Basically, this is the football force. There was the light side where I wrote about the running game’s progress, the CBs being islands and Sammy Watkins becoming a star. Its the Jedi counsel of Buffalo Bills football. However, there’s the darkside or the other side of the force. Darth Ryan? Kylo Whaley? Emperor Pegula? There’s always two sides of the schwartz…I mean the force. Here’s the darkside review or my F-Bomb version of the Bills 2015 season.
From 4 years…to 8 years…to 12 years….to now 16 years of zero playoffs. Its amazing that if we split the 16 years in half, Dick Jauron was the coach and Trent Edwards just finished his 2nd season as the Bills starting QB. My God, it seems like it was just yesterday when we wanted Jauron fired and we were all concerned about Trent’s health. Then, it was 7 years ago this off season that Terrell Owens came into our lives and we gave him the key to the city. Think about that…7 YEARS AGO!! I swear, time flies when you are not having fun, too.
I’ve talked ad nauseam about how when the Bills made the playoffs in 1999, I was a freshman in college. I’m turning 36 this weekend and the last playoff game I saw was basically when I was a teenager. But while the 16 years of zero playoffs is always the focus (Tied for 8th longest drought in NFL history and currently the longest drought in all 4 major sports) for the ineptitude of this franchise, there’s much more..
- Its been 20 years since the Bills last won a division title (3rd longest drought)
- Its been 20 years since the Bills last won a playoff game (3rd longest drought)
- Its been 22 years since the Bills went to a conference championship game (6th longest drought)
I couldn’t even drive when all these things above had happened. Its just incredibly fucking sad and frustrating. Like why the fuck do we even bother at this point? Why do I continue to watch when this has happened for almost half of my life? Seriously, almost half of my F’N life the Bills have not played a playoff game. Why do I waste my time writing about a team that has given me so much dissapointment since 2000?
How many get rich quick schemes have we gone through the last 16 years? Bledsoe…Spikes..Losman…TO…Marcus Stroud…Mario Williams…Rex Ryan…More spending…and what have the results been? The exact fucking same. We get all happy in the offseason and then once the fall hits, boom…its back to hating our football lives.
What’s the definition of insanity? Its doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
That right there is the life of a Bills fan and that’s why we are fucking insane. Seriously, we are all insane. The pessimists who want to fire Rex/Tyrod/Pegula and god knows who else….fucking insane. The optimistic folks who sit with roses in their vase while reading poetry and will talk themselves into the Bills making the playoffs every year….fucking insane. I AM FUCKING INSANE. Twitter is fucking insane. The media is fucking insane. The Buffalo Bills have done this to us. If we were fans of the Patriots or Chiefs or a team that has actually made the playoffs over the last 16 years, we’d be in such a nicer place.
What is the point in this? It is all cyclical. The names of GMs/Coaches/QBs change, but the situation remains the same. Why on earth do we do this to ourselves? Honestly, I’ve come to the point where I’ll continue to watch games and blog about it, but if you think I’m gonna be optimistic entering a season…Eh. I’m sick of them hanging banners from the rafters saying “off season world champions.” I’m just sick and tired of being sick and tired at this point. Basically, you can live in your Bills optimistic prism and I won’t throw stones at you.
However, if I want to be a curmudgeon and be a spiteful delightful on Twitter about their chances, back the fuck off [Pounds a bottle of jack]. Why should you be angry??
Here are 5 reasons why:
5) Inconsistent passing game
In my happy ending review, I mentioned the Bills running game and Tyrod Taylor as being things you can hang your hat on. The Bills finished 12th in offense. They had 5 games where they had at least 30+ points in offense. However, there’s a dark underbelly there. The Bills also had 5 games where they scored 16 points or fewer. Let’s not forget those two horrible halves Tyrod had against the Giants and Titans (72 yards passing combined). While the Bills were awesome when it came to running the football, their passing game was good when you view it through the prism of what they wanted the QB to do (Throw 20-30 passes a game and don’t fuck up), but if you view through the rest of the NFL, it wasn’t that great.
The Bills were 28th in total yards passing and passing 1st downs. They were one of 2 teams to not have a 300+ yard passer this season (Rams were the other). In fact, since the Bills drafted EJ Manuel, Kyle Orton is the only QB to have over 300+ yards passing. The Bills have also had just 9 300-yard passing games in their last 9 seasons. Drew Brees had 10 this year alone. WOOF.
