How the Bills look after 4 games: Josh Allen is Josh Allen-ing...

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Almost one quarter into the 2022 season (17 games takes away that neat division of 4 quarters), time to check in on how the Bills are doing, especially as compared to the lofty pre-season expectations.

Joe B, as usual, provides a well thought out, credible and very accurate analysis....

How the Bills look after 4 games: Josh Allen is Josh Allen-ing, Buffalo holds steady

Four games in, the Bills have made quite an impression on the rest of the NFL. Coming in with high expectations, the Bills have been on full display in three of their first four weeks with prime-time games over the first two weeks, and the national game in Week 4 against the Ravens.

So, since they’re through almost a quarter of the season, it’s time to check where things stand. How have the Bills handled the lofty expectations, which players have stood out, and what are some games and things to keep an eye on?

Is team better, worse or about where expected after 4 games?

It’s early days, but despite some injury adversity, the Bills have already lived up to their reputation as one of the top NFL teams and a bona fide Super Bowl contender this year. The Bills are rolling hot with a 3-1 start featuring wins over some of the better teams in the league, and their lone loss only coming on the road by two points.

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Team MVP: QB Josh Allen

A truly shocking answer, I’m sure. Kidding aside, Allen has found success in multiple ways this season, making him one of the most frustrating quarterbacks to defend in the NFL.

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Breakout player: DT DaQuan Jones

His might not be the name you first think of when it comes to “breakout,” but the way DaQuan Jones has taken over the middle of the defensive linehas been remarkable. He’s one of their best players every week, stout against the run, and he gives them more pass rush from the one-technique position than teams usually get.

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Top rookie: CB Kaiir Elam

It was a slower start than what the Bills would have hoped for from their first-round pick, but Kaiir Elam has settled into the starting lineup excellently. Elam hasn’t made a game-changing play, though the team has to feel impressed by his steady weekly improvement.

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Key players who need to improve: LG Rodger Saffold and RG Ryan Bates

It’s been mostly smooth sailing for the Bills in 2022, but the most significant weakness so far has been how poorly the starting guards have played. Veteran left guard Rodger Saffold was signed to provide the Bills a good base of a starting guard, which the team has had difficulties finding over the years. Saffold has struggled in the first three games of the season both as a pass and run blocker. He performed better against the Ravens in Week 4, but he hasn’t had the impact some were expecting.

The same can be said for starting right guard Ryan Bates, another offseason investment.

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Is the head coach on the hot seat or looking good for 2023 season?

Even if coach Sean McDermott and the Bills had lost three of the first four games, he would not be close to the hot seat for the 2023 season. The organization is fully invested in him and vice versa, and there is a sense of calm about the regular season in 2022 that hasn’t existed in previous years.

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Toughest stretch of remaining games: Week 6 through Week 8

The Bills have already gone through the gantlet of their schedule, with big early-season tests against the defending champion Rams, the 2021 AFC top-seeded Titans, the up-and-coming Dolphins and a high-powered Ravens team. Three of those four games were on the road, and the Bills managed wins in two of those three road contests. The most challenging part of their remaining schedule is just around the bend.

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Playoff contender? Or pipe dream?

Everything we’ve seen early on from the Bills shows they are a serious Super Bowl contender this season. All the roster construction and strategy they’ve implemented in the first five years of the Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott era have been building to this point. Even through early injuries and a demanding schedule, they’ve remained one of the most dominant teams in the league. Nothing has deterred fans from thinking this could be one of the most memorable seasons in franchise history.

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I would add the most surprising rookies as Christian Benford as a positive and James Cook as a negative.

Benford, only a 6th round pick, 185th overall, impressed at CB so much that he nominally beat out Elam to get the start at CB for the first three games of the season, and getting much more snap counts than Elam the first two games before he was injured.

Elam is probably going to develop into a better long term CB for the Bills but Benford is nothing less than a revelation and looks like the steal of the Bills draft.

On the negative, James Cook has had a terrible start to his career. He looks like deer caught in the headlights and is tentative and cannot seem to hold on to the ball.

Certainly it’s very early and hopefully, he will show some of the promise that made him a second round pick before the end of the season.

[sukie]

Slow day at the pay site “the Athletic”?

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In the same vein of first quarter analysis that is presented widely in sports media, which is of interest to real fans that desire to be informed (which is why professional sports media puts the effort in and publishes it), NFL.com’s “Next Generations Stats Analytics Team" ranks the “early season top-10 defensive lines”.....and the Bills, unsurprisingly are #2.

2022 NFL season's early top-10 defensive lines: Nick Bosa-led 49ers group, deep Bills unit top the board

Each week of the 2022 NFL season, the Next Gen Stats analytics team will present a different Position Power Ranking, meant to spotlight the top performances among a specific group of players. This week, we've assembled a list of the top 10 defensive lines heading into Week 5.

Before we dive in, though, a note on our methodology in this series: To help create quantifiable rankings, we have devised a formula that yields a Next Gen Stats percentile score, which measures how players are performing relative to their peers. In today's exercise, the formula uses each defensive line's percentile score across a series of key metrics to create one composite score, indicating which units have performed best.

NOTE: Defensive line percentiles are based on components measuring each team's pass rush AND run defense. The metric and overall scores draw from each unit's performance in Weeks 1-4.


Rank - 1

San Francisco 49ers
2-2 · T-1st in NFC West
o Pass rush score: 95
o Run defense score: 94
o OVERALL SCORE: 95



Rank - 2

Buffalo Bills
3-1 · T-1st in AFC East
o Pass rush score: 95
o Run defense score: 73
o OVERALL SCORE: 87

Buffalo's depth along the defensive front is a testament to the organization's roster construction and player development. For the second straight season, the Bills have at least eight defensive-front players logging between 20 and 60 percent of defensive snaps. This rotation helps keep their pass rushers' legs fresh, an approach which has unleashed veteran offseason addition Von Miller. The future Hall of Famer has generated 18 pressures this season (tied for second-most in the NFL), despite having just 78 pass rushes (tied for 94th).

Unencumbered by fatigue, Buffalo's pass rush has generated the third-highest pressure rate this season (33.1 percent). This is even more impressive when you consider that Sean McDermott and Leslie Frazier rarely send any extra bodies -- the Bills have blitzed on just 11 percent of dropbacks this season, the only defense with a blitz rate under 16 percent.







Rank - 3

Tennessee Titans
2-2 · T-1st in AFC South
o Pass rush score: 93
o Run defense score: 61
o OVERALL SCORE: 82



Rank - 4

Los Angeles Chargers
2-2 · T-2nd in AFC West
o Pass rush score: 84
o Run defense score: 74
o OVERALL SCORE: 81



Rank - 5

Washington Commanders
1-3 · 4th in NFC East
o Pass rush score: 86
o Run defense score: 69
o OVERALL SCORE: 81
o

Rank - 6

Jacksonville Jaguars
2-2 · T-1st in AFC South
o Pass rush score: 74
o Run defense score: 92
o OVERALL SCORE: 80
o

Rank - 7

Philadelphia Eagles
4-0 · 1st in NFC East
o Pass rush score: 92
o Run defense score: 40
o OVERALL SCORE: 75



Rank - 8

Dallas Cowboys
3-1 · T-2nd in NFC East
o Pass rush score: 93
o Run defense score: 18
o OVERALL SCORE: 68


Rank - 9

New York Jets
2-2 · 3rd in AFC East
o Pass rush score: 67
o Run defense score: 67
o OVERALL SCORE: 67


Rank - 10

Cincinnati Bengals
2-2 · T-1st in AFC North
o Pass rush score: 77
o Run defense score: 45
o OVERALL SCORE: 66