Improved Bills Make Run at AFC Playoffs

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Last Sunday, the Buffalo Bills allowed the Cleveland Browns a miserly 17 total net yards of offense and sacked Cleveland quarterbacks eight times for 79 yards. While the defense was busy smothering the Browns, the offense ran up 321 net yards on its own. At game’s end, the scoreboard read Buffalo 37, Cleveland 7. And it wasn’t even that close.


The win put the Bills at 7-6, making them the most surprising of AFC playoff contenders. When the Bills started the season 1-5,they couldn’t have imagined that they would be just a game out of wild-card position with three games to go. The question now is whether Buffalo can continue to ride its improvement into the postseason.


A chart of the Bills’ performance from week to week would resemble a graph of seismic activity immediately before California falls into the ocean. They have been the least consistent team in the NFL, mixing crushing defeats at the hands of division rival New England with dominant victories over the feeble franchises of the NFC West – Seattle, St. Louis, and San Francisco.


They’ve also had a few close games, in which they either played well but were narrowly defeated by strong opponents, or played extremely poorly and narrowly beat the AFC’s lowliest teams, Miami and Oakland.


Because those dominant victories have come during the last four weeks, the man who receives the most credit for Buffalo’s turnaround is the NFL schedule-maker. Even after taking him into consideration, though, Buffalo has dramatically improved over the second half of the season. The Bills haven’t just been beating the easy teams on their schedule; they’ve been crushing them.


But despite the fact that Buffalo has scored at least 37 points in four straight games, the offense is not the foundation of the resurgence. With the exception of an unexpected shootout against Miami, defense has been driving Buffalo’s recent wins.


A single adjustment in the defensive lineup can have a huge impact on a team – not necessarily because of that player’s individual ability, but because the change allows the rest of the defense to switch into roles where they have a better chance to succeed.


Buffalo has a number of gifted defensive players, particularly in the front seven with linebackers London Fletcher and Takeo Spikes, as well as defensive lineman Sam Adams. But the pass rush dramatically improved after two moves: Safety Lawyer Milloy returned after missing the season’s first five games with a broken arm, and second-year defensive end Chris Kelsay was moved into the starting lineup for good after eight games.


During their 1-5 start, the Bills had a middle-of-the-road pass defense according to Football Outsiders’ Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) ratings, which breaks down each play of the season and compares it with the NFL average based on situation and opponent.


But over the past seven games, Buffalo has had a top-five defense against both the pass and the run. Both sacks and turnovers have become more frequent, and Buffalo has really turned things around where defense is most important: preventing third-down conversions.


The team figures to get even stronger with the return of veteran cornerback Troy Vincent, who is moving into the free safety role after missing nine games with a knee injury. Last week, in his first game back, Vincent had a sack, a fumble recovery, and an interception.


The Buffalo offense has also improved, but not because of the player who has gotten the most attention, running back Willis McGahee. In reality, McGahee has not performed significantly better than the running back he replaced, Travis Henry. McGahee has averaged just 3.8 yards per carry, 0.3 better than Henry. The fact that Henry was starting against tougher opponents early in the year, while McGahee has played against the recent string of softer opponents, is the primary reason for the difference.


Instead, Buffalo’s offense has succeeded or failed for the same reason that it succeeds or fails every season – the offensive line. The success of any Drew Bledsoe team always comes down to the quarterback’s protection. When Bledsoe has time to throw, and weapons to throw to, he wins. When Bledsoe has to hurry his throw under pressure, he loses focus and makes mistakes by the bucketful.


During Buffalo’s recent string of success, Bledsoe has benefited from much more time to throw. For the first six games of the season, he was sacked an average of four times a game. Since then, he’s been sacked an average of once per game.


No discussion of Buffalo’s strengths would be complete without a mention of special teams. Rookie Terrence McGee is second in the NFL with a 26.5-yard kick return average, and has returned three kicks for touchdowns. On punts, thanks to returner Nate Clements and punter Brian Moorman, Buffalo averages four yards of field position more than their opponents.


The question now is whether or not all this improvement will add up to a playoff berth. In the NFC, the answer would clearly be yes, but in the AFC Buffalo must battle 8-5 Baltimore, 8-5 Denver, and 7-6 Jacksonville for the second wild card. Even 6-7 Cincinnati still harbors wild card dreams, and Buffalo must travel to the Queen City this weekend to face a team whose offensive improvement over the season’s second half is the mirror image of Buffalo’s defensive progress.


Their penultimate game comes against the league’s worst team, San Francisco, but even if they win both of these games, a poor conference record probably means that the Bills will have to beat Pittsburgh in the final week to make the postseason on a tiebreaker with another 10-6 team. Since the Steelers haven’t lost in three months, and will probably still need a win to guarantee home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, that may be too much to ask.



Mr. Schatz is the editor-in-chief of FootballOutsiders.com.


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