Tyrod also had 5 games of less than 200 yards passing and his 216 yards passing per game ranked 29th for QBs. After starting the year hot with completing almost 70% of his passes, in 5 of his last 6 games, he completed less than 60%. While I still think you could win with a top 5 defense and running game to go along with average to good QB play, its still a passing league. Bottom line: Because of the so many moving parts that need to work, its an easier get rich quick scheme to make the playoffs when you have a top 12 QB than to have defense/running game do very well.
4) Rex Ryan
I wanna like Rex Ryan. Really, I do. Was I on board with the hire? Absolutely. However, his mouth is wearing me out. No, this isn’t about him talking shit or pounding his chest. That’s all theatrics at the end of the day. What’s wearing me out are the excuses. Its fine to mention the injury card. Hey, that shit happens and those are facts. However, when he went on “Mike and Mike”and started talking about the reason why his defense floundered was because they didn’t go all in with his scheme until the middle part of the season, that’s when I start calling bullshit. Hold up. I remember the Bills players were complaining about your system after the Bengals game and that was 2 weeks before the bye week when you decided to junk Jauron or Schwartz’s system for all I know.
So, he’s telling me now the players were really just complaining about the old system being blended in? Not to mention, the defense was inconsistent all year. You kicked Fitz and Brady’s asses, but then you had guys like Hoyer/Alex Smith/Cousins torch the defense (86 points combined) after you started using your system. During the first 7 games, the Bills defense did well against Bortles (Up until last drive), Luck, and Mariota…but got drilled by Brady/Dalton/Eli. Again, there wasn’t that much of a difference.
But, hey, you got your excuse in for this season. You tried the old defensive scheme and it didn’t work for you. You then put Manny Lawson on a pedestal for football IQ in a way to basically say the others guys who didn’t get your system were dumb. I’m sure when training camp comes around, you’ll boost about how your resume is awesome and we got new guys in who are sooooooo much better and smarter. And now we are going to use your brother -who has been fired at his last 4 DC jobs- to help you institute your system.
Oh, and let’s not forget the excuse for why you didn’t make the playoffs for 4 straight years with the Jets had to do with the QB and then soon after it had to do with your GM not liking you and wanting to sabotage you. Its funny that Rex says that about his last GM since his “sabotage” ended up fucking the GM over because he got canned.
You talked a bunch of shit when you got here and you got punched in the mouth. Instead of looking in the mirror and asking yourself what you fucked up, you are starting to go down that road of making excuses for yourself and blaming others. The old scheme and the dumb players, right? But hey, excuses will always be there for Rex, but opportunity will not. Winners make goals, losers make excuses. Rex is going to get his way next year when they jettison a few coaches/players. There won’t be excuses then because it will all be on him.
3) Player/management/Coaching dysfunction
Hey, you know how everyone is getting their jollies on about how Doug Marrone is terrible and are laughing at anyone who would give him a job? Well, some of that angst towards him lies with all the drama he and Whaley had last year. It was spun that Marrone was basically the dictator of North Korea with how he ran things. So, with him gone, it should have all but ended the infighting…
NOT.
A year later…The Bills still seem to have issues within the walls at One Bills Drive. There are more leaks than Titanic. We can start with all the rogue shit with Fred Jackson that happened before the season started. Then there were reports that the Bills coaches were pissed off about Matt Cassel. After that, we can go to the reports from CBS about Whaley pissed off about the use of Watkins and wanting Rex to can Roman. Is your head spinning? Yeah, so is mine. And we aren’t done.
We then get the front office leaking word to #rocknwarwow that Mario Williams is getting cut. When the hell did a leak about cutting someone get out this early? My guess is management wanted to send a message to Mario for daring to question the HOF scheme of Rex Ryan. And while Mario seems to be the fall guy in the defensive shortcomings with certain media shills placating to their Bills sources, it should be noted that he’s not the only one who complained about the defense.
Dareus and Hughes were vocal about the defensive scheme earlier this season. Recently, we even had leaks about Mario thinking more about his cars than playing. Oh, boy. Just so much petty bullshit. I bet the player who went anonymous is some shitty backup whose jealous of Mario’s money. Then there was the whole ultimatum thing TBN reported, but then Russ Brandon (My theory) got on the horn and basically told every reporter in the (716) and (585) that it was all bullshit.
Remember when nothing ever got out of One Bills Drive? Its like since Ralph died, there’s a bunch of disgruntled people there trying to not get thrown overboard by the new guard. Bottom line: The leaks and discord need to stop. Disagreements are fine, but holding a grudge is not. Its the same sort of discord we had during Marrone’s final year here.
