Bills head coach McDermott preaches patience
Sean McDermott readily admits he’s not a patient man, so the Bills’ 1-3 start certainly has the head coach in an irritable mood. His team has underwhelmed in every phase, most notably on offense where the Buffalo Bills have been so putrid, they are on pace for some truly gruesome results.
But McDermott is trying to remain focused on the big picture, “the process” as he loves to call it, and all of the struggles the Bills are enduring right now, he hopes, will make them better in the long run.
“As we go and develop these guys … you go through this and say, ‘Hey, we’re a young team, and there’s going to be some of these moments,’” he said. “As hard as it is, you gotta understand where we are in this building. And these moments, if you learn from these scars that we’re taking on, if you’re using it the right way, you’ll look back and say, ‘That was good for us.’ We get the right education early and the guys learn from it. And those teams, those individuals that stick with it usually come out on the right end of it at the end of the process.”
Painful is the only way to describe the process right now, though. In a league where passing offense is soaring to new heights, the Bills are stuck in prop plane mode as they rank dead last in passing yards, percentage of interceptions and sacks allowed per attempt, 31st in scoring, and their quarterbacks, Josh Allen and Nathan Peterman, have completed less than 50 percent of their passes.
McDermott made it perfectly clear that Buffalo’s offensive problems are spread equally amongst the quarterback, the line, and the skill players. However, the place where the improvement must take root is up front where the Bills simply haven’t been good, meaning no push in the run game and no protection for Allen.
“Win the line of scrimmage,” he said. “If you don’t win the line of scrimmage in the run or the pass game, you have no chance, so we’ve got to establish the line of scrimmage on the offensive side of the ball and defensive side of the ball for that matter. That’s a weekly thing, it’s not just new this week, it’s a weekly thing, a football fundamental, one- on-one, we have to win at the line of scrimmage.”
That endeavor will be difficult this week as the Titans bring a defense to New Era Field that ranks sixth in points allowed, seventh in sacks and third-down efficiency, and ninth in first downs.
The inside presence of Tennessee tackles Jurrell Casey and Austin Johnson figures to give the Bills’ line fits because they can get push up the middle against the weak belly of Buffalo’s interior group and force Allen to leave the pocket, something he has been too quick to do.
The Titans do a nice job of disguising their looks pre-snap, and then once the ball is snapped, they have a gang tackling, swarm to the ball mentality and you have to wonder if the Bills can cope with it, especially if they run some of the blitzes they did to successfully harass Philadelphia’s Carson Wentz last week.
One way to counteract the blitzing is to run the ball, something that has also been lacking in the Buffalo attack. Taking Allen’s scrambles out of the mix, the Bills are averaging 3.4 yards per rushing attempt which would rank them 30th in the NFL. Even with Allen’s team-leading 116 yards, they sit 25th at 3.6 yards.
LeSean McCoy has been held to 85 yards in the three games he has played on just 21 runs, meaning he’s averaging seven attempts per game. “It’s tough,” he said. “The only thing I can control is making things happen when the ball is in my hands.”
Part of his inactivity has to do with the Bills spending so much time trailing in each game he has played – he sat out Buffalo’s lone victory in Minnesota – but offensive coordinator Brian Daboll acknowledged that he has to find ways to get McCoy back into the attack.
“We have to do a good job of getting him involved, staying on track, not going three and out and then getting him the ball,” Daboll said. “No question about it. He’s a pro. I have a good relationship with LeSean. Every good player should want the ball a bunch.”
Defensively, the Bills haven’t been terrible. They’re ranked ninth in yards allowed per play, 11th against the rush and 15th overall. That said, the opposition has jumped to big early leads in the three losses, so there’s a lot to improve on. And now they will be confronted with Tennessee quarterback Marcus Mariota who is coming off a 390-yard total offense day in the win over the Eagles.
And given how much the offense has struggled, the burden on the defense is off the charts.
“I don’t know that burden is the right name for it,” said defensive tackle Kyle Williams. “But I think that we feel like we need to be better. I think we felt like as far as limiting points or doing some things on Sunday, we were OK. But we can tighten some things down and be even better. We feel like we can be a good defense, we feel like we should to help our offense.”
SERIES HISTORY: 43rd regular-season meeting. Titans lead series, 27-15. The Bills won the last meeting 14-13 in 2015 at Tennessee in a game where Tyrod Taylor, in his first year as the starter, pulled off what was one of the few fourth-quarter comebacks of his career. That ended a five-game losing streak in the series that dated to Buffalo’s win on opening night in 2000.