Buffalo Rumblings
This week I brought you all a variant of the Sloppy Joe I call the Tidy Joey. It includes onion rings as retaining walls for meat to reduce the sloppiness to near zero.
Well guess what? I think the Buffalo Bills took offense to my sandwich technology upgrade and worked hard as heck to restore the universal balance of sloppiness. I won’t go over every mistake because who has the time for all that, so let’s just focus on the three uncharacteristic turnovers.
I don’t know how much I need to analyze this really. This play design is flirting with danger just by existing. One miscue or person even a split second off rhythm and you run the risk of… well, this. I won’t claim to know if this was intended to go to Dawson Knox or James Cook, but based on body language of the two players my hunch is Knox.
What I’m about to say does not completely absolve Keon Coleman for a lack of ball security, but watching the replay over and over again makes this seem like a great play by the defense too. Not only did Robert Spillane get a hand on the ball, but he restrained Coleman’s left arm as well, making it harder to hang onto the ball.
Watching live I was quite shocked at Allen’s lack of care with the ball. Frame by frame makes it a little easier to see what he was thinking though. Especially when you see it from both angles.
When Allen was getting ready to throw, the defender was not only trailing Khalil Shakir, but was deeper down the field too. I don’t mind the decision whatsoever now that I’ve seen the all-22 angles.
What I DO mind is the throw. You can see Shakir had to slow down and Marcus Jones found an extra gear at exactly the right time to undercut it. If the throw was ahead and hit Shakir at his stride, at worst it was an incompletion.
These three things weren’t the only mistakes by the Bills on Sunday Night but let’s take a look at the impact. The Allen fumble didn’t directly cause any harm as Buffalo got the ball right back. However the fumble knocked them out of their groove and pushed the ball backward. It’s possible this drive goes somewhere but maybe not. Let’s call this a wash.
On the Coleman fumble, New England got the ball in field goal position. The defense held them to those three points, but that’s a three-point shift. The interception was in the red zone and worst case the Bills are in field goal range. That’s another three-point swing.
The sloppy Bills are like the Homer at the Bat episode of The Simpons, except if the team didn’t have Homer and Darryl Strawberry to help them squeak out a win. If there’s one positive...
