sound decision making, etc., the Bills lack. They simply are not a good football team regarding fundamentals and have perhaps even regressed since last season. We should know more by the bye week.

There’s more talk but the talk thus far simply has not played out. It appears to once again, although not unpredictably given the direction and changes this past offseason, be a team led by hype and hoopla. The honeymoon will be over shortly if it isn’t already, and both Levy and Jauron will then begin to be evaluated by actual team performance and no longer what they promised.

Either way, if this team is serious, then they will have to become something other than a poor offensive team capable of only scoring from outside the red zone. Defensively they will need to tighten up significantly and particularly at the most key moments. Let's face it, they haven't exactly had to play the "who's who" in NFL offenses yet this season although they're coming. 

Comments: mweiler@afceastreport.com