Bills Schonert Stretching Field, Not Truth

[Pinkerton Security]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=clayton_john&id=3606110


One of my favorite stops this summer was Bills minicamp. Watching a June practice, I almost fell out of my seat when I saw Turk Schonert's offense. "That's Sam Wyche's old offense,'' I shouted to a Bills team official. Sure enough, Schonert, a former Bengals quarterback, was installing a lot of the motion plays he learned from Wyche, the former Bengals and Bucs coach. The offense was imaginative and fun to watch.
After practice, I had a great chance to stand around with quarterback Trent Edwards (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/profile?playerId=10536) and Schonert and talk offense. I threw out the idea that a quarterback needs to average better than 6.4 yards an attempt to stretch defenses and force corners to backpedal. Edwards and Schonert both agreed that going downfield was important, but I loved Schonert's response regarding where he wants the yards per attempt number to be this season.



"Eight yards an attempt,'' Schonert said.











I do enjoy the fact that we seem to be taking well-timed shots downfield, and I think we can all agree that Turk so far seems to be better than Fairchild.

[LABillsFan]

<TABLE class=tablehead cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3><TBODY><TR class=stathead><TD colSpan=14>Passing Statistics</TD></TR><TR class=colhead align=right><TD align=left width=150>NAME</TD><TD>CMP</TD><TD>ATT</TD><TD>YDS</TD><TD>CMP%</TD><TD>YDS/A</TD><TD>LNG</TD><TD>TD</TD><TD>TD%</TD><TD>INT</TD><TD>INT%</TD><TD>SACK</TD><TD>YDS</TD><TD>RAT</TD></TR><TR class=oddrow align=right><TD align=left>Trent Edwards (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/profile?playerId=10536)</TD><TD>63</TD><TD>94</TD><TD>733</TD><TD>67.0</TD><TD>7.80</TD><TD>41</TD><TD>3</TD><TD>3.2</TD><TD>1</TD><TD>1.1</TD><TD>7</TD><TD>48</TD><TD>96.6</TD></TR><TR class=evenrow align=right><TD align=left>Brian Moorman (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/profile?playerId=2797)</TD><TD>1</TD><TD>1</TD><TD>19</TD><TD>100.0</TD><TD>19.00</TD><TD>19</TD><TD>1</TD><TD>100.0</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>0.0</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>0</TD><TD>158.3</TD></TR><TR align=right><TD align=left>Totals</TD><TD>64</TD><TD>95</TD><TD>752</TD><TD>67.4</TD><TD>7.92</TD><TD>41</TD><TD>4</TD><TD>4.2</TD><TD>1</TD><TD>1.1</TD><TD>7</TD><TD>48</TD><TD>100.9</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

Pretty close.

[Philagape]

Moorman has the best rating! He should be the QB! :D

[Jan Reimers]

Turk is changing things up, using a lot of formations and getting the ball to a number of different receivers.

What a welcome change from the numbing predictability of Fairchild.

[gr8slayer]

I love that we're using screens and the play-action pass this year. I've been screaming for it for years.

[Pinkerton Security]

I love that we're using screens and the play-action pass this year. I've been screaming for it for years.

one of the only good points the announcers brought up last week was the absence of screens, especially cuz they were blitzing so much. I can barely remember any being run, and they were just sprinting upfield. I hope if the Rams gets desperate they will blitz the heck out of us and we can catch em offguard with a Lynch or Jackson screen, both seem real adept at waiting for and then using blocks.

[gr8slayer]

one of the only good points the announcers brought up last week was the absence of screens, especially cuz they were blitzing so much. I can barely remember any being run, and they were just sprinting upfield. I hope if the Rams gets desperate they will blitz the heck out of us and we can catch em offguard with a Lynch or Jackson screen, both seem real adept at waiting for and then using blocks.
I counted three in the first two weeks and a few in pre-season. Is it enough? No, but it's nice to see anything at this point.

[Pinkerton Security]

true.

[trapezeus]

i wish the bills would run more reverse and fake reverse routes to keep the DE in their lanes and not over pursue.

[Cntrygal]

There's even a question/answer about this week's opponent!!!

Q: John, I am a Rams supporter and must admit I am shocked about their terrible performance this year. When Scott Linehan took over, we were a .500 team and back on the rise. Do you think we are the worst team as far as talent? I believe we are at least middle of the road when it comes to talent. So it must be coaching and motivation to explain their horrible performance this year, right? Thanks.

