Zone Original: Neil Masters

[northernbillfan]

The Buffalo Bills got the 2005 season off to a great start with a dominating 22-7 victory at home over the Houston Texans last weekend. The Bills are off to play their first road game of the season this week against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who are coming off an impressive season opening themselves with a 24-13 upset over the Minnesota Vikings on the road. They are up against a formidable opponent this week.

Full Article (http://www.billszone.com/mtlog/archives/2005/09/15/as_i_see_it_bills_vs_bucs_preview.php)

[TigerJ]

Good article. I think, judging from the way Williams got his running yards against Minnesota, there is a very good chance Buffalo can shut him down. His 3 yards per carry average appart from the big 71 yard TD run speaks of a weak run blocking offensive line. The big challenge for the Bills on defense will be to disrupt the West Coast passing game of Tampa sufficiently to keep Griese from moving the chains.

Tampa's front seven on defense is built more for speed than for strength. I expect they will be tough early. Buffalo will want to move JP around alot to keep him away from the Tampa pass rush. I think JP will throw a lot of short passes this week, while the Bills may roll him out for a few mid range or deep patterns. The Bills offensive line, with their great size, may be able to get pretty good push on Tampa with plain old, straight ahead drive blocking in the run game to let the Bills move the chains. If Buffalo can hold on to the ball and win the time of possession war early, McGahee could get some big runs late as Tampa's smallish defensive line wears down.

[X-Era]

Good article as far as content but I dont see it that way at all. I looked at the head to head stats based on last weeks game and the teams seem almost identical except in Defensive yards given up where we gave up about half:

<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" width="100%"> <tbody><tr class="bg4" align="center"><td class="bg1"> </td><td class="bg0away" align="left">Buffalo Bills</td><td class="bg0home" align="left">Tampa Bay Buccaneers</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">PASSING</td><td align="left">Losman: 17-28-170-1-0-89.9</td><td align="left">Griese: 18-29-213-2-2-78.7</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">RUSHING</td><td align="left">McGahee: 22-117 (3C)-5.3-0</td><td align="left">Williams (R): 27-148-5.5-1</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">RECEIVING</td><td align="left">Moulds: 4-40-10.0-0</td><td align="left">Galloway: 5-97-19.4-0</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">OFFENSE</td><td align="left">316.0</td><td align="left">345.0</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">TAKE/GIVE</td><td align="left">+5 (T1L)</td><td align="left">+3 (T1C)</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">DEFENSE</td><td align="left">120.0 (1L)</td><td align="left">248.0</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">SACKS</td><td align="left">Schobel: 2.0 (T1L)</td><td align="left">McFarland, Rice: 1.0</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">INTs</td><td align="left">Vincent: 2 (T1L)</td><td align="left">Kelly: 2 (T1L)</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">PUNTING</td><td align="left">Moorman: 40.6</td><td align="left">Bidwell: 46.8</td></tr><tr class="bg2" align="right" height="17" valign="top"><td align="left">KICKING</td><td align="left">Lindell: 16 (1L) (1/1 PAT; 5/5 FG)</td><td align="left">M. Bryant: 6 (3/3 PAT; 1/1 FG)</td></tr></tbody> </table>
I think the better question is what did each team do based on how the week 1 opponents stacked up.

Minn doesnt have a fraction of the D we do. And yet Griese throws 2 picks? We went up against 2 of the best CB's and our young QB threw very well against them, moved the ball in the red zone many many times, and gave up no picks. TB runs up 148 yards against the Vikes who have Pat and Kevin Williams. That could be an issue but again overall, our D smokes Minn's.

On D, we went against a known RB quantity who ran for over 1000 in each of the last 2 seasons I think. and we held him to 48 yards on 14 carries. And Minn gave up 148 to a rookie. Was it TB or was it Minn? Im thinking Minn. Our D held Johnson and Carr two of the leagues best to under 70 passing yards, Johnson had a total of 7 yards. Yet Minn gave up 97 yards to Galloway and a total of 199 overall. Galloway is FAR from a league leader, and Griese is FAR from being one of the leagues best. Was it TB or Minn's D, again I think it was Minn's D. My point is they wont get anywhere near that against us on D. And I think we proved we can throw on some pretty good CB's last week, TB's secondary is easier IMO.

