Buffalo Bills vs. Carolina Panthers Preview & Prediction | PFF

Buffalo Bills vs. Carolina Panthers Preview & Prediction | PFF

in a game that uh I don’t know a month ago people would have looked at and thought this is going to be a three-score blowout. All of a sudden this could be a football game here. The Buffalo Bills traveling to Carolina to take on the Carolina Panthers. Now Bryce Young not playing in this game. I mean like he was he was at practice in a walking boot. Like I I do not think that he is playing in this game. I don’t know if that’s been like official yet, but I would be shocked if if if Bryce Young played in this game. So, it looks like it’s going to be Andy Dalton here, but you want to start with the Panthers or where do you want to start talking about this one? Yeah, regardless of which quarterback it is, the Panthers have been running the football really well lately. Their offensive line has been rolling despite some injuries on the interior. I love the way they involve the tight ends, Tommy Tremble, Mitchell Evans, even a receiver like Bryson Tremaine. They’re really getting it done with those extra blockers and getting downhill. And they’ve got another opportunity to succeed in the run game again against a Bills team that ranks in the bottom five as a team in run defense grade. The defensive line has been okay. You’ll have a lot more success running away from Greg Russo, who’s their best run defender on the Dline. You run at AJ Epanessa and Joey Bosa and those guys away from Russo. Um, and you look at what the Panthers can do, specifically against those edge players. Those guys are big in this game because the Panthers all season have been having a ton of success when they get off tackle. Fifth in rushing grade, third in EPA per rush, third in yards per carry. The most explosive runs in the NFL this season, 10 or more yards. when they get off tackle, when they work off of Iky Aquanu and Taylor Motton, the two tackles, and get outside these tight ends, there’s so many explosive runs this year that you see from the Panthers that either by design, they’re getting those pinpole concepts and they’re getting on the outside, or they are bouncing runs, even say duo runs that are meant originally to run between the tackles and the backs are bouncing because you’ve got these um you’ve got these blockers on the exterior of the offensive line, the tackles and the tight ends. You’ve got those guys really washing things down inside and allowing that space to bounce outside and create big runs in space. So, this is something the Bills are going to have to be very concerned with. And their linebackers when they see these offtackle runs, they have to get over the top because the Bills, again, their back seven, we’ve talked