Eric in Baltimore

A: Talent is a problem, but it obviously goes beyond that. During the offseason, I picked the Rams as one of my five surprise teams for possible turnaround, based on St. Louis having an easy schedule and an accurate, talented quarterback in Marc Bulger. However, I changed my rating on them once I watched the preseason: At times during games, they looked as non-competitive in the preseason as they are now. They are a mess. I like Linehan, but another loss or two will force a coaching change. Something is really, really wrong here.

[Ed]

Moorman has the best rating! He should be the QB! :D
Can't go wrong with a guy that throws TD's 100% of the time.

[jamze132]

Overall the offense has look 100% better than years past both in performance and ingenuity. However, the 1st half of the Raider game looked eerily similar to Faichild.

[LifetimeBillsFan]

This article basically confirms something that I wrote back during the offseason in a thread here where people were wondering what the Bills offense would look like under Schonert and I responded by saying that I thought that it would look very similar to the Cincinnatti offense that Wyche ran back in the mid-1980s when Ken Anderson and Boomer Esiason were the starting QBs and Schonert was their backup.

What you have been seeing is pretty much what that offense was like. The reason that no one really remembers who the stars were on that team (other than Esiason and, maybe, Anderson) was that the offense spread the ball around a lot to the different skill players that they had, just as the Bills have been doing in these first three games.

With this article confirming that this is pretty much the same offense that Cincy ran back in that era, I would not be concerned about the Bills throwing the ball deep enough. If you go back and look at the numbers, as I did, that that Cincy offense put up, you will immediately notice that the leading receiver on those teams was Eddie Brown, who put up 1,000 yards receiving and made the Pro Bowl back when 1,000 yards in receiving for a WR was not that common. Eddie Brown was a very fast WR, similar in many ways to Lee Evans (Brown was so fast that I'm not sure which one would win a hypothetical 40 or 100 yard race).

Like Trent Edwards, both Ken Anderson and Boomer Esiason were very intelligent, heady QB. And, like Edwards, a lot of people back then questioned their arm strength as well. But, as Brown's numbers prove, they took their shots downfield when the opportunities presented themselves. And, I expect that the Bills offense under Schonert will, too, pretty much as we have seen these first three games.

Another similarity can be seen at the # 2 WR spot where Josh Reed has developed into a pretty reliable possession receiver, not unlike Chris Collinsworth, who was that Cincy team's # 2 WR. Collinsworth had a bit more size than Reed, though, and I expect that Schonert will try to ease James Hardy into the lineup in those spots and packages where he knows that having a big WR will be an advantage.

As for the absence of screen passes against Oakland: in his postgame interview (accessable on BB.com in the Multimedia section), Trent Edwards mentioned that, probably as a result of seeing the Jax game on film, Oakland was taking away Fred Jackson on Sunday (he didn't say exactly how)--which was why they didn't throw to him much. But, Edwards did throw several passes to his backs during the game: not counting the dump off deep in Bills' territory in the second half, M.Lynch caught 2-3 and dropped two early on and D.Barnes had two big catches. Additionally, D.Schouman dropped a pass while he was in playing FB. That's at least seven passes that were thrown to players who were lined up as backs. The two that Lynch dropped as well as the passes to Barnes and Schouman were all thrown out wide, like screens. So, even though Oakland was trying to take Jackson out of the passing game when he was on the field, that didn't prevent the Bills from throwing the ball to their backs in the game.

That's something that was a feature of the Cincy offense under Wyche and something that I would expect from the Bills offense this season. Cincy's RBs and FBs were thrown to quite a bit. L.James, their starting RB before the arrival of I.Woods, was an excellent receiver out of the backfield. However, if an opposing defense tried to take James out of the passing game, they would throw to their other backs and TE instead. It was a very flexible offense and we've been seeing some of that flexibility in the Bills offense the first three weeks of this season.

It is still early in the season and I don't think that this Bills offense has hit its stride yet, but, from what we have been able to see of this offense thus far, this offense appears to have a chance to be nearly as productive as that Cincy offense was, averaging in the mid-20s in ppg when their key players were healthy. Edwards is still young and not yet as polished a QB as Anderson and Esiason were when they were running the Cincy offense, so I expect there to be some ups and downs and a bit less productivity from the Bills offense this season, but I expect this offense to continue to spread the ball around and be productive enough to keep the Bills competitive in the playoff race this season.

[madness]

Spot on as usual, LBF.

I remember when Thurm and Funtimes jumped on me for saying we were going to run the Cincy version of the WCO. :tongue:

[yordad]

Moorman has the best rating! He should be the QB! :DYeah, that sample size is huge!