Snap Count Notes: Washington Football Team vs Buffalo Bills

The Buffalo Bills put together a complete game against the Washington Football team and cruised to a victory. Snap count notes are always useful, but they’re a lot more fun after games like this. Let’s dive in!

Offense (79 snap)

The first takeaway is the number of snaps on offense—79 is quite a bit, usually more what you’d see if a game went into overtime. The Bills dominated time of possession, with over 35 minutes controlling the ball. While that sounds like only a little extra time, remember that it’s a zero-sum game and that extra 5:37 came at the expense of Washington, meaning the Bills held the ball for 11 minutes more than WFT did.

With eight snaps of Mitch Trubisky, the 100 percent club is missing a lot of members this week, but I don’t think they mind. Only Dion Dawkins and Jon Feliciano hit the mark. Kneel formation also means Micah Hyde as the “break glass in case of fumble” role makes another appearance this week.

Emmanuel Sanders edges out Stefon Diggs this week, and this is also likely due to pulling starters to close the game. Cole Beasley falls about as expected. Gabriel Davis may be losing some snaps to Isaiah McKenzie this year as the Bills seem to be working in the gadget man more often these first few weeks.

Dawson Knox remained steady in snap counts (and catching) this week after Week 1 saw very little tight end work. Adding in a handful of reps for Tommy Sweeney and Reggie Gilliam and that’s two weeks in a row where Buffalo worked in the “heavies” a bit more than the season opener.

After being inactive the first week, Zack Moss was a clear second fiddle to Devin Singletary against Miami. This week the roles reversed a bit. This position group might be opponent specific, but based on the first few games this year, and a good chunk of last season, Moss might be the direction the team is heading.

Defense (54 snaps)

The 100 percent club was mostly intact on defense. Tre’Davious White, Levi Wallace, Taron Johnson, Micah Hyde, Tremaine Edmunds, and Matt Milano were omnipresent on the field. Jordan Poyer was shaken up late in the game, being replaced by Jaquan Johnson. Poyer looked pretty good celebrating on the sideline so hopefully there’s nothing to worry about there. This does mean that, yet again, the Bills played 100 percent of the game with AT LEAST nickel defense. With some defensive end coverage snaps, the Wooden Dime defense is alive and well (I am Groot).

Jerry Hughes reclaims the top spot of defensive end snap counts and had a little time in coverage himself. He was followed very closely by Greg Rousseau with Mario Addison not far behind. A.J. Epenesa fell off a bit in playing time.

For defensive tackles Star Lotulelei and Ed Oliver tied for top honors at 57 percent. Justin Zimmer and Vernon Butler were the rotational depth. Both groupings of the defensive line played 108 snaps, meaning there weren’t any hybrid responsibilities on the line itself.

Special Teams (29 snaps)

I’ll add the note here about the format change. Last week there were a couple questions on format/graphics, etc., with the response being that for the sake of quickness I used screen grabs of the NFL game books that had their limitations.

By the time I was able to sit and write this week, pro-football-reference.com had the numbers extracted and on their site. That allows for easy export and sorting. Whenever conditions favor this route, expect today’s format to carry on.

Special Teams clearly shows how nice this can be, with actual numbers ready to go to see for everyone (I only grabbed players who were at 50 percent or above). The only notes I’d add would be the addition of Andre Smith and Jake Kumerow to our core group. In Week 1 I hinted that Smith was a name to look for as the Bills experiment so consider this my official self-pat on the back. Kumerow’s name shouldn’t be a surprise either but is further evidence that the special teams grouping comes with the warning “subject to change.”