10 Things You Should Know - Preston Brown

[The King]

Sorry for the delay on this one. My wife had a baby this week.

http://www.billszone.com/?p=1775

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Preston Brown played high school football for the Northwest Knights in Colerain Township, OH. Brown played LB and FB.
Brown originally committed to Cincinnati before switching to Louisville. He was considered a three-star recruit coming out of high school.
During his senior year Preston led the Cardinals in tackles, and finished 2ndin sacks and forced fumbles to Marcus Smith who was selected 26th overall in this years draft.
Brown was originally projected as a 5th round pick, it was his individual team meetings that helped him move up the draft boards.
While Brown was the 4th Cardinal selected in this year’s draft, he’s also the first LB drafted from Louisville since 2006 and the highest selected since 1980.
Brown faced Syracuse three times with Doug Marrone as the head coach. Preston won two out of the three meetings. Syracuse ended a nine game winning streak for Louisville who was ranked 11th in 2012.
That 2012 Louisville (22) team went on to face Florida (4) in the Sugar Bowl. The Cardinals pulled off a major upset winning that game 33-23. Brown racked up 13 tackles in that game.
Brown has had the same training partner since he was a kid. His father, Mike Brown. Mike was the captain of the 1984 Ball State Football team.
Brown played in the 2014 East West Shrine game for Coach Jerry Glanville. Fellow draftee and Bills teammate Ross Cockrell was on that team as well.
Brown recalls his favorite play during his career as a Cardinal was a 48 yard fumble recovery for a touchdown. A notable second was a 37 yard run on a fake punt.

[Fletch]

Doesn't sound very good against the pass.

In 4 seasons, 3 of them starting, he has only 7 sacks and 1 INT, the latter not even having been during his Sr. season.

Could be why the pub on him at nfl.com is this;

Bottom Line


Aggressive, high-collision 'Mike' linebacker best paired with a demanding position coach who will extract the most from him. Could be most ideally suited as a two-down thumper vs. the run.

Spikes is a 2-down thumper vs. the run too. Not sure how many 2-down thumper LBs a team needs. Those guys are more role-players than 3-down starting types. We need 3-down LBs and ones that have proven that they can defend v. the pass. Right now we have one, Kiko.

Who's effectively going to play on 3rd-downs besides Kiko on a regular basis? It's not going to be Spikes or Brown apparently.

I wonder how Gaines is doing. I have a hunch that he'll make the roster and end up with a starting spot. He's underrated IMO. I could be way off, but he quietly played very well at Miami on a crap D with a crap DC.

[feldspar]

Not sure how many 2-down thumper LBs a team needs.

The Bills probably need a couple, as they have been notoriously poor against the run for a long time.

They have guys that can rotate in against the pass.

Stopping the run has been this defense's biggest weakness by far. Linebackers play a huge role in that.

[The last buffalo fan]

Congrats to the Queen and to you, Mr. King! :up: :baby:

[Fletch]

The Bills probably need a couple, as they have been notoriously poor against the run for a long time.

They have guys that can rotate in against the pass.

Stopping the run has been this defense's biggest weakness by far. Linebackers play a huge role in that.

Linebackers play a huge role in pass D too. Perhaps an even bigger one, especially since the NFL is all about passing these days.

Our pass D hasn't been good either. It's overrated now because of last season, but we didn't beat one team with a good passing game.

We poured all of our resources into logging sacks, had a weak schedule when it came to playing top passing teams, and traded pass D for rush D. The schedule tightens up significantly this season in that regard, and we should see a regression in D that everyone's going to falsely blame entirely on Schwartz and on Pettine leaving.

Either way, there is such a thing as 3-down LBs, just seems that people here in Buffalo don't know what they are. They're all over the league though. I see no need, short of poor planning and player management, to not be able to field three of them. One of the problems with our management/front-office/Whaley is that we keep changing our defensive systems. 4-3 to 3-4, to hybrid, back to 4-3, every couple of seasons. Part of it is competent coaching too, something we haven't seen here in years.

I don't see why we should have to cash out in pass D just to bolster a horrific rushing D that couldn't stop a drain last season. IMO if Spikes and Brown both start, given the loss of Byrd (yeah, I know I know, we won't miss a beat with Searcy in there) I think that our pass D is going to be a huge issue.

As it is, we've allowed 25 to 30 passing TDs in each of the last four seasons, I don't see that changing. It may get worse statistically given that we play a whole bunch of top passing teams this season. Last season we had the benefit, statistically, of not having had to play many top passing teams, despite the fact that we couldn't beat one passing team ranked in the top-half, but this season we play five teams that ranked among the top-6 in passing last season, and two more games against the Pats with Brady now having had a season to gel with his young WRs.

I can easily see us finishing near the bottom in passing TDs allowed and by allowing 30+ this season. We'll see.

[Pinkerton Security]

The Bills probably need a couple, as they have been notoriously poor against the run for a long time.

They have guys that can rotate in against the pass.

Stopping the run has been this defense's biggest weakness by far. Linebackers play a huge role in that.

seriously. anyone complaining about us picking up 2 run stuffing LBs is insane. We were SOOOOOOOO bad against the run last year, and the year before that, and the year before that..


all I have to say is Lagarette Blount had like 400 all purpose yards against us last year. Nuff said