What needs to go right for the Bills to win...

[Skatt8011]

1st- Are we gonna see the Drew Bledsoe whos going to manage the offense or the Drew Bledsoe whos gonna try to make to many plays with his arm and throw picks.

2nd- Are we gonna see the Travis Henry that had us saying "Why did we draft McGahee" or the one that made us say "Trade Henry, start Willis"

3rd- How is Josh Reed gonna come off the greatest game of his career?

4th- Is Gregg and Gilbride gonna keep the playcalling under control?

5th- I would say penalties but thats asking to much.

6th- The D has gotta stay tough!

7th- Punt out of bounds!!!


There ya go, 7 ways for 7 point TDs.... GO BUFFALOOOO

[shelby]

Penalties....how much of that is coaching, and how much of it is undisciplined players? Or are the two inseperable?


Nice post

[CHIEF4EVER]

7th- Punt out of bounds!!!

No! No! Kick it to Dante! You can stop him!

[mypoorfriendme]

i dont know about you guys because im thinking we wont even have to punt! (jk)

[mypoorfriendme]

i can almost gurentee hall returns one on us all the way if he gets even the smallest chance

[BAM]

I had a dream last night that Antonio Brown finally ran one back for a TD. Ironic.

[Tatonka]

this game has to be all about travis henry.. mix in some short passes to josh, mark campbell, and shaw.. and maybe take 1-2 shots down the field to aikens or coleman at some point when the defense starts to bite up. and they will..

the defense just needs to keep playing like they are playing. they will earn that #3 in the nfl ranking... all you have to do is put winfield on gonzo again, and watch him shut him down completely like last year.. and the rest of the team needs to sell out and stop holmes.

really not that much to it..

run henry and stop holmes.. both of which we can do.

[justasportsfan]

What needs o happen is for the bills that played The skins, Pats and Jags need to show up. If it is indeed that bills team that show up, match for match we have an advantage. Our O is as good as theirs and our D is better than theirs.


Our running game has to open up the pass. The coaches need to run, run, run early to tire the Chief's D that isn't so great.

As for our D, it is vital that Sam Adams and Pat Williams have a big game. Our lb's will need to contain Gonzalez. Their wr's are not as scary as Gonzalez.


I hope we win this one. Everyone that don't follow both teams closely think we are gonna roll over.

[WG]

Re: What needs to go right for the Bills to win...

Originally posted by Skatt8011
1st- Are we gonna see the Drew Bledsoe whos going to manage the offense or the Drew Bledsoe whos gonna try to make to many plays with his arm and throw picks.

2nd- Are we gonna see the Travis Henry that had us saying "Why did we draft McGahee" or the one that made us say "Trade Henry, start Willis"

3rd- How is Josh Reed gonna come off the greatest game of his career?

4th- Is Gregg and Gilbride gonna keep the playcalling under control?

5th- I would say penalties but thats asking to much.

6th- The D has gotta stay tough!

7th- Punt out of bounds!!!


There ya go, 7 ways for 7 point TDs.... GO BUFFALOOOO

To your points skatt:

1st: Drew's strength has never been "managing an offense." If anything he's tended to "put the ball into his own hands" more than healthy for both the Pats and Bills. The question will be will Gilbride/GW restrain him and call the plays properly as you mentioned in point #4. Also, Gilbride has a habit of using us being down by 4 points late in the 1st Q as an excuse to say "we need to start throwing." If that happens, look for a disaster and plenty of INTs!

2nd: As to the rushing game, the issue is not Henry so much as it is the OL. Hardly anyone noticed that our UTM rushing was really not working all that well other than on only a couple of series last week against a team w/ one of if not the worst DLs in the game today. If we can't open any holes for Henry, there isn't a RB in the world who's gonna gain much w/o holes to run through. Right now, Pucillo is pulling down the average play of Teague and that is translating right over to LG/Brown too. So the middle of our OL is relatively porous. That weakness will not go as unnoticed v. the Chiefs. Yes, the Chiefs' D is overrated, but no way are they as poor as the Skins are. We couldn't put more than 17 points on the board last week through nearly 3 and 1/2 Qs, and much of that was b/c our D easily stopped the Skins O and gave us great FP. Don't expect us to be able to shut down the Chiefs' O this week at all. In fact, I'm expecting that out of say 9 possible drives, the Chiefs will come away w/ at least 3 on 6 of those.

