Beat San Diego? Do it through the air, Buffalo

by Brian Galliford on Oct 17, 2008 9:30 AM EDT in Opinion Comment 21 comments

Reed could be in for a big game against San Diego (Associated Press)

What's the secret to being - and beating - a good football team? The answers are varied, and depend largely on circumstance. Therefore, considering the circumstances of this weekend's matchup between the Buffalo Bills and San Diego Chargers - good weather, an inconsistent Bills rushing attack, and a highly potent Chargers offense - there's an easy way for the Bills to be, and beat, a good football team on Sunday.

Do unto San Diego what Arizona killed you with.

Buffalo needs to keep the ball out of San Diego's hands for as long as possible. The Chargers are susceptible to being controlled in this area of the game - in fact, they've held the ball for at least 30 minutes in just two of the six games they've played this season. They're 2-0 in those games, and 1-3 in all other contests. The Bills have a golden opportunity to continue that trend against San Diego. They should do it through the air.

Ball control via air, not ground
When the Bills dropped a 41-17 decision to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 5, Buffalo should have noticed that the Cardinals were providing them with the offensive blueprint that could allow the Bills to handle the Chargers. They controlled the clock, and thus the flow of the game, through the air.

Kurt Warner completed a whopping 33 of 42 passes, none of them for a gain longer than 18 yards. That plan, coupled with efficiency in the red zone (Warner threw two touchdowns, and Edgerrin James and Tim Hightower rushed for three more), allowed the Cardinals to wear out the Bills' defense simply by keeping them on the field. That opened up the Cards' ground game - which pounded out 113 yards on the day - and the efficiency allowed the Cardinals to chew up over 36 minutes of possession.

The formula worked to perfection. The Bills have the pieces in place to execute such a scheme. For a plethora of reasons, the Bills should make every effort to employ it in just over two days' time. That type of attack has been a weakness for the Chargers for its first six games this season.

Controlling San Diego
The way to beat the Chargers isn't to "pressure Philip Rivers" or "shut down LaDainian Tomlinson" or "contain Antonio Gates". The key to beating those three - along with the other explosive offensive weapons the Chargers possess - is to keep the ball out of their hands. For as long as possible. The ball control passing game does just that.

The Bills have struggled to run the ball. So have the Cardinals. They used a controlled passing game - with enough runs thrown in to keep the Bills honest - to open up their own rushing attack later in the fourth quarter. The Bills have diverse weapons at running back, so the duo of Marshawn Lynch and Fred Jackson should be emphasized in each facet of the game. They can contribute to a controlled passing attack, as can Josh Reed, James Hardy and - yes - even Lee Evans.

Trent Edwards' health is paramount. Getting the ball out of his hands quickly increases his chances of survival. It also reduces the pressure on Buffalo's pass protection, which has struggled. And hey - if the Chargers decide to sit on the short game, it's their loss. The Bills can beat them deep with a certain Mr. Evans and his 27 yards per catch.

Being scared of San Diego
Bills fans, for the most part, like to err on the side of caution. Thus, when we look at the Chargers, we tend to mess ourselves a little when we see names like Rivers, Tomlinson, Gates and Chambers. It's not unwarranted - clearly, San Diego has an explosive offense.

What gets lost in the shuffle of "ooo-ing" and "ahh-ing" over San Diego's weapons is the fact that the Bills match up very well with San Diego in the remaining two phases of the game, particularly when we have the ball. In reality, San Diego's offense is the wild card of this game - and Buffalo's defense certainly has its hands full. But so does San Diego's defense and special teams.

Don't forget the East Coast advantage. Don't forget that the Chargers are crossing the Atlantic after this game. But most especially, don't forget the most important factor of Sunday's contest - the Chargers have team weaknesses that the Bills are equipped to exploit. Taking into account the raucous crowd that is sure to be at The Ralph this Sunday, I'm unusually confident that the Bills are going to find a way to pull out a W. Call me crazy (and I'm coming close to doing it myself) - but if the Bills can control the flow of the game off the arm of Mr. Edwards, their chances of winning are quite good.

0 recs | Comment 21 comments | Share

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Brian, good post as always. Your optimism contradicts nicely with my eternal pessimism as a Bills fan.

I agree with your post in theory. I certainly think the Bills can and should attack the SD defense through the air and that ball control is absolutely paramount in this game. However, I disagree that dink and dunk should be the approach. From what I saw Sunday night, it was NE’s inability to complete a deep pass that doomed them. The chargers shut down their attempts to dink and dunk, dominated the Pats terrible run game, and NE couldn’t stretch the field to keep the D honest. I think we can control the clock using dink and dunk, but the Bills will need to hit a few deep to Evans down the sideline and some mid range crossing and in routes to Reed (and hopefully Hardy).

When the Bills are on D, I agree we match up nicely against them. This D has been stout against the run (minus the first half against the Rams) and with Tomlinson hampered with his toe, I think the Bills can shut him down. The Bills D doesn’t give up long passes so I’m not entirely concerned with Rivers ability to hit the long pass; although, I would feel safer if McGee was back.

