Buffalo Rumblings
Reviewing another poor defensive performance against the Chiefs in the playoffs
The Buffalo Bills once again fell to the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs, and once again Buffalo’s defense found itself in familiar territory with a lackluster performance against quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
In their four playoff matchups, the Bills have given up 38, 42, 27, and 32 points for an average of 34.75 points per game. That’s awful, to be clear.
Let’s review where it went wrong for Buffalo this time around. All data below is courtesy of Match Quarters.
The Bills posted a defensive Expected Points Added (EPA) per play of -0.234, which is a poor mark, terrible actually. Not to be outdone by their 46.7% success rate, which was the worst of any team that played in the conference championship, including the Washington Commanders’ defense — which let up 55 points.
In fact, it was the worst defensive success rate out of any team, in any game, for the entire playoffs.
Buffalo’s defensive drop-back success rate was just 31.4% — the worst by a significant margin in any playoff game this season. To put this into perspective, the NFL average during the 2024 regular season was 61.2%. It’s hard to describe how poorly the pass defense played.
Buffalo played Cover 1 (man-to-man) on 40.7% of their snaps, which was the most they used in a game all postseason. Unfortunately, this backfired, as they allowed a staggering -0.719 EPA when in Cover 1 — the second-worst mark for any game this postseason.
The decision to lean heavily on man coverage was costly, exposing the secondary to big plays. I personally thought playing more man-to-man this week was the way to go, but clearly it didn’t work out as well as Buffalo hoped. Two injured starters in the secondary for the Bills could have something to do with this ineffectiveness.
On the flip side, the Bills found success using Cover 2 zone (two high safeties). They ran Cover 2 22.2% of the time and posted a 0.120 EPA when playing this type of zone coverage.
The Bills have been a big Cover 2 team in the past and are solid at disguising their looks. Man-to-man coverage was a key part of their game plan, but it didn’t pan out.
Hindsight might say Cover 2 would have been more effective. However, Mahomes may have shred that up too if he saw more looks.
Buffalo blitzed at a 20% rated and used pass-rush stunts 22.9% of the time. This led to six quarterback hits, 12 hurries, 16 pressures, and two sacks. While these numbers indicate a solid effort up front, it wasn’t enough to help their coverage issues.
Bills’ run defense was the lone bright spot -------------------------------------------...