3rd: Good question as to Reed. But IMO if the rushing game ain't workin', we're cooked! Drew isn't going to do anything through the air and essentially hasn't since he's been here if you don't overrate the first 2 or 3 of the first 5 or 6 games last season.

4th: No, don't expect that to occur. Gilbride is a fool. The Chiefs will put up the first points of the game and continue to score whether FGs or TDs on thru the course of the game. At some point we will be down. Gilbride hasn't ever shown any patience under those circumstances since he's been here. What he, GW, and the fans and media have failed to pick up on however, is that once we go into "put the ball into Drew's hands" mode, the problem only worsens. So the question will be by how much and when will we go down. If it's by 10+ I can almost assure you that KG will all but abandon the run and the deficit will only increase.

5th: Agreed!

6th: The D just has to do what it's been doing. The problem is almost entirely with the O other than the fact that we have trouble against the run. In 3 losses, the O has put up 0, 13, and 3 points! If that isn't entirely pathetic, then I simply don't know what is. Even in wins, we only put up 16 v. Cincy at home and then 24 v. the Skins at home too. That's not exactly impressive by any definition.

7th: Yes! Can't KO OoB however. If we give the Chiefs that ball at the 40 we may as well just give them 5 points each time they get the ball. :)

The key to this game will be threefold:

First, will we be able to generate some solid blocking and therefor a rushing game? If yes, then we will be in this one for most of the game and have a shot at a win. If not, then we'll be finished by the half.

Second, forget Holmes, he'll have 90-150 rushing yards one way or another. What we will have to be able to do defensively is something that we've struggled against all season and in the preseason too. Namely, we will have to be able to control the over-the-middle short passes, flats passes, and TEs and RBs out of the backfield in the passing game. That is primarily KC's game. There's been some discussion about us "shutting down KC's deep game." Who cares! They don't utilize a deep game much. I'll concede right now that they're not gonna beat us w/ their deep game. It's the short dink-n-dunk game that will hurt us. Up 'til now we haven't been able to stop it. Part of the reason for that is that Donahoe and GW have created the defense with the notion that the OLBs will put the pressure on the QB. Well, that's fine, but when a good QB such as Green is, has the wherewithall to get rid of the ball when he sees that pressure coming, who's gonna be covering the RBs, FBs out of the backfield and the TEs OtM? What, Fletcher? LOL He's terrible in coverage. As I've said, we haven't been good vs. a short-OtM passing game all year. Since this is KC's MO largely after Holmes rushing, the degree to which we can control them on that will reflect the chances we have of winning the game. I ain't holdin' my breath.

Third, STs. We don't need a career-STs week, but we do need solid KOs and decent returns. If we can only average a couple of yards on PRs and only 10 or 15 on KRs, and Lindell only kicks off so that the ball lands at KC's 15, then we're half screwed from the get-go and will be short on the field position battle all game long. If we do manage to prevent KC from scoring, I would imagine that they're still gonna get a couple of 1st downs every drive. So field-position will be especially key in this game.

Lastly, one other thing that I hadn't thought of until now, suppose we do go down by 13-17 in the first half? How are the players gonna react? With GW and Gilbride on the outs, hopefully anyway, If the Chiefs do manage to put up say 13 and our O can't respond with any points and is ineffective again, then what will that do to morale and will the players "give up." I suppose we may find out.

Anyhoo...

[WG]

Originally posted by justasportsfan
As for our D, it is vital that Sam Adams and Pat Williams have a big game. Our lb's will need to contain Gonzalez. Their wr's are not as scary as Gonzalez.

Fletcher will cover Gonzalez...



Adams hasn't had a "big game" since the NE game and that was largely luck. He's had "small games" since then.

If we're gonna cover Gonzalez, it's gonna have to be Spikes or Posey. I don't think that Milloy is big enough. If it's one of the two OLBs, don't expect much pressure on Green.

[Patrick76777]

Winfield covered Gonzo last year. He had 2 catches!