Overall, I think the Bills match up well against SD and they certainly have the home field advantage (crowd noise and SD’s looked shaky on the road). However, I just can’t pick the Bills to win this game because of their extreme inconsistency. In five games, they have yet to play four quarters of quality football (Jax game was the closest when they played 3 good quarters). SD is a team with far too much talent for the Bills to screw around for 2 or 3 quarters, and then think they can turn it on late and sneak away with a W. If they come out flat, their going to geat beat, bad. Certainly SD has been inconsistent as well, especially on this coast, but I have to go with the team with more talent in this case.

If Buffalo can come out of the gates and play 4 strong quarters of football on both sides of the ball, I think the Bills prevail because of the home advantage and their advantage on special teams. Unfortunately, until the Bills show that they are capable of playing 60 minutes of football, I just can’t pick em to win. Regardless, I’ll be there on Sunday to make as much noise as humanly possible.

by thatguy34 on Oct 17, 2008 10:14 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Great Post! I agree that expecting us to suddenly be able to establish the run after not being able to in 5 games is probably wishful thinking but hopefully coming off our Bye, enough work has been done in that area. Meanwhile I agree that Trent Edwards and his lightning quick realese should be able to pick them appart. And I 100% agree with you that the key to this game is keeping the Bolts offense off the field.

It will be a great matchup, I am really looking forward to it. I am especially anxious to see Ellis get more reps and given Schobel’s current situation, I sure hope he get’s his chance. Without McGee it concerns me but they will be without Chambers so it probably evens out.

The Chargers have had the luxury of good field position all year thanks to Sproles. He has an ankle injury and has never played against a top end ST unit, so assuming that we can keep them in check field position-wise, it will be interesting to see if Rivers can sustain long drives each time. And on the flip side, with Parrish back, we should do well on field position and I expect Leodis to break one any game now… I expect our ST unit to be a huge factor in this game.

They also seem to often pickup big chunks through the air, which has been the strength of our Defense so far so the match up will be exiting to watch… With Ko Simpson in the line-up I feel comfortable that the deep middle will be well covered.

I think that we can be effective on offense with Evan/Parrish/Hardy/Reed in the lineup and I would expect Hardy to continue to show progress so he might actually surprise in this game.

Biggest concern: We need to improve our run-blocking and I surely hope that they made the necessary adjustments during the bye week to help improve the miserable 3.5y/carry ave. I expect Marshawn to get 22+ carries and break the 100 mark.

Lastly, SD rarely does well on cross-country trips and the Bills under DJ are 2-0 coming off bye weeks and in both cases, they had hearthbreaking losses the week prior to the bye week.

Bills 27, Chargers 23

GO BILLS!

by keysh67 on Oct 17, 2008 10:41 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

special teams

remember, San Diego is 1st in the NFL on kick off returns with over a 29 yard average and our special teams kick coverage has been way off par lately. I think we sit somewhere over 28 on kick coverage now. It was once a strength. But it doesn’t seem to be a strength for us anymore. Sproles is really really good back there.

Punt return with Roscoe could be huge as he is the best punt returner in the league.

by J2 on Oct 17, 2008 11:17 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I was just going to chime in and say that. San Diego’s special teams strength is kick returns and Buffalo’s special teams weakness is kick return coverage. We should be holding our breath every time we kick off.

Also I should point out to Keysh that it looks like Chambers is going to play. He hasn’t practiced this week, but he was supposedly very close to playing last week and they are holding him out of practice as a precaution. I suspect he practices today and suits up on Sunday.

by kaisertown on Oct 17, 2008 12:59 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Easier said than done

It’s easy to say we need to control the ball, and I agree with it, but we aren’t likely to see CB’s 10 yards off the ball like we did to the Cards. I don’t think it’s going to be that easy to throw the ball on SD, especially with a pretty solid secondary. Antonio Cromartie is a whole different beast from what we’ve seen this year. Lee Evans will have his work cut out for him. Sure, Cromartie got absolutely torched by Brandon Marshall, but Evans isn’t Marshall. I expect Cromartie to be physical with Evans and completely take him out of the game. It’ll be up to Reed, Parrish and Hardy to really step up this week. If those guys can get open and Trent is able to fine them early and often, we can control the ball a bit through the air. I think it’ll be MUCH harder than many think though.

Definitely need Lynch and Jackson to have big impacts in the passing game as you said. The run game will be sporadic as always, so getting them the ball out of the backfield is going to be paramount to our success this week.

by Kurupt on Oct 17, 2008 11:27 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I think it’ll be MUCH harder than many think though.

Well it’s not going to be a cake walk, clearly, but we’re talking about the 31st rated pass defense in the league, K. This is their weakness. We need to attack it, and attack it hard.

There are ways to get Evans open that the Bills don’t often explore (see Owens, Terrell). I’d like to see more of this.

by Brian Galliford on Oct 17, 2008 11:40 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think that’s exactly why it’ll be harder to get done….the Chargers D is better than the 31st ranked pass D. They have 17 sacks on the year and a good secondary, including one of the best CB’s in the league. If we can indeed get the underneath passing game rolling, we can have success, but they are much better than what those numbers indicate, IMO.