2) Defense regresses
I’ve beaten this horse dead about how the defense regressed since last year. Basically I think the defense not being near what it was in 2013 and 2014 was why the Bills didn’t finish higher than 8-8. The Bills went from 54 sacks to 21 sacks. The biggest drop in franchise history and the lowest sack total in a 16-game season for the Bills. From 2012-2014, Mario Williams had 38 sacks which was the 4th most in the NFL during that time. Its not like Mario just hit a wall. Instead, Mario couldn’t adjust to the new defensive scheme and his sack production dipped from 14.5 sacks to 5.
Sure, Mario deserves blame for not putting in a full effort, but he’s not the only one who didn’t adjust to the system. While Hughes/Dareus got QB pressures, their sack production dipped and they also complained. Dareus went from 10 sacks to just 2 sacks on the season, while Jerry Hughes production was cut in half (10 to 5). Here are more team stats that proved they underachieved:
- The Bills had just 74 QB hurries on the year which ranked 30th.
- The Bills gave up 30 passing TDs which was the 2nd most they had ever given up in team history.
- The Bills gave up 5.6 yards per play which was the 9th most in the NFL.
- The Bills had 5 games where the opposition scored 30+ points (Last year-1)
Not only did the DL regress, but so did the linebackers. Preston Brown and Nigel Bradham were studs last year under Schwartz as the rated very highly by PFF. However, they couldn’t adjust to Ryan’s defense. PFF had Preston Brown rated as the 88th best LB in the league while Nigel Bradham was ranked 79. The duo had just 7 tackles for losses this past season which doesn’t bold well since Ryan’s defense is basically set up for the LBs to make plays while blitzing and having the DL take up as many blocks as possible. Aside from Manny Lawson, I feel everyone on the front 7 either regressed majorly or regressed slightly.
To this day, I’ll never understand why Rex Ryan’s protege (Mike Pettine) could get more out of basically the same front 4 in 2013 than Rex could in 2015. Frankly, Pettine may have been the worst thing to happen to the fan mindset with Rex since we all thought the transition would be smooth with Rex basically having the same scheme as Mike. We were sooooo wrong. If you listen to the players, it was about taking too long with the calls or trying too hard to disguise what they would do prior to an offensive snap.
I’ll say it right now from the top of a mountain, but if Greg Roman was named HC and they kept Schwartz as the DC, I think the Bills would have been a 10-6 team.
1) Year 17 on the horizon?
If the Bills don’t make any significant improvement to this roster next year, I don’t think they are making the playoffs in 2016. I think this was the year they could have done it because they had this much talent and the schedule worked in their favor almost exactly how we predicted. Maybe the toughness of next year’s 12th hardest schedule as it stands won’t hold up, but the NFC West and AFC North aren’t cake walks. Baltimore is going to be better and going out for 3 west coast games isn’t going to be easy. Now, I’ve gone on record to say that I think the extension Whaley got and the ultimatum that TBN reported can BOTH be true.
Pegula fired Lindy Ruff after about 16 months after saying he wasn’t going anywhere and gave him a fat extension.Darcy Regier got an extension in January of 2013 and was fired 10 months later. Ted Nolan got an extension and was fired a year later. Leino and Ehrhoff were bought out and are gonna get money for awhile now. In other words, the man has wasted a lot of money with telling people to get lost.
So, maybe he’s telling everyone that everything will be fiiiiiine, but if the Bills go 7-9 or 8-8 once again, you think fans and The Pegulas are gonna be cool with that? The Bills ended the season on a high note with beating the Jets, but Bills-polarism can come at you at a moment’s notice.
The Bills have already said they aren’t going to be aggressive in FA this offseason (Note: I’m hoping they rework some deals and work that magic cap stuff to get some guys). The draft is always a crapshoot and you don’t know if you are going to get a 1st year wonder like Ronald Darby or someone like Cyrus Kouandjio who is more useless than ice cubes in Alaska.
This roster could be the exact same and if you put a gun to my head right now and tell me that the 2016 draft class and re-signing 77/64 are the only things on the docket for the offseason, I don’t think they are a playoff team. Maybe the young kids get better like they do for all other NFL franchises, but I’ve been through this before when it comes to hoping this or that young Bills player gets to the next level and that level ends up failing.
And that’s when things could get dicey.
You start getting more infighting and then maybe you get that power struggle between Whaley and Rex with rats trying to save themselves. I know its a death knell situation, but the Bills basically blew their load it would seem last off season. The results were .500 and now they’ll have a tougher schedule next year.
When you have a new owner who kept your team here, there comes a point when you start getting passed the whole “Being grateful to keep the team” rhetoric and you start wanting more results. I think we are at that point. We thanked Pegula enough on Twitter and I am grateful. But now is the time to act like an NFL fan base that isn’t just happy to have a team, but to actually not accept losing.
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