[venis2k1]

I personally am not afraid of Hall, we have some great Spec Teams tacklers, Wire, Prioleau, Stevenson....We can stop him.

[Dman]

my "simple" take

I am going to counter all of this pre-game analysis about game planning and strategies with one "simple" word:

ATTITUDE!!!

That was my observation in last weeks victory over Washington.

This team...to a man... came out with an "in your grill" attitude and it worked.
If you look at the games where we didn't play well we lacked that aspect. No one 'peacocked' throughout those games... it was more of a 'hang-dog', flat aura that surrounded this team.

I'm not saying I even like that sort of "hot-dogging"..in fact ..I don't care for it. The championship teams we had didn't do it...they didn't need to, obviously.

But this team does....need to..I think.

Bobby Shaw strutted at every catch and everyone knew each and every first down he produced. TH did it, Reed did it along with almost the entire defense, Spikes,Williams, Fletcher, Shoebel,Winfield, Milloy and even K. Thomas were all dancing, prancing, slappin', hootin' & hollerin' at almost each and every play.

If they bring that same attitude to this weeks game they will IMHO bury KC.

That's how I see it..but I could be wrong.

[WG]

Originally posted by Patrick76777
Winfield covered Gonzo last year. He had 2 catches!

And who was covering the perrenial pro bowler Eddie Kennison, , as he had 3 grabs for 93 yards? The Chiefs completed 12 passes for nearly 200 yards and an APC of 16.4 yards.

I have no idea if Winfield was on G the entire game, but I cannot imagine that if he's on him again, that the 5'8" CB is going to adequately cover the 6'4" TE since he has difficulty vs. WRs his own size.

Green threw to G only 4 times last season, once complete w/ Fletcher on coverage for the longer of the two passes. Once complete over AW for a short gain. Doesn't seem as if they used him much.

KC ran the ball nearly 40 times. I'm sure we can expect to see that again. Meanwhile, we struggled to put up 16 in regulation on only 1 TD vs. a D that wasn't nearly as strong as it is this year. Last year the Chiefs' D was ranked near or at dead last depending upon the measure. Since we have difficulty vs. even the most average of Ds, I'm not expecting things to change for a road game at Arrowhead on SN.

I'm sure Green/Vermeil are wishing for a AW-TG matchup all night long.

[WG]

Re: my "simple" take

Originally posted by Dman
I am going to counter all of this pre-game analysis about game planning and strategies with one "simple" word:

ATTITUDE!!!

That was my observation in last weeks victory over Washington.

This team...to a man... came out with an "in your grill" attitude and it worked.
If you look at the games where we didn't play well we lacked that aspect. No one 'peacocked' throughout those games... it was more of a 'hang-dog', flat aura that surrounded this team.

I'm not saying I even like that sort of "hot-dogging"..in fact ..I don't care for it. The championship teams we had didn't do it...they didn't need to, obviously.

But this team does....need to..I think.

Bobby Shaw strutted at every catch and everyone knew each and every first down he produced. TH did it, Reed did it along with almost the entire defense, Spikes,Williams, Fletcher, Shoebel,Winfield, Milloy and even K. Thomas were all dancing, prancing, slappin', hootin' & hollerin' at almost each and every play.

If they bring that same attitude to this weeks game they will IMHO bury KC.

That's how I see it..but I could be wrong.

It all still boils down to execution D. You can have all the attitude that you want. But there's no way you're gonna make up for well below average play at LDE, very mediocre play at LT/Adams, and with a D scheme that uses it's OLBs to apply pressure that should be coming from an ineffective DL on the whole.

Same on O. How much "attitude" is it gonna take for Pucillo to not get schooled again? For Teague to play like even an average C? For Brown to play above average and not cost us 25 yards in penalties?

The issue with this team originates w/ the lines and until that is resolved, we're a .500 team at best, possibly worse.

KC has improved defensively and is the same top offense that they were a year ago. We have regressed offensively and at best made only a marginal improvement defensively largely due to tightening up a secondary that won't be the primary defensive requirement in this game.

If I could pick one word to pre-describe this game, it would be "interesting." I'm curious to see what happens. I wouldn't bet the Bills tho, even plus the 6 that they're getting. I made that mistake a couple of times this season.