We’ve heard how the team wants to get Evans the ball more often and all the ways they planned to do it, but we’ve yet to see it. I wonder if it’ll ever happen?

by Kurupt on Oct 17, 2008 11:43 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Edwards has to be sharp.

For the Bills to win Sunday Edwards has to be sharp and our recievers have to make plays all day. This game and our season will be determined by the success of our passing game more so than with Lynch or our defense. The Bills OL is better at pass blocking than run blocking. If our passing game is clicking it will make us a better run team. Our defense is not good enough yet to rely on for a victory. Until we have better play from our DE’s and find a middle linebacker that can play the pass in a Tampa 2, our D will be just mediocre. Don’t get me wrong, I think Poz is a good linebacker and will be great for the Bills. He is just not good at covering the middle in the Tampa2 defense. I think he would be a better weakside linebacker in our scheme.

by gjv on Oct 17, 2008 12:08 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

One Huge Problem With This Analysis (OK Many Problems)

The Cardinals were able to possess the ball the way they did because Buffalo’s offense was unable to sustain drives itself. Had Buffalo’s offense been able to muster more consistent drives the Cards would not have possessed 36 mins. Another problem is that Buffalo’s receiving corps is much different than Arizona’s. Buffalo’s offense does not execute the intermediate passing game very well at all, intermediate gains for this offense usually come as a result of YAC or play action. If Buffalo tries to possess the ball this way SD will without a doubt make adjustments to shut down our short routes. The Bills also use a lot more play action in the passing game than the Cards, and that’s difficult to sell without a running game.

Besides, the Cards beat us for mainly for 2 reasons:

1) Their receivers were winning their one-on-one match ups ALL-DAY.
2) The Bills failed to get sufficient pressure on Warner, so even our zones coverages failed.

You can expect pressure form this SD front, and the running game is going to be crucial to counteracting their blitzes. We still need someone in this offense to step-up and own the middle of the field… if James Hardy claims this territory Buffalo’s offense could take off. Rob Royal has certainly shown he’s not capable…. so screw Tony Gonzalez.

If the Bills do go aerial on the Bolts, I think Josh Reed matched up on Antoine Cason is a pairing that will produce ALL-DAY. Or even James Hardy on him in the slot as a matching up with another rookie could help his confidence.

"I don't agree with a damn thing you say, but I would die for your right to say it."

by ForeignArrow on Oct 17, 2008 12:39 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Had Buffalo’s offense been able to muster more consistent drives the Cards would not have possessed 36 mins.

Certainly. That’s obvious. I was more speaking toward the fact that the Cards were as efficient as they were while only punting twice and not turning the ball over. That had a lot to do with Buffalo’s inefficiencies offensively, as did the early lead.

Buffalo’s offense does not execute the intermediate passing game very well at all, intermediate gains for this offense usually come as a result of YAC or play action.

Does it matter how it’s done? I’m not saying run the same plays as Arizona; I’m saying work the same theory. I don’t care how the Bills are picking up intermediate gains through the air as long as they’re getting them. It achieves the same end.

If Buffalo tries to possess the ball this way SD will without a doubt make adjustments to shut down our short routes.

And that’s when Evans has to make them pay deep. The Bills have the talent to attack at all levels of the field. Basically what I’m positing here is to start the game with a controlled passing game so that they can eventually balance out their attack as the Chargers make adjustments. Getting Edwards in a rhythm early is essential, as he only gets better as the game progresses.

If the Bills do go aerial on the Bolts, I think Josh Reed matched up on Antoine Cason is a pairing that will produce ALL-DAY.

Completely agree here. I think Reed’s going to have a big day just in terms of the number of catches he has.

by Brian Galliford on Oct 17, 2008 1:01 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Cason

If the Bills do go aerial on the Bolts, I think Josh Reed matched up on Antoine Cason is a pairing that will produce ALL-DAY. Or even James Hardy on him in the slot as a matching up with another rookie could help his confidence.

Cason is good in coverage, he has a pick, a forced fumble and come up with some ferocious hits as the nickel this season. I don’t think you will see that much yardage there.

"Football is a physical sport, sometimes you have a disagreement on what's going on, and you have a discussion about it." Chris Dielman

by Brian (DaBolts) on Oct 17, 2008 6:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

If we don't run this week.

We lose.

by Scoe221 on Oct 17, 2008 1:58 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

That’s true any week. Basically I’m saying pass to set up the run later in the game.

by Brian Galliford on Oct 17, 2008 2:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That's how the K-Gun used to get it done

Pass to set up the run. Worked well (most of the time).

Get the Bills back to the big game!

by Blitz on Oct 17, 2008 4:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

B DAWG,

you do such a great job at keeping the HOPE alive for our team. I have my doubts about this game, but after reading that I’m actually pumped up about this Sunday.

The bloggerformelyknownasBigBaddBubbaJ

by NYTXFAN on Oct 17, 2008 4:58 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Somehow, Brian is able to find the positive in everything related to the Bills. I don’t know how he does it, but I’m glad he does. It gives the rest of us something to argue about!

by Kurupt on Oct 17, 2008 5:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs