Good morning Bills Fan,

Start your engines!!!

In my life I've been fortune enough to meet some really interesting people. In my past profession as an Investment Banker, I came across a guy who's name I won't mention. But he's the type of guy who knows everything and everybody. I'm sure we all know someone like this, but this guy is seriously connected. He know athletes, movie stars, politician, everybody. He's the type of person that you call if you need something or need information.

Anyway, we've grown close over the years and I met up with him while I was in California these past few weeks. Like most of our conversations, we were talking sports and the topic of the Bills came up. He's friends with a few players on the team and knows their agents. Well he told me something that hasn't been "officially" mentioned on BB.com or even here at Rumblings.

If you want to know what he said, hit "continue reading this post", and if you don't give a crap just hit the back arrow :)

So the title probably gave it away, but it appears that NASCAR is coming to Buffalo. Sorry racing fans; I'm not talking about Jimmie Johnson and crew, but I'm talking about the NASCAR defensive line formation that Giants used, which has been so effective against pass happy teams and spread formations. More importantly; it's effectiveness against the Patriots.

For all of you out there who aren't familiar with the NASCAR formation. It's basically a defensive front that the Giants uses, to generate a pass rush with their front four. Typically, they use 4 DE to rush the passer on obvious passing plays. In the Giants case, they slide defensive JPP (the team best pass rusher) at the DT position; have Tuck playing one DE position; Osi at the other and bring former DE and current LB Kiwanuka at the other DT position. Sometimes they use DT Tolefson as the DT if they're thinking it can be some sort of draw play. But the idea is to put their fastest and best pass rusher on the line to create matchup problems for the OL. Guards aren't used to pass blocking against speed rushing DE, thus creating the mismatch.

From the conversation that I had with my guy, the Bills has been experimenting some with this formation in OTA. Here is how it was explained to me:

When the offense goes to their 4 wide set and RB in the backfield:

LDE-Merriman

RDE-Anderson

DT1-M. Williams

DT2-K. Williams

When the offense goes to their 5 Wide sets; 3rd and long and obvious passing downs:

LDE-Merriman

RDE-Anderson

DT1-M. Williams

DT2-Kelsay

Now from what was explained to me; in scenario number one, Kyle Williams and Dareus are interchangable, with Spencer Johnson getting work there. The use of the DT in the NASCAR formation is typically determined if the team feels like the offense is going to try to counter with a draw play or some sort of screen pass to catch the defense off guard and rushing up the field. The DT job is to shoot the game and sniff out the draw or the screen while the other 3 rushing DE get to the passer.

Okay, so you're probably thinking Doc is full of crap and a) doesn't have a source and b) he's probably wrong. So let's say my guy is completely wrong and I'm full of crap, which is possible :-). I mean no one is perfect, right? One would think if NASCAR is coming to Buffalo, I'm sure we would have heard something about it? True I guess. So let's completely disregard the source and me, and look at it from a pure football sense. If the source gets discredited, it tends discredit the idea which isn't fair. I guess thats the risk you take when you try to share new informaiton. But ultimately, the idea make sense, here's why:

1) Mario Williams- The NASCAR formation for the Giants allowed their most athletic player on their DL to consistently match up against the other teams OG. Maybe that's why JPP was 3rd in the league with 16.5 sacks. At 6'5 278lbs, JPP is a freakish type athlete. Not the freakish athlete as JPP, but at 6'6" 283lbs Mario Williams has the same body type, stronger, and have more pass rushing skills than JPP. Not to mention, he's no slouch in the athletic department either.

2) Patriots- We all know, the road to the AFC East runs through the Patriots. The Giants has showed the way to beat the Patriots and to slow down their offense is to generate a pass rush with the front four and press their outside WR's. We also know that when you take away his outside WR's, Brady loves the crossing route to Wes Welker and the seam routes to the TE's. With two guys 6 foot 6 and 6 foot 4 rushing up the middle and tipping passes, it makes those crossing patterns and seem routes a little harder to complete, no?

So I don't want to sound like that super excited and delusional fan, but seeing a relentless pass rush with Merriman, Anderson, Williams, Kelsay or Dareus/Kyle, getting after the QB makes me (the usually skeptical type) pretty pumped about the possibilities.

Okay Bills fans, what do you think about NASCAR possibly coming to Buffalo?