Buffalo scored 30 offensive touchdowns last year.  It was a strong 24th best in the league.  Rian Lindell hit 78.9% of his field goals and Buffalo finished an even stronger 28th in that category.  We also had a 1.25 to 1 ratio of attempted field goals to offensive touchdowns.  That was the 27th best in the league.  And my personal favorite, our Bills turned the ball over 29 times.  The team also had 9 turnovers on downs and their 38 total turnovers tied Houston for the 3rd most.  That Dick Jauron style offense never really happened last year and only four teams turned the ball over more times than Buffalo did.  Now, this may look like I'm doing my usual talk people down from their unrealistic expectations routine, but considering that Buffalo had a decent year despite all that (insert soft schedule comments here) actually has me thinking that a little growth from Trent, a new center giving this team a fighting chance on 3rd and 1 and that TO character really could push this offense into the top 10-15 in the league.

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I'll start with something I found by accident.  I'm not sure if people have ever seen this, but pro-football reference has a list of the Bills' starters by year and also gives their record each season.  It goes way back and looks accurate.  It's worth a quick glance for amusement and stashing in your favorites for later reference.

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/buf/lineups.htm

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I did a live shadow draft where I made the picks for Buffalo when they were (or were going to be) on the clock.  Now that my mock offseason has gotten to the point where the roster has taken shape, I wanted to compare my offseason vs. the Bills'.  But first, I want to throw some quick thoughts out about the draft.

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Buffalo's DEs had 8 sacks last season.  That tied with Cincinatti for the second fewest of the 22 teams that ran a 4-3 (Cleveland was the only 3-4 team with 8 or fewer sacks from their OLBs and they tied Buffalo with 8).  So I have to ask, why doesn't everyone have Buffalo addressing DE with one of their first couple picks in all the mock drafts that keep getting posted? (note: I love that people post their mocks, I'm going to put one at the bottom of this post)  Everyone would have Buffalo picking a RB if Marshawn and Jackson only averaged 3.7 ypc for the last couple of seasons.  Who wouldn't have us taking a QB if our team had the 3rd worst QB rating of any team?  If Buffalo gave up 5 yards per carry last year, wouldn't we all want a new DT or MLB?  Why is it different for the DEs?  I don't get it.

Aaron Schobel is not the savior of the pass rush.  In 2007, Our DEs only had 11.5 sacks.  So for two seasons in a row, with Schobel playing 21 of the 32 games, Buffalo's DEs have consistently been one of the worst units in the league.  Schobel is is soon to be 32 years old.  He barely weighs 240 pounds and comes to camp a little slimmer every season in an attempt to maintain his average athleticism.  And most importantly, Schobel has 7.5 sacks in his those last 21 games.

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So here is my mock offseason.  This is what I would do if I were running the show and not what I think Buffalo will do.

First I want to say that I'm on board with the Dockery cut.  I was really surprised and totally disagreed with the move at first because I thought that Dock was only going to be making about 3 mil this season.  But after some digging and some thinking it looks like bonuses were going to push his contract up over 5 mil this year.  Rotoworld had his salary listed at 2.75 mil, but if you add up all the money he has already gotten and all the salaries rotoworld had him scheduled to recieve, it ends up being more than 4 mil short of the 49 mil contract he signed.  So to recap:  Derrick Dockery for 3 mil is something I don't mind on the team, but Derrick Dockery for 5 mil is a good cut.

In addition to cutting Dockery, I would cut Robert Royal, just like Buffalo did and save about 1.5 - 2 mil that way.  I would cut Chris Kelsay saving 3.5 mil and Roscoe Parrish to save another 3 mil.  I thought about cutting the overpaid Spencer Johnson too, but a lot of his contract is still guaranteed and a vet replacement would end up being just as average and just as overpaid.

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I said I would try and figure out how much money Buffalo had to spend this offseason under their cash to cap philosophy.  I added up all the money they spent on new contracts and player salaries last year and subtracted all the 2009 salaries to see how much less money they had already committed to 2009.  It didn't really work though and by my math the Bills only have about 8 mil less on the books heading into the 09 offseason then when they did after they signed all their rookies last year.  The number that screws everything up is the Lee Evans contract.  I counted Evans' salary at around 2 mil (the number it was before the extension) and his 2009 salary is 9 mil.  If you were to count Evans' 08 salary as 11+ mil which it ended up being, Buffalo has a lot more money to spend.  So, I've decided to take a simplified approach and just look at the major differences from last year's payroll as opposed to the upcoming season.  Either way, here are the big salary differences between 2008 and 2009:

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This post is largely a defense of Buffalo's defensive schemes.  Or at the very least the effectiveness of those schemes against the Dolphins.  Going into the game I was most concerned about Pennington's ability to throw underneath the coverage and hit big targets like Fasano and Martin as well as their little quick guys in Camarillo and Bess.  Well The Bills essentially shut that stuff down.  Here are the season averages of catches, yards and yards per catch for those four guys:

               catches - yards - ypc

Camarillo - 4.5 - 56.2 - 12.5

Bess - 1.7 - 12 - 7.2

Fasano - 3.4 - 39 - 11.5

Martin - 2.7 - 38.8 - 14.6

With all the speculation that the Bills' corners playing off the line was part of the reason that we lost, wouldn't one conclude that these guys ate us up?  Well you guys all watched the game and not only did this group of guys not beat the Bills, we kept them all below their season averages.  Camarillo went for 35 yards and a season low 7 yards per catch.  Camarillo hadn't had a game all year where his opponents held him under 11.3 yards per catch until he lined up across from Jabari Greer, albeit 6-10 yards away from Greer.  Davone Bess was his typical ineffective self.  On a side note, does anyone know why Dolphin fans were/are so high on the guy?  He quite literally had the worst size/speed combo in NFL combine history.  And back to my point, both Fasano and Martin were kept below their season averages in catches, yards and yards per catch by a good amount.  The two TEs combined for 4 catches and 37 yards on Sunday which is about what they both do on their own in an average week.

So what went wrong?  We all know the answer to that.  Terrence McGee played the worst game of his life.  I havn't watched every game he has ever played, I actually never managed to tune in to one of his games at Northwestern St (who even knew that was a school? and did we ever make a point to notice that Demetrius Bell also went there? Washington safety, Mike Green is the only other current NFL player to attend), but I am pretty confident that he has never played worse than what we just witnessed on Sunday.  He was so bad that the only logical explanation is that he is in serious financial trouble and he bet his house on the Dolphins .... or he was still hurt.  It's obvious that Mcgee was nowhere near 100% and had no business being in the game.  That is a coaching error that we can all get behind and use as a rallying cry for everything that Jauron and co. have done wrong at OBD, but I think it is wrong to judge Jauron and Fewell for the schemes that McGee was unable to execute.  Ted Ginn went off to the tune of 7 catches for 175 yards for a ridiculous 25 yards per catch.  Ginn did everything players aren't supposed to do against the Fewell/Jauron style cover 2.  What does it matter how far off the line McGee lined up?  Ginn was able to get open 10+ yards down the field with consistency.  That isn't the schemes fault, the scheme prevents that.

McGee's play and the coaches inability to pull him really, really, really bothered me.  I was yelling at the TV all afternoon to the point where I just drank myself stupid and pouted for several hours after the game even ended.  The other thing that bothered me was a bunch of the Rumblers reaction to scheme, specifically, that people accuse Jauron and Fewell of using schemes based on "fear".  Does anyone else think that is completely ridiculous or am I alone on this one?  Chess is a game with very aggressive and equally as conservative strategies.   If one of the most brilliant chess players in the world employed a conservative strategy, would anybody say he chose that strategy out of fear?  I know there are a lot of hockey fans around here and while we all hate the trap and the effect it has had on the game, do you go around and call all the coaches who use it afraid?  Criticize the scheme all you want, but that very same "scared" scheme had held opponents to 184.5 passing yards per game, a number that would be the fourth best total in the league right now.

In my opinion, Jauron and Fewell challenge teams to make plays.  They line their guys up in a conservative manner and say "good luck making a play".  The coaches essentially dare their opponents to try and throw over the top with full knowledge that if an opposing QB attempts to make a big play, than our team is the one that is in a better position to make that big play.  Don't think of it as giving up those short routes.  The Bills give teams no choice but to make short completion after short completion after short completion until eventually they make a mistake or two and have to punt or settle for a field goal.  You can't win in the NFL with dinking and dunking down the field and the Bills force their opponents to try and win with this losing strategy.  After all the criticsm that went Edwards' way last year for being unable to throw the ball down the field, you would think Bills fans would notice that no opposing QB has been able to accomplish that against us all year, at least up until Pennington picked apart a helpless Terrance McGee.  In the six games prior to Miami, the Bills allowed 7 completions of more than 20 yards and two of them (the slant to JL Higgins and the screen to Jackson) weren't long passes at all.  Jacksonville couldn't complete a pass longer than 15 yards.  Philip Rivers, who gets off throwing down the field, only completed one pass over 20 yards and it was a 23 yard completion to Malcolm Floyd.

Is it possible that Jauron isn't afraid of anything (except snakes ..... I bet he is afraid of snakes worse than Indiana Jones), but rather in all his years playing and coaching football he thinks that preventing the big play and forcing his opponents to either check down or throw into coverage is the best strategy to win a football game with the team he has?  How did we beat the Chargers?  Did Edwards put the team on his back and carry them to victory or did Jauron's conservative approach prevent Philip Rivers (whose 2,038 yards passing is 3rd in the league while his 30 completions of 20+ yards are the second most in the league and his 9 completions of over 40 yards are also the second most in the league) from making the big play that the Chargers live off of.  Rivers has averaged 14.4 yards per completion against teams that aren't the Bills.  When he came into Buffalo his average completion went for 9.5 yards.

I think it is time to give credit where credit is due and Dick Jauron, your defensive scheming is fine by me.  If the trap can win the New Jersey Devils a few Stanley Cups, than I will put my faith in the cover 2 to eventually bring Buffalo a Super Bowl.

So I recently noticed that NFL.com and buffalobills.com have two different sets of stats up for tackles.  The player bios on buffalobills.com have different numbers all together.  The differences are special teams related, but I am having trouble trying to determine the exact number of special teams tackles that all of the Bills had last season.  It's currently 1:30 AM and I can't sleep.  I just cracked my 3rd beer in hopes of getting a little drowsy and I have been staring at similiar sets of numbers for awhile now.

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