Overall, I see the game as follows:

We will have more yards and hopefully TD's through the air than we did last week. But, McGahee will have an even tougher time running. TB will not get even close to what they did on O last week against our D.

I see us beating them by a pretty decent margin, Im saying by 10 or 14 points. My biggest concern is our o-line and McGahee getting 100 or more running yards and keeping the D honest.

[northernbillfan]

I think Tampa's pass rush may throw JP off his game and if not JP it may throw Gandy off a bit.

[X-Era]

as far as pass rush, I love what Mularkey did this preseason. He blitzed the crap out of JP to the point where he doesnt get rattled when it comes. Im wondering if he plays like Peter Brady in the pocket and shows great poise. It will be fun to watch

[X-Era]

hey vote on my poll, I want to know how you feel overall, unless you already did.

[LifetimeBillsFan]

There's a bit of a limit on how much I can put into a front page article because I have to try to touch on a lot of different points and there are a couple of potentially important points that I really wasn't able to get into that you might want to take into consideration when thinking about this matchup.

McFarland and Hovan didn't just dominate the middle of the Minny O-line, they embarrassed them. Minny's rookie starting OG was benched before halftime, but had to go back in after B.McKinnie was hurt and the second string OG/OT had to move from OG to LT. With starting C M.Birk out, Minny had its second string C, a rookie OG and a second-stringer at LT for much of the second half. M.Tice said they were awful--and coaches rarely say things like that publicly. Minny was unable to keep the Bucs defense from pressuring D.Culpepper and was unable to move McFarland and Hovan out of the middle. McFarland is the kind of guy the Bills had a problem with last season--which is why they brought in B.Anderson to be able to muscle the big DTs better in the run game. The problem could be in the passing game, where Anderson isn't at his best, because McFarland has the size and Hovan the quickness to get into the face of the QB. As much of a challenge as S.Rice presents to Mike Gandy, I happen to think that a big key to the game will be how Anderson, Teague and Villarial or Preston do against the middle of the TB defense on passing plays. The Bills could try to wear the middle of the TB defense out by running off-tackle and to the outside early--right at Rice--which is what the Bucs did to the Minny D.

While it is true that TB didn't get a lot of yardage out of their running game until the very end of the game, they did run the ball effectively. They weren't able to run the ball well inside against Pat Williams and Kevin Williams, so they ran it outside a lot, picking up 3 and 4 yards at a pop. The key was their ability to convert 3rd and short situations. M.Clayton had 4 catches for 57 yards, but 41 of those yards came on one play. Three of his catches, one by I.Hilliard and the 8 that went to the TEs and FBs were all on short throws. To me, that means that the Bills LBs and safeties are going to have to come up with big plays on third downs when TB passes the ball. Call it a "dink and doink" offense or whatever you want, but Minnesota was unable to get them off of the field and their ability to control the ball got the Minny offense out of sync. If you look at the play sequences, D.Davis had a number of 4-7 yard runs against the Bills on Sunday, but Houston really didn't make a committment to the run and the Bills stifled their passing game, but I wouldn't count on TB going away from the run the way that Houston did--even if it doesn't look like it is working early. J.Gruden was talking about running the ball with C.Williams the way that Philly used to use R.Watters--giving him 30-40 carries if necessary. The Bills will have to stuff the run all game long. But, then again, that's what they are going to have to do when they face KC, SD, Carolina, Denver, Oakland, the NYJ and NE, too.

I don't think that you can underestimate the importance of this game being on the road. NFL coaches and bookies consider the home field to be worth 3-4 points. Prior to the middle of last season, a lot of these Bills players did not play particularly well on the road--when they had a veteran QB running the offense (not to say that Bledsoe showed much poise on the road for a vet!). Even though I think that the Bills are a better team than TB, the Bucs, especially B.Griese, played very well at home last season and I think that that, coupled with the fact that this Bills group with JP at the helm has not yet proven that they can play well on the road, should keep this a close game. It think it would be a different game if they were playing at The Ralph. But, since they're not, I think it is probably wise to temper my expectations of the Bills until I can see how they will play on the road. It still think that the Bills have a great chance to win this game, but they are going to have to minimize the mistakes (penalties and mental errors on 3rd downs) and get the Bucs offense off of the field in order to do so.

[northernbillfan]

It's game day.

[Cntrygal]

:clap: