| December 22, 2002 | « Previous Story | HOME | Next Story » | Posted at 11:01 PM |
In any event, this season could hardly have wrapped up much more differently than it began. The Bills started off the season over the first several games as the number one ranked scoring offense and yardage offense largely predicated on the passing offense. The defense remained or hovered near the dead last ranking for scoring defense through the first handful of games.
Currently, the Bills rank 11th in yardage offense and are tied with Minnesota for 12th in scoring offense, which is clearly an issue for a talent laden offense such as the one that we have. There is absolutely no reason on earth as to why this offense with its 6 Pro-Bowlers, legitimate or not, should be ranked anything less than 5th or 6th in either scoring or yardage offensive statistics. In order to have fallen such, the games since then must have been very significantly lower scoring than the first ones, and indeed they have been. Meanwhile, the defense has played at a level over the last 9 weeks that if it had played that way all season, it would have been sufficient to rank the scoring defense in the top 10 or very near that.
Drew Bledsoe started this season with a bang luring NFL, Bills, and N.E. fans into thinking that perhaps New England had made a mistake in “the trade” this past offseason. Drew’s average QB rating over the first 5 games started off at an incredible 102.6, then fell to 87.2 over the second 5 games, and has currently plunged to 66.3 over the last 5 games. That trend has certainly not won over any critics of “the trade” and has seemingly placed some that were patiently supportive of it on the fence now. In any case, it certainly has left the notion that the Pats certainly made the right choice for their team while leaving the Bills’ value in this trade very much up in the air.
For anyone tracking Bledsoe’s performance over the season, it would resemble the path of a downhill skier. His rating has gone from tops in the NFL to currently 17th and his TD production has fallen sharply also dropping him from 1st in the NFL to 7th. This in spite of his 2nd in the league yardage totals. This has been a Bledsoe trademark, namely throwing for lots of yards yet without putting up matching numbers of touchdowns which has unfortunately played itself out again this season, his first in Buffalo as well.
Additionally, Drew threw 14 touchdowns in the first 6 games to only 5 interceptions, while reversing that trend almost entirely by putting up 9 touchdowns in the last 9 games to 10 interceptions. Key sacks have also become much more prominent in Drew’s game as he has been very RJ-like in his unwillingness to throw the ball away at key moments. Drew will finish the season as the second most sacked quarterback with 50-some sacks (currently 52) behind only NFL record setting sack setter David Carr, a rookie on an expansion team.
At the same time, Travis Henry started the season by averaging 68 rushing yards-per-game mostly as a result of a huge game vs. the Jets in week one. Over the last 10 games Henry has averaged 102 yards-per-game. The team has also gone from allowing 34.0 points-per-game over the first 6 games to allowing only 20.4 points-per-game over the last 9 games.
In this game, the offense however was abysmal! Perhaps Randy Cross said it best when he said “You’ve seen a team that wanted to be in the playoffs in Buffalo, and a playoff caliber team in Green Bay.” It’s not that Green Bay had an otherwise productive afternoon offensively speaking, but Favre and the Packer offense sure answered the call when they had to as opposed to Bledsoe and the Buffalo offense who squandered three outstanding red zone opportunities and set Green Bay up for theirs as well due to shoddy and sloppy offense, largely on Bledsoe’s part.
On the first red zone opportunity, Bledsoe threw an interception on 3rd-and-4 from the Packer 4 yard line eliminating a Bills early scoring opportunity. On the second, Bledsoe took a costly sack that moved the Bills back 10 yards to attempt the game-tying field goal into a viscous headwind from the 33 yard line. The result was a missed field goal and better field position for the Packers. The third was a sack and a Bledsoe fumble on 2nd-and-10 from the Packer 17 to put the icing on the cake. The Bills would otherwise have had a FG attempt into the win and a shot at an onside kick if they had not been able to convert it to a touchdown instead.
Little was working on offense. It was O-fer just about everything. By my count, Bledsoe launched at least 8 deep passes throughout the game not one of which found its mark. Most were long or wide, but Price dropped one as well. Bledsoe was sacked 6 times for 37 yards several times on blitzes that were very apparent prior to the ball being snapped. Once on 3rd-and-3; once on 3rd-and-5; and 4 times in the 4th quarter on 2nd-and-7 and then again on the following 3rd-and-14 accompanied by a lost fumble; once on 3rd-and-15 with a recovered fumble, nevertheless to effectively end the game; and then finally on 2nd-and-10 with a lost fumble to ice the game and a Packer victory.
The defense stepped up again in spades to re-emphasize their ever-improving defense this season and to mark the second of their two best games in a row all season long holding their two opponents of the last two weeks to only 23 combined points while logging 2 interceptions, 2 sacks, 7 passes defensed, and 1 forced fumble. The defense has held opponents to less than 20 points 5 times in the last 9 games and to 10 in two of those matchups and 13 in another with all three being against 3 decent offenses. Along with Henry, at least two aspects of our game ended up heading in the right direction throughout the course of the season.
Game Positives:
The Bills may have found a diamond in the rough cornerback in rookie Kevin Thomas, a 6th round draft pick who played the lights out today with the tightest coverage we have seen all season long by any individual player. Adding an excellent interception and two passes defensed only cemented that notion.
Antoine Winfield showed why he is considered to be one of the hardest hitting cornerbacks in the league with a highlight-reel leveling hit on Terry Glenn at the end of the first half.
The Defense stepped up in spades and indicated that all of the improvement over the past 8 weeks was for real. It had only allowed the Packers to score 3 points through 3 and ½ quarters. Jerry Gray may have salvaged his job as a result. I sure hope he did as the defense has improved enough to warrant his getting another shot next season. If any coach should be on the hot seat, it is Kevin Gilbride.
Brian Moorman had a team record 84-yard punt to generate a complete turnaround in field position all for naught.
Other than some individual exploits and the play of the defense, there really was little to get excited about in this shutout. The Bills still tried to put the ball in the air too much again in spite of extremely difficult weather conditions and the fact that our passing game was even more inept than it was last week, again, largely due to Bledsoe’s personal errors. Prior to the last two drives in which Drew dropped back to pass 14 times, he still dropped back to pass 28 times to Henry’s 20 carries, and 42 times overall. It’s not as if the rushing game was any more successful against that outstanding Packer D, but at least running more would have ended the pain of the passing game and possibly prevented the only Packer TD of the day.
The team, particularly the defense, played hard and never gave up through until the end of the game.
Game negatives:
Again, it was the mistakes of the passing game that cost us this game. Can anyone say broken record. I did not think that it was possible for Drew to have a worse game than he did last week. Oh how wrong I was. He had only 117 yards passing, 86 net yards prior to the last drive in which Green Bay was giving up yards down to the red zone like giving away candy on Halloween. Naturally the Bills were unable to convert even a field goal due to Bledsoe’s bumbling mistakes. Add to that 6 sacks three resulting in fumbles, 2 lost, 2 interceptions, at least 8 deep throws none of which found their mark, and three personally blown opportunities in the red zone, and it all added up to one of the worst performances of the season by any quarterback. The Bills should easily have been able to put up 13-20 points had it not been for Drew’s mistakes, misreads, and very key turnovers.
Sketchy play-calling again. On 3rd-and-2, why pass the ball? On 2nd-and-1, why run a sweep? Call a sneak or run Henry up-the-middle. Too many long throws with the wind the way it was and with the lack of success of the passing game in general. There were at least 8 deep throws not a one of which resulted in a play. That was 8 wasted plays. Additionally, on Drew’s sack which resulted in a fumble to set the Packers up for their only touchdown of the day, Price was wide open on the left sideline for what should have been an easy mid-range throw and completion. Why Drew could not spot that leaves some questions as to his “big game” abilities.
What can we look forward to?
Hopefully this upcoming week the coaches will not simply use the Cincy game as easy fodder for padding stats. Let’s use the opportunity to see how well Travis Brown can play and how well Joe Burns can run the ball. Let’s also try some other players that may need to be evaluated this coming offseason. But let’s use this game to prepare for next season instead of trying to prove anything for this one. A win should be easy to obtain here at home, even with largely second-stringers starting.
So as we close out the season, it is interesting to note that at the beginning of the season, we began with a stellar passing game, not much of a rushing game by design it seems, and a horrible defense. We now find ourselves at the end of this season long trek with a very shaky passing game, a strong rushing game that has produced one of the league’s top rushers, and a defense that is playing at a top 10 level point-wise. Could things have turned around any more!
This upcoming week, there should be plenty of incentive for winning the Cincy game in trying to deny New England several positions in the draft hopefully in what I cannot imagine it ending up as anything but a win even if Van Pelt and Burns start. Who knows, perhaps the chances increase if Van Pelt or Brown start given Drew’s terminal slippage in play since the beginning of the season. It is not as if there should need to be any incentive for winning that game however in that it could be won almost by accident if we were trying to lose it intentionally. Nevertheless, we also find ourselves playing for .500 which should materialize with the slightest of ease against this woeful Cincy team.