SB Nation User Blog: kaisertown

numbers for the optimists

kaisertown — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:10:23 -0000

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.

The first thing to discuss is whether Buffalo's 38 FG attempts from last year (4th most, behind only NE, PHI and NYG) is a good thing or a bad thing. Obviously it's a negative when your thinking about how the season went last year, but if your using that number to try and forecast how the Bills' offense is going to do this season, then I think it's a good thing. The fact that Buffalo had that many drives resulting in a chance to score is a positive. Add in Buffalo's 30 TDs and their 68 drives that resulted in a TD or FG attempt was the 16th most in the league. Not great, but not terrible either.

Here's a positive stat: Buffalo only punted 53 times last year. It was tied with Indy and Houston for the 4th fewest in the league. Want to know why Chicago traded for Jay Cutler? Here's one reason, Denver only punted 46 times last year. It was 4 fewer than NE who punted the 2nd fewest. San Diego was the other team to finish ahead of Buffalo. Chicago on the other hand punted 96 times, the second most in the league.

The obvious thing to factor in is JP Losman's ineptitude. In just 3.5 games (AZ, MIA, NYJ, half of SF), Losman turned the ball over 9 times. The Bills also managed to have 4 drives end on downs with Losman at QB. Talk about clutch. They only turned the ball over on downs 5 times in Trent's 12.5 games. So including downs, the Bills turned the ball over 25 times with Edwards at QB. Let's also subtract Robert Royal's two fumbles because I doubt that whoever takes over his role is going to fumble once per every 15 touches or whatever Royal averaged. So that's 23 turnovers and if you extrapolate that out to 16 games then it's 29.5 turnovers. If you include the turnovers on downs for each team, then Edwards' extrapolated turnovers would have been the 13th fewest in the league. Not too shabby.

Losman also struggled to put this team in a position to score points. Buffalo had 11 drives with Losman at the helm that ended in either a TD or FG attempt. As a team, Buffalo had 68 of those drives, so Trent had 57 of them. Extrapolate that out and it's a hair short of 73. Believe or not, but that would have tied Arizona and Green Bay for the 8th most in the league.

So with Edwards at QB, Buffalo didn't turn the ball over too often. They punted far less often than your average team and had more drives into scoring territory than all but the best offensive teams. Rian Lindell should bounce back this year considering that he hit 88.9% of his FGs in 2007 and 92% in 2006. So it all comes down to those 38 attempted FGs to 30 offensive TDs ratio. Things really might be as simple as finishing off drives with TDs instead of field goals for this offense to take off. I know that's a tall task, but it's the kind of thing that a little improvement from Trent, a few more third and short conversions and some guy named TO might be able to pull off.

Poll

Where is Buffalo's offense going to finish in points per game?

Some thoughts

kaisertown — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:13:27 -0000

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

So I was thinking about the sack numbers that Mark Gaughan writes about in a Buffalo News article that you can read HERE that Kurupt discussed in a fanpost HERE. In the article, Gaughan claims that the Bills blitzed on 32% of pass plays and that 17 of their 24 sacks came on plays where they blitzed. So if you figure that the Bills opponents threw the ball 516 times (and that doesn't include plays where a QB felt the pressure and took off) and Buffalo blitzed on 32% of those plays, then there were 350 plays where the opponent threw the ball and Buffalo didn't blitz. 7 sacks on 350 plays is exactly 2%. When Buffalo rushed 4 players, they got a sack one out of every 50 pass attempts. Maybin is a fine start to rebuilding the defensive line, but don't expect me to stop asking for more help anytime soon.

And more on the pass rush, I really like the duo of Stroud and Williams, Johnson is decent and I feel like I'm one of the few who has never completely given up on McCargo, but don't expect the Bills' DTs to be part of the solution to a better pass rush. Stroud and Williams are both good for a few sacks a season which is very respectable for 310ish pounders who are better run stoppers than pass rushers. I was hoping that Spencer Johnson would be able to come in and provide a few sacks situationally, but that doesn't seem likely after watching him play last year. McCargo wasn't a good pass rusher in college and probably profiles better as a two gap player than he does in this defense. That is why I wanted Buffalo to draft a pass rushing DT and would have taken Jarron Gilbert with the 42nd pick. Buffalo should have done everything they could to improve the pass rush. They didn't and it's going to show again this season.

I have every intention on doing some some film study of Buffalo's defense this year. My intentions are more about compiling numbers then analyzing who is doing good and who isn't. I'm trying to keep it as objective as possible and don't feel expert enough to do grades like Ron does. I'm thinking about trying to keep notes on: How often the team blitzes, how many players they blitz and what players do the blitzing. How many yards the opposing team gains when we blitz vs. when we don't blitz. Who is getting double teamed on pass and run plays. Which CBs and safeties generally cover which players and who gives up the completions and maybe how bad the coverage was. Where players record tackles (something like close to line, 4 or more yards away from line and way down field). Anyone have other ideas? I can only do so much so what do people want to see the most? Anyone planning anything similiar?

Part of being a fan is being optimistic and getting excited. One unfortunate result of that is that players regularly don't live up to the expectations of the fans. I'm getting worried that TO is going to be one of those players that dissapoints. I think he'll have a really good season here, but he's not the top 10 WR that he has been for his entire career. The fanpost about Steve Johnson supplanting Reed in the slot got me thinking about this. If Reed's drops are still fresh in peoples' memories, then what are they going to do when TO starts dropping a ball every other week? Here is a stat for you: TO has dropped 35 passes over the last three seasons. It's easy to rip on someone like Braylon Edwards for his struggles last year, but he only dropped a few more passes last year than TO drops every season.

And to continue on TO, what kind of production are people really expecting? Dallas threw the ball at TO 140 times last year. It was the 8th most of any WR. For the sake of camparison, Buffalo threw at Evans 102 times. TO caught 69 passes which is actually a pretty pathetic 50% catch rate. That basically means that dropping 10 passes per season is bad news and that Dallas forced some balls at Owens. The WR with the next most catches to also have a rate lower than 50% was Braylon Edwards and his 55 catches. What are the odds that TO goes the whole season without complaining about not getting the ball enough? My guess is somewhere around 1 in 4.

I don't want to sound pessimistic about TO because I thought the signing was the perfect decision. So I'll throw out some things to be excited about: Lee Evans is the obvious one. Teams are going to have to play a lot of two deep zone or else they are really going to be relying on the FS to cover more ground than most guys can handle. As long as Trent can read those safeties and is willing to trust his instinct and take some shots downfield, Evans could have more big plays than ever. The next thing to be excited about is that Terrell Owens has the single greatest middle name ever. I'll give you 1,000 guesses ..... Nope it's Eldorado. How awesome is that? And the best thing about TO is TDs. TO can beat you on every route in the playbook and his big physical frame and style make him the perfect addition for a team that has really struggled in the red zone.

I know it's early for fantasy football, but after looking at Yahoo's rankings, I'm already worried about how to rank the top 25 or so players this year. I'm in a very deep, very competitive money league with some friends. It's a touchdown league and we start 2 QBs, so they go really fast. When you figure that there are 7 QBs who should go really high in my league (Brees, Manning, Brady, Romo, Warner, Rivers, Rodgers), 4 STUD WRs (Fitz, Moss, A.Johnson, C.Johnson) and 15 or so RBs that could be put in a million different orders, I'm already sweating out the first few rounds of the draft. Is Tomlinson in the top 3 or out of the top 10? Is Peterson really worth the number one pick? DeAngelo Williams had 20 TDs last year? What about time share guys like Chris Johnson? Can Steve Slaton or Jones-Drew hold up to a full season at their size? These rankings might literally push me over the edge into insanity.

The trend for hiring head coaches has been to go with the hot coordinator. But so many teams have done that, there aren't many names left out there. I'm sure we will see some former HCs get some jobs next offseason, but I'll throw Leslie Frazier's name out there as my guess as to who the Bills will hire if Jauron can't do better than 7-9 again.

Alright Rumblers, there's a lot in there and I know you've all got some thoughts. We've got little else to talk about for the next few weeks, so let's hear what you're thinking.

Who did better, me or the Bills?

kaisertown — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:41:43 -0000

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.

I thoughts the Pats did an awesome job. It makes me hate them even more.

On the flip side, I didn't like KC's draft or Denver's all that much. I would actually go as far to say that I think KC's draft might have been worse than Oakland's. I think it becomes more clear every year that Belichick is light years ahead of the rest of the league in evaluation, schemes and philosophy and that even includes the coaches and front office people that he surrounds himself with.

I'm sure there are some people claiming that Maybin isn't a good fit in a 4-3, but the right defensive end spot in this defense is designed to specifically limit the run stopping responsibilities. One of the goals of the scheme is to protect the RDE. On run downs the job of the right defensive end is to cover the gap to the outisde of the left tackle. As a speed rusher that also happens to be the same place that Maybin would be heading on pass plays. If the run is to the outisde of the LT than the RDE's first option is to make the tackle (something that Schobel has excelled at), but if Maybin's explosion off the snap can force the RB to go back inside than it would also be considered a successful job. The RDE could also just string the run outside as far as possible and leave the CB or FS to make the tackle near the sideline. Maybin will typically line up so far outside the LT that an offense can't really try to run right at him. The LT will have a really tough time trying to square up on Maybin and drive him in a way where he isn't covering his gap. Even if the LT gets a great push on Maybin, but pushes him outisde and creates that hole between himself and the LG, then it isn't Maybin's responsibility anymore and Kawika Mitchell will be the guy making the tackle.

I loved the Bills draft except for that one little ommission of a left tackle. It doesn't make sense to me that Buffalo would draft a building block type player in Maybin, but would then do something as short sighted as assuming Walker can play LT this year and that Bell can be the guy in the future. Buffalo ends up in a pretty tight spot if Walker can't handle the position. How do they set up the OL if you have to move Walker back to RT?

Onto my mock:
Here's a quick recap of what I did:

I traded Peters to Philly for the 28th pick and the 4th pick in the 5th round (141). Since the Bills got more than that, I just threw in Philly's 7th rounder (230) as well. I also traded Roscoe Parrish to KC for their 5 round pick (139).

I retained all the same players that Buffalo did except for Corey McIntyre and some other minor players and let all the same players leave other than Angelo Crowell who I gave a solid contract to. I cut Chris Kelsay and signed Hangartner, Houshmandzadeh, Charlie Batch, Keiwan Ratliff, Jason Babin, Jeremy Newberry and Michael Pittman. So with similiar needs to the Bills, I drafted:

11 - Michael Oher - I really thought this should have been an obvious pick and I would bet that the Bills are looking for a new LT next offseason.

28 - Everette Brown - I was prepared to reach a little on Connor Barwin or even Michael Johnson, but got rather lucky. How did he last as long as he did? At least Carolina gave up their first rounder next year which reassured my belief that he was truly a first round prospect.

42 - Jarron Gilbert - I stayed true to my mock from a few weeks ago and went Oher, best DE, Gilbert. Jarron is mostly a DT on my squad and gives us an instant pass rusher from the inside as well as someone who can be slid outside on short yardage plays. The selection of Gilbert and the presense of Spencer Johnson also lets me ignore replacing Kelsay. Denney will start at LDE with Gilbert, Johnson and even Chris Ellis and/or Jason Babin seeing time situationally.

75 - Shawn Nelson - I was surprised to see him here in the third round. Who woulda thunk he could've been picked 35 spots later? With all the TEs still on the board, I considered waiting a round, but I thought there was a decent dropoff after Nelson and Chase Coffman.

110 - Chip Vaughn - A sliding Duke Robinson or Tyronne Greene was almost the pick, but I figured there was enough depth there to take a player in Vaughn, who like many fellow Rumblers, I really believe in.

139 - Duke Robinson - In the pick I got for Roscoe, I take a player who I don't like very much, but provides good value. I'm very comfortable with a Chambers/Robinson competition at RG with Butler starting at LG.

141 - Marcus Freeman - LB isn't a need with Crowell coming back, but like Robinson, Freeman has great value at this point in the draft. This is the second pick that I got from Philly and am quite happy with a return of Brown and Freeman with a 7th rounder still to come.

147 - Coye Francies - Another value pick. I'll take a gamble on the inexperienced player with size, speed and upside over Victor Harris who I also considered. With Keiwan Ratliff and Reggie Corner as the 4/5 CBs, Francies might push a good player off the roster or force me to keep 6 CBs.

183 - A.Q. Shipley - Shipley should be a great backup center for his career. Not the sexiest pick, but an interior offensive lineman was a need and this late in the draft any remaining need had to be addressed with this pick.

220 - Brannan Southerland - one of my biggest regrets was being unable to add a great FB. Luckily, I was able to take Southerland who went undrafted. Considering he's the only FB on my roster, he is essentially a lock to make the team and that alone makes me happy with the pick.

230 - Kory Sheets - Michael Pittman isn't exactly reliable at age 34 so Sheets could be a necessity if Jackson misses any time when Lynch is suspended.

I also grabbed some players after the draft to fill out my 80 man, training camp roster. This is always tough because you have to be able to not just grab all the best players and try to be somewhat realistic. I did cheat some and end up with a far better list than Buffalo will actually be able to pull off. So after all that, here are the 60ish players who are most likely to make my final 53 man roster:

QB - Trent Edwards - Charlie Batch - Gibran Hamdan
RB - Marshawn Lynch - Fred Jackson - Michael Pittman - Kory Sheets - Xavier Omon - Bruce Hall
FB - Brannan Southerland - Travis McCall(ufa)
TE - Derek Fine - Shawn Nelson - Derek Schouman - Jonathon Stupar - Travis McCall(ufa)
WR - Lee Evans - TJ Houshmandzadeh - Josh Reed - James Hardy - Steve Johnson - Justin Jenkins - Felton Huggins
LT - Michael Oher - Demetrius Bell
LG - Brad Butler - Chambers/Robinson
OC - Geoff Hangartner - Jeremy Newberry - A.Q. Shipley
RG - Chambers/Robinson
RT - Langston Walker

RDE - Aaron Schobel - Everette Brown - Chris Ellis - Jason Babin
LDE - Ryan Denney - Zach Potter(ufa)
DT - Marcus Stroud - Kyle Williams - Jarron Gilbert - Spencer Johnson - John McCargo
OLB - Kawika Mitchell - Angelo Crowell - Keith Ellison - Marcus Freeman - Blake Costanzo - Ace Bowen - Jon Corto - Marcus Buggs
MLB - Paul Posluszny - John DiGiorgio - Kelvin Smith
CB - Terrance McGee - Leodis McKelvin - Ashton Youboty - Reggie Corner - Keiwan Ratliff - Coye Francies
SS - Bryan Scott - Chip Vaughn
FS - Donte Whitner - Ko Simpson - George Wilson - John Wendling

Poll

Who had the better offseason?

You did. The LT, DE and DT in the draft as well as Housh can be both early contributers and a core to continue to build for the future

18 votes

Buffalo. Give me Maybin, TO and the new guards and leave the work to the actual professionals

128 votes

146 votes | Poll has closed

A bunch of quick (for me) thoughts followed by a mock draft

kaisertown — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:44:55 -0000

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.

Let me try to explain why Peters' trade value is so low if he won't come down off his contract demands like this: If Buffalo just cut Peters and he was available to any team without having to give up compensation, how many teams would actually sign him to the contract he wants? So if teams are barely willing to do that, then why would any team give up a first round pick AND other pick(s) to sign Peters to a huge contract? Buffalo better hope that Peters' demands go down with a trade (I think they will).

I know a lot of people would like our defense to be more like Philly or the Giants, but both of those teams had more sacks from their defensive ends than Buffalo did as a team. Both the Giants and Eagles get 62% or more of their sacks from their DEs (Buffalo's 35% is pretty easily the lowest percentage of every 4-3 team). So in my opinion, drafting say, Clay Matthews, makes Buffalo's defense look less and less like NY or Philly.

Speaking of Philly, we really should model our DL after them. They have two established pass rush threats who can handle their duties as run stoppers, but are pass rush first guys. Trent Cole weighs an impressive 270 pounds, but he is an all-out get after the QB guy with 30 sacks in his last 3 seasons. Darren Howard weighs 260 and had 10 sacks last year. They then supplement those two with situational guys. Juqua Parker weighs 250 and has had 5 or more sacks 3 years in a row. Despite the presence of those 3 players, Philly still went out last offseason and gave 15 mil to Chris Clemons, a 240 pound speed rusher who had 4 sacks last season after having 8 as a situational guy in Oakland 2 years ago. Buffalo really needs to revamp their entire group of DEs if they ever want to have a dominant defense. A LB simply isn't going to impact the game enough to change the overall look of this defense.

If I'm drafting for Buffalo then I'm putting an emphasis on defense for a reason that we havn't really talked about yet. Special teams. Buffalo has by far the best punt return group in the NFL. They averaged a league best 15.5 yards per punt return last year. Oakland came in at 2nd with 13 yards per return while Houston and New Orleans both avereaged about 12. Only 7 other teams even averaged 10. With that big of an advantage a team that forces our opponents to punt from inside their own 40 more could help put more points on the board without addressing the offense as much. Last season, Buffalo only returned 30 punts. Only 6 teams had less than 29 returns while the leader, Philly, had 52. Don't blame the Tampa 2 either because the 2nd most PRs were by Tampa Bay and their 47 and that was in a very strong offensive division too. Just stop for a second and imagine how much better this team could be with Roscoe or McKelvin getting an extra punt return per game (not fair catch, actual return).

Here is one more reason to trade Peters (or at least one more reason for us fans to hope the team trades Peters). If the Bills end up with a coaching change next offseason (which we can all agree is very possible, if not very likely), then not paying Peters, letting TO and Denney leave and making some cuts like one (or both) of our other 30something DEs, maybe Walker, maybe Spencer Johnson and who knows who else could put this team into position to have a huge offseason. If this team trades Peters and has a solid draft, I think a new coaching staff could come in and have the roster flexibility and money to instill any new type of scheme they want and bring in their kinds of players immediately. I think this roster could be turned over in just one offseason and Buffalo could start competing immediately while still building for the future.

In my mock offseason, I traded Peters to Philly for the 28th pick and the 4th pick in the 5th round, so for this mock draft, I will do that again.

11 - Michael Oher - no explanation should be necessary

28 - Connor Barwin - Immediate pass rush contributer with the upside to be an every down RE in just a season or two. He also has plenty of schematic versatility, which I would be drafting for If I were the GM and got final say over a potentially soon to be fired Jauron. Michael Johnson and Larry English would also be options here if Barwin was off the board. I would have to be pretty confident that one of those three would still be available with our second round pick to not go DE with this pick.

RD2 - Jarron Gilbert - I would use him as a true one gap DT who can provide pressure on pass plays, take Stroud out of the game for a few extra plays (did anyone think Stroud played too many snaps last season?), make the overpaid Spencer Johnson expendable after this season, play DE in short yardage situations and/or a third DT for short yardage/goaline and he also offers that long term upside and schematic versatility that I would be looking for.

RD3 - Tyrone McKenzie - I'm not sure if he can take Ellison off the field in year one, but I like his upside and just think he is one of the few best players available at this point regardless of position.

RD4 - I'm praying that a TE I still like is available. I think one of Beckum or Casey is still here and I grab him. I'm a big fan of Casey and I think he has a higher floor than the other non-Pettigrew TEs, while still having the potential that guys like Beckum and Ingram have. If nobody is left then I'm taking the best interior OL player available.

RD5 - Best G or C available. I'll be honest and say that I don't know if that will be Tyronne Green, Louis Vasquez, Cornelius Lewis, Greg Isdaner, AQ Shipley, Edwin Williams or whoever. I'm pretty comfortable with Chambers starting so I'm not afraid to wait on a guard. If I went OG in round 4, then I'm probably settling for a blocking first TE like Anthony Hill with this pick.

RD5 - Best G or C available .... again. I am making sure that at least one of these two played center in college and can back up Hangartner.

RD6 - There are some intruiging late round safeties that I would look into here. I would consider FS Trimane Goddard and see if his 7 INTs last season were for real. To be honest, I don't really view either safety spot as a bigger need than the other right now, so I'm just taking the best available safety and that player is likely a FS. I just think you find more late round gems with the smaller ballhawk types than you do with the bigger in the box guys this late in the draft.

RD7 - Slade Norris, Oregon St. I'm hoping the 245 pound DE is still available here and I'm hoping to stash him on the practice squad and tell him to work on strength, but to not bother trying to get bigger. I would like to see Buffalo keep a 5th DE who they can use solely as a pass rush specialist (like Copeland Bryan is supposed to be) at some point. Slade is a bad-ass name and his 19 sacks over the last two years are just as bad-ass.

phase one of my mock offseason

kaisertown — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:54:42 -0000

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.

Next thing I'm going to do is trade Jason Peters. I know this sounds like insanity to many of you and I agreed for the longest time, but after Jordan Gross got 10 mil a year, I think Peters isn't worth the investment. I know that leaves me with 3 offensive line spots that need to be filled, but it also leaves me with lots and lots of money to fill those spots as well as an extra pick or two to fill some of the holes with. I'm trading him to Philly who thinks they can win now, won't have to pay Peters too much more than they were going to give Tra Thomas anyways and has an extra first round pick. Is it reasonable to think that you could get the 28th overall pick and Philly's first 5th round pick (5th pick in the round) for Peters? I tend to be conservative with speculation like this, but I think that sounds about right.

So that leaves Buffalo's roster and the money we owe them in 2009 looking like this:

QB
Trent Edwards - .6

RB
Marshawn Lynch - 3.0
Xavier Omon - .4

WR
Lee Evans - 9.0
Josh Reed - 2.6
James Hardy - .4
Steve Johnson - .4

TE
Derek Fine - .4

OL
Brad Butler - 1.5
Langston Walker - 4.0
Demetrius Bell - .4

DE
Aaron Schobel - 4.0
Ryan Denney - 3.1
Chris Ellis - .4

DT
Marcus Stroud - 5.0
Kyle Williams - 2.5
Spencer Johnson - 3.5
John McCargo - .9

LB
Paul Posluszny - .6
Kawika Mitchell - 3.5
Ace Bowen - .4

CB
Terrence McGee - 3.0
Ashton Youboty - .5
Leodis McKelvin - 3.0
Reggie Corner - .4

S
Donte Whitner - 4.0
Bryan Scott - .8
Ko Simpson - .5
John Wendling - .5

ST
Rian Lindell - 1.2
Brian Moorman - 1.2

total - 61.7

ERFA
Matt Baker
Fred Jackson
Derek Schouman
Copeland Bryan
Blake Costanzo
Jon Corto
Ryan Neill
Jonathon Stupar
Bruce Hall
Corey Mace
Chris Denman
C.J. Hawthorne
Felton Huggins
Brandon Rodd
Marcus Buggs
Vince Hall
Mike Jefferson
Marcus Smith

RFA
Gibran Hamdan
Justin Jenkins
John DiGiorgio
Keith Ellison
George Wilson
Dustin Fox

UFA
Kirk Chambers
Melvin Fowler
Duke Preston
JP Losman
Jason Whittle
Angelo Crowell
Jabari Greer
Corey McIntyre
Jonathon Scott
Teddy Lehman

So I have Buffalo at 61.7 million cash to cap dollars on the books. Buffalo spent 113 mil last year on player salaries and bonuses and that was about league average. It looks like Buffalo will spend a little more this year than last year so I'm capping myself off at 120 mil.

I'm actually going to bring 80 players into camp like they do in the NFL. So first up is RFAs and obviously there is a lot of guess work as to what these guys would or wouldn't accept, but I think my offers are pretty fair.

Keith Ellison - I'm not giving him or DiGi tenders, instead I'm going to try and lock them up on the cheap for multiple seasons. I am signing Ellison to a three year contract that pays him 1.1 mil per season. The contract would give him 600K in base salary this year and a 700K signing bonus and 1 mil in salary in 2010 and 2011.

John Digiorgio - 2 year contract that gives him a 400K signing bonus with 500K in first year salary and 900K his second year.

George Wilson gets the million dollar RFA tender that gives me the right to match any offer and I feel safe assuming that no team is actually going to try and sign Wilson away.

I'm letting Hamdan and Jenkins become UFAs. I would bring them back very early into FA on cheap one year contracts. 600K for each sounds like the best offer they could get from someone else.

Dustin Fox can walk. I might bring him back after the draft as camp filler.

I am offering the league minimum to every ERFA other than Jackson and Baker. I'm giving Jackson a long term contract and I won't be offering Baker a contract at all. So (by my best guess) that ends up looking like this:

460K for Derek Schouman, Copeland Bryan, Ryan Neill and Corey Mace. 460K isn't a fun number to round, but i'll just round up to 500K

385K for Blake Costanzo, Jon Corto, Jonathan Stupar, Bruce Hall, Chris Denman and Marcus Buggs. I'll round those contracts up to 400K

290K for CJ Hawthorne, Felton Huggins, Brandon Rodd, Vince Hall, Mike Jefferson and Marcus Smith. These contracts get rounded up to 300K

Fred Jackson gets a 5 year, 14 mil contract. I know I said I would never give him that type of money, but I'm setting it up like an extension more than a new contract. Jackson gets a nice bonus now to keep him happy (4 mil signing bonus, 3 of which I will pay upfront and I will give him the last mil next offseason) and really cheap salaries for a few seasons and some big ones that we can avoid by cutting him down the road. So the cash to cap money that I would owe Jackson would look like: 2009 - 3.5 mil, 2010 - 1.5 mil, 2011 - 1.5 mil, 2012 - 3 mil, 2013 - 3.5 mil.

The UFAs that I'm just letting walk without a second thought are Melvin Fowler, Duke Preston, JP Losman, Jason Whittle, Jabari Greer (too expensive), Corey McIntyre and Jonathon Scott. I'm letting Teddy Lehman experience some free agency as well, but I might bring him back at some point to be roster filler if somebody doesn't beat me to it.

I'm going to handle Crowell a lot like the Bills are going to handle him. I want to see just how much I would have to pay him to get him back, but I would guess there is an 80% chance or better that I bring Crowell back to start on the strong side. It just makes too much sense not to do it.

Kirk Chambers is getting offered a 3 year, 5.5 mil contract. If Buffalo gives him a bigger deal then that, I will reconsider. For now, I feel like that is about what Buffalo will give him. The cash to cap values would look like: 2009 - 2.5, 2010 - 1.5 mil, 2011 - 1.5 mil

That leaves me with these cash to cap additions to my roster:

Ellison - 1.3
DiGiorgio - .9
Wilson - 1.0
Hamdan - .6
Jenkins - .6
Jackson - 3.5
Chambers - 2.5
Schouman - .5
Neill - .5

I'm also estimating 15 mil in cash to cap money that will have to go to signing the draft picks. I have 9 picks and 41 players under contract. So I can assume that I won't have many (if any) players who I havn't accounted for cash to cap wise (guys like Costanzo, Bryan, Huggins etc...) make the team. That means I have already used about 88 of my 115-120 mil. And you can also see how I think that Buffalo has very little money to spend this offseason in the real, non-mock world.

So now comes the fun part. How am i going to spend my 30 mil in UFA.

The first thing I would have done would have happened this afternoon when I signed former Dolphin LB and Syracuse grad Kelvin Smith to a nice cheap contract and let him compete for a roster spot. 1 year 500K with a nice little 30K signing bonus would bring him into camp.

I'm going after TJ Houshmandzadeh hard. We will have to wait and see what kind of deal he ends up signing, but I wouldn't mind going over 10 mil per season and I wouldn't mind giving him way more years than he deserves to get. I plan on just beating whatever contract he ends on signing. It's tough to give a guy like him an actual contract without, you know, actually negotiating and hearing what other teams are offering.

My other sizeable first day signing is Geoff Hangartner. I really like the idea of Buffalo bringing in a versatile player like Hangartner who can play either center or guard and go into the draft knowing that you can grab someone early from either position to compete for a starting spot. My initial offer to Hangartner would be 5 years, 18 mil and I would definitely be willing to top an offer from a different team as well.

Jason Babin could be a nice fit here as a stop-gap role player. He has been traded and/or cut a few times over the last few seasons, but he played well when the Chiefs got desperate late in the season. He is a former first round pick too. I would give him a decent contract and pretty much guarantee him that he makes the roster here and that is more than most teams will be willing to do. I would give him a 2 year deal worth 3 mil.

I'm assuming that the three contracts I end up giving out to Housh, Hangartner and Babin end up costing me about 20-25 mil in cash to cap money this season. That only leaves me with enough cash to sign some fringy vets for depth. This is something I'm going to be doing over time leading up to the season, but here are some of my front runners for various roles:

I'm open to a number of different QBs. Batch tops my list, but anyone who I can get really cheap will do including Joey Harrington, Ryan Fitzpatrick or even Chris Simms or Patrick Ramsey.

I'm waiting on third RB until after the draft. I'll probably settle for someone who is pretty bad, but I just don't think a 3rd RB is much of a priority. I wouldn't rule out drafting one in the later rounds to compete with Omon either.

I'm calling the agent of every FB available. I don't really have money to spend on one though, so I either have to find someone that nobody else is interested in or grab one in the draft.

Grabbing a blocking TE in FA is something to consider. A guy like Will Heller could be a nice addition at the right price. This would probably lead to me drafting a good receiving TE and keep 4 on the roster. Schouman might end up inactive most weeks, but then again, I've never really been a fan of his.

I'm definitely signing a CB at some point. Keiwan Ratliff seems like a nice option. Reynaldo Hill and former Bill, Eric King would be pretty cheap options too. I younger vet like Daven Holly or Eric Green would be great options too if I can get them cheap enough.

And a quick mock draft to end this ridiculously long post:
11 - Michael Oher
28 - Michael Johnson
rd 2 - Eric Wood
rd 3 - Chase Coffman

Pat Kirwan has Jabari Greer as the 19th best FA available

kaisertown — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:13:33 -0000

Pat Kirwan has Jabari Greer as the 19th best FA available

It's a list that gets ugly pretty quickly. Anyone want to speculate where Dockery would have ranked had he been cut a day earlier? He has to be in the top 40 if not much higher. There's a couple surprises in there and it is worth skimming through if nothing else.

Some Thoughts

kaisertown — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:50:30 -0000

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:

Salary increases:

Chris Kelsay from 1.4 to 3.0

Aaron Schobel 1.5 - 3.0

Marcus Stroud 3.0 - 3.5

Donte Whitner .5 - 2.4

Brian Moorman .75 - 1.25

Langston Walker 2.0 - 3.0

Derrick Dockery 1.5 - 2.75

That's just 7 veterans, but they receive a combined 8.25 mil in salary increases from last season. Obviously cutting Kelsay would help, but that it is a pretty substantial increase without him too. This is obviously the problem with handing out big contracts to average players. The contracts are always signing bonus heavy with team friendly salaries early and as the salaries escalate each season you have money that just kind of dissappears from year to year.

Money coming off the books:

Duke Preston - about 1 mil

Melvin Fowler - 1.775

Jason Whittle - .7

JP Losman - .65

Jabari Greer - .7

Kawika Mitchell - 3.5 mil in signing bonuses and salary

Roscoe Parrish - about 1.5 mil in roster bonuses and salary

Kyle Williams - about 2.7 mil in signing/roster bonuses and salary

Spencer Johnson also has a mystery of a contract, but you can assume that he got some signing bonus money last year that will be available to spend this year. It's 12.5 mil coming off the books in addition to any relief that Johnson's contract brings.

If the Bills had been planning on throwing all that money Evans' way during the season (I think its safe to assume they were), then that is another 2.5 mil coming off the books. So by this very questionable method, it looks like the Bills don't have enough money to sign multiple quality free agents and extend Peters. I'm guessing the Bills give Peters his new deal, sign one new starter who comes with a good sized, but nowhere near superstar pricetag and sign one or two solid backup/rotational/role type of players.

Would anyone be interested in doing our own organized, realistic and fairly detailed mock offseasons? I did one in real time last year out of boredom and curiousity. I decided to do it a day or two into free agency, but what we would do is decide which current Bills to resign and offer tenders to our own RFAs. We would actually have to come up with contract offers ie: 6 years, 30 mil, 12 mil signing bonus for Greer and if he signs for a similiar contract in FA then you get him at that deal. If he gets a good amount more you would have to decide whether to beat that offer or let him go, but if he gets a contract for less, then too bad, you overpaid (the Bills don't get contract offer muligans, we shouldn't either). We would pick a dollar number that we have to sign free agents and try to work within a real budget. And then, the tough part do a real time shadow draft. When the Bills are on the clock so are you. It makes it really tough to put together an entire draft, one pick is easy or doing a mock draft before hand for every round is easy, but I really struggled in my shadow draft last year.

As an example, here is what my offseason for the Bills looked like last year: I started after the Stroud and Mitchell moves and I liked them so I kept them. I was smart enough to address FB and TE in free agency by giving Tony Richardson a two year deal for a little more a season then the Jets gave him and Ben Utecht for a similiar deal to what he got in Cinci. I traded Losman to KC for a 6th round pick (I honestly think that is all he could've fetched), but was dumb enough to sign Quinn Gray as my backup. I let Whittle and Bryan Scott (stupid I know) leave, but retained Coy Wire. Here is how my draft went last year if anyone is interested:

1 - Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie

2 - Jerome Simpson - I guess I went a little potential overboard with my first two picks

3 - Jeremy Zuttah - I figured he could essentially back up every OL spot and be the eventual replacement at center. My guess is he would've replaced Fowler/Preston at some point during the season.

4 - Dre Moore - I didn't sign Spencer Johnson so I was really counting on McCargo and Moore to be a part of the rotation. Moore didn't even make Tampa's roster out of training camp.

4 - Owen Schmitt - I was calling for him with the 4th round comp pick all offseason just like 3/4 of this blog was

5 - Marcus Howard - I would have preferred a more well rounded DE, but I liked Howard's upside and potential immediate contributions better than the Chris Harrington type of players who were left I guess I should've taken Trevor Scott though.

6 - Gary Guyton - No clue how he went undrafted. Great size speed combo and was productive in college. He was the top performer in 6 speed and agility related drills of the linebackers at the combine at 245 pounds. Go figure he made the Pats opening game roster.

6 - Chauncey Washington. I felt good drafting a RB once the Bills did the same thing. I mostly just thought it was a value pick.

7 - Brandon Keith - Huge RT who made Arizona's 53 man roster. I guess Bell would have been a better pick though.

7 - Adrian Arrington - 3 picks in a row where I took the same position as Buffalo. it was weird. Johnson is another player who the Bills did a better job taking then I did.

7 - Derek Lokey - I was a little surprised nobody grabbed the hustle guy earlier in the 7th.

So is anyone interested in doing something like that this offseason? We could throw up a fanpost a couple of days before free agency to put our contract offers up and another fanpost during or after the draft to put up who we drafted. It's funny to look back after a full season and feel smarter than NFL GMs by drafting Guyton, signing Richardson and thinking that Coy Wire still had something left in the tank and then feel like an idiot for drafting Moore (who I loved), not resigning Bryan Scott, not finding something that even resembled a backup QB etc..... I even took like 70 players into training camp and made my own 53 man roster and 8 man practice squad. If we wanted to get really crazy we could try to keep our teams and do it again next offseason.

And now to finish with some random thoughts. I was wrong about Baltimore playing their CBs off the line as often as Buffalo does. I guess they were just playing it conservatve because they had the lead and Pennington had some bigs plays against them in the regular season. Baltimore still plays their CBs way off the line more than any Fewell hater likes to believe though. And after paying attention to it in the playoffs, I think every team I watched had their guys 8 yards off the line 50% of the time or more often then that.

I think Fewell's biggest problem is how unimaginative his blitzes are. I hate one man blitzes and 5 man rushes. If your going to be conservative be conservative. If your going to be aggressive and blitz, then throw multiple rushers at the QB. Our blitzes almost never work because they aren't creative, but they also stink because we don't have any great pass rushers anywhere. We don't have DEs who can take advantage of one on one matchups that blitzes create, Poz is a terrible blitzer and Mitchell is good, but not nearly good enough to beat an offensive lineman when we only blitz one and the line picks it up. I know blitzing defensive backs is only effective because the offense doesn't expect it, but we can blitz a safety or corner a couple more times a game without getting anywhere near predictable.

I think Whitner would be a great centerfielder if we could get a pass rush. I think the best way to create a great defense is to have great DEs (or a blitzing scheme, same difference for me) and have a stud safety who can sit back and play cover 1. I also think Whitner had a good year in 2007 when the Bills had to play him up in the box because their run defense was so bad. I think Whitner really struggles in that area between. He is a pretty average run defender in open space (which does make a lot of players look pretty average), he isn't a ballhawk in intermediate coverage and never makes plays and he is pretty mediocre in man coverage too. I think if Buffalo could make him a true in the box strong safety by finding a great centerfielder (Taylor Mays?) then he can be a really solid player. I also think if Buffalo miraculously finds a pass rush, then he could be a really solid cover 1 player and an above average FS. I think Whitner needs a more defined role, he isn't special enough (or special at all) to excel in a role where the team asks him to do everything.

Why does everyone think Poz will be better as an outside linebacker? Is it his great athleticism that will cause him to make great plays in pursuit? Is it his great coverage and ball hawking skills that will lead to big plays? Is he some kind of great blitzer that will make big plays moving forwards? Poz is best suited for the middle where he can use his his best ability, his head along with his solid tackling and solid ability to stick with the play despite traffic. I thought Poz was our best linebacker this year and one of the better players on our entire defense. Maybe thats just me though.

And I will finish with something to give all the Jauron haters some hope. Over the course of his career, when DJ's QB plays well, his teams win games. Some people might remember this stat I put up about the AFC East and team's records when the QB plays well. I define the QB playing well as a yards per pass attempt of 7 or higher and turning it over less than 3 times (via INT or fumble). I have added a mediocre category of 6-7 yards per pass attempt and still less than 3 turnovers and of course, the bad category of less than 6 yards per pass attempt and 3 or more turnovers. Here is how the AFC East did when their QBs played good, mediocre and bad:

good ------ mediocre ------bad

New England - 10-1 ----- 1-0 -------- 0-4

Miami ---------- 7-3 ------ 3-0 -------- 1-2

New York ----- 7-1 ------- 1-2 -------1-4

Buffalo --------7-0 ------ 0-1 ----------0-8

In Buffalo Jauron is 17-2 when his QB has a good game, 3-6 when his QB is mediocre and 1-19 when his QB plays bad. That means that under Jauron, Buffalo's QBs have averaged under 6 yards per pass attempt or turned the ball over 3 times in a game a ridiculous 20 times! Ryan Fitzpatrick and Derek Anderson were the only QBs in the league this year who had enough attempts to qualify to average under 6 yards per attempt. Cleo Lemon and Brodie Croyle were in the 5s in 2007 and Joey Harrington and Bruce Gradkowski were the only 2 in 2006. Under 6 yards per attempt is pathetic. Our QB play over the last decade has been pathetic and is the biggest reason (by far, like by really, really, really far) that this team has been in rebuilding mode all these years. If Trent can play like he did at times this season with some consistency then maybe Jauron can show all the haters that he can win in this league. I think Jauron is a pretty average coach (at best), but to lay all the problems at his feet and assume that the results of this team would be any better with another guy leading practice and calling the shots with JP Losman, a rookie Trent or turnover machine Trent is delusional.

Alex Mack Scouting Report

kaisertown — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:35:35 -0000

Alex Mack Scouting Report

Scott Wright and NFLDraftCountdown.com put up his scouting report for California center, Alex Mack. He obviously says very good things about him, but like me doesn't seem to be all that blown away with him.

I think as the draft approaches you will hear fewer and fewer "best center in 10 years" type of comments from respected scouts. He is a legit first round guy, but it should be an excellent debate right up until the draft as to whether or not he really is worthy of the 11th selection.

My thoughts on the game and our reactions

kaisertown — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:00:54 -0000

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.

special teams tackles

kaisertown — Wed, 28 May 2008 05:12:45 -0000

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.

I first noticed the difference today when Brian put up his state of the ILB thing. He noted Costanzo's special teams ability, which I didn't think he had and went to check out his stats, hopeful that I would find out how many special teams tackles he has. Turns out Brian was right, Costanzo had 6 or 7 ST tackles. Here's where it got tricky for me. buffalobills.com stats page doesn't award Costanzo with a single tackle. I then noticed that Stamer only has 1 recorded tackle and Wendling doesn't have any. Clearly buffalobills.com stats page only includes tackles made while playing D.

My next move was to click back on my internet explorer and check NFL.com's stats for the Bills. Costanzo was awarded 6 tackles, but he was only listed at 6'1. I remembered the Bills website lists him at 6'2 so I went back to check and ended up reading his bio where it says that he had 7 ST tackles this season. So Brian was in fact, very right. Costanzo had 6 or 7 tackles in only 3 games last season. And to go further off subject for a moment, I was curious as to how tall Costanzo really is (not that it matters) and he weighed and measured in at 224 pounds and a touch under 6 feet tall at his Lafayette pro day. I guess its pretty obvious now why he didn't get drafted. I'm sure he does weigh the 235 pounds that he is listed at (it's been 3 years since his pro day), but I doubt he has grown 2 inches.

After some more looking around, the player bios at buffalobills.com award Ryan Neill with 14 ST tackles, Jenkins with 8 and Wendling with an absurd 24 ST tackles. NFL.com only has Neill with 10 tackles and Wendling with 10 tackles, but it gives Jenkins 9 tackles. Are these numbers just completely off? Am I wasting valuable sleep time reading into typos and made up stats?

SI/CNN has a very detailed stats page so I went over there to see how many times the Bills punted and kicked off in an attempt to determine how many ST tackles the team as a whole had.

Moorman mishit a few punts, but looking at his overall numbers I no longer think he had a down year. He punted the ball 81 times, but only 3 of those resulted in a touchback. The opposing teams only managed to return 37 of Moorman's 81 punts. Lindell had 65 kickoffs. 56 were returned, one of which for a TD. That leaves 55 ST tackles on KOs and 37 on punts. The Bills should have about 92 special teams tackles.

I'm immediately dismissing the bios on bills.com from now on. To assume that Wendling had 24 ST tackles doesn't make any sense. Are they possibly giving him a tackle every time the opposition fair catches a punt and he is the closest Bills player? After some more looking over of the bios, it says that Ryan Neill had 3 tackles on defense. That can't be right and on thier stats page it only gives Neill 1 tackle. The bios must be puffery and useless info and nothing more.

I'm assuming that you can tell how many special teams tackles the Bills players had by finding the difference between the tackles bills.com and nfl.com have awarded. Here are the differences for everyone who had more than a 1 tackle seperation (I counted an assist as a half a tackle so that the total comes out near 92):

John Wendling - 10
Ryan Neill - 8.5
Justin Jenkins - 8 (7 solo and 2 assists)
Josh Stamer - 8 (7 solo and 2 assists)
Mario Haggan - 6.5
Anthony Hargrove - 6.5
Blake Costanzo - 6
Rian Lindell - 3.5
Sam Aiken - 3.5
Bryan Scott - 3.5
Leon Joe - 3.5
Coy Wire - 3
Jim Leonhard - 3
Dwayne Wright - 3
Ryan Neufeld - 2.5

Butler, Fox, Youboty and Thomas all had 2 and there were a bunch of players with 1 tackle as the only recorded difference between buffalobills.com and nfl.com. Ignoring the players who only had one ST tackle the total number of ST tackles I found was 87. Considering that offensive players could have recorded a tackle on a lost fumble or INT, the tackle numbers were exactly what I was hoping for and I am confident they are VERY close to being correct.

So after all that, it seems like a good idea to discuss my outlook on the 2008 Bills special teams coverage units (I think that was my whole point of writing this, but I'm not sure anymore). Buffalo will return both of their punt gunners assuming that Wendling and Jenkins make the team. Personally I think that is a near lock, so I believe our punt coverage could even be a little better than it was last year. That is pretty impressive considering the Bills allowed a league best 5.3 yards per punt return last season. I think punt gunning is MUCH more specialized than kick coverage, so I am not at all concerned about the loss of Stamer, Haggan and Hargrove. Considering how well Costanzo did last season along with the moderate success of players like Leon Joe, I think the Bills can find replacements. Bryan Scott has the size/speed combo you look for in a ST ace. Linebackers are tailer made for special teams, so Ace Bowen, Keith Ellison, John DiGiorgio and any other LBs that make the team (Costanzo, Jon Banks, Marcus Buggs) are all possibilities. New offensive additions Darian Barnes, Mike Viti and Derek Fine are all candidates. Chris Ellis should be able to fill Hargrove's role and Will James, Ko Simpson, George Wilson and Youboty are a little undersized for kick coverage, but could all fill a role as well. I'm pretty confident that Bobby April can mold that long list of potentials into a solid kick coverage unit.