The Red Flags
What on earth was that?
There are some things that are just not worth overreacting. Among them are March baseball, August football, or September hockey. These periods are meant for dress rehearsals. For evaluations. For rookies trying to scrape a roster spot. To overreact to them is a waste of energy. They really serve no purpose.
That being said, there are some red flags regarding the Bills’ first team performance on Saturday evening in Pittsburgh. The false starts are the most glaring. You can excuse rookie anxiety when these things happen in the pre-season, even opening game, but again, these were the starters committee these penalties. 13 penalties for 96 yards? That’s bad – even for a game in August.
The other aspect is I am not sold on a head coach calling defensive plays as a pseudo defensive coordinator. Any position whether it be a head coach, a coordinator, or a defensive line coach has its own measure of responsibilities. Pulling double-duty on that rather than going through the process and filling the coordinator position properly has a high potential of being problematic.Another red flag in this process is that through the initial two pre-season games I haven’t seen a change in defensive approach. That also could be an area to look out for moving forward. Was it Leslie Frazier’s defensive scheme, or was it McDermott’s that Frazier was implementing? Either way, while I’ve wanted to see this edition of the Bills win, I was never completely sold on the previous iterations of the Bills’ defense as being dominate. At best I gave them a grade of C+. I acknowledged the fact they had lost Von Miller and that was a big void to fill, but had he not been injured the grade would only have improved to a solid B. The Bills have not had a dominate, Grade A defense for some time. As the Bills finish up the rehearsals in Chicago it’ll be something to watch. As for the pre-snap penalties those are fixable. Having offenses convert third and long on a consistent basis is more time consuming and may require a shift in philosophy. It may also require a defensive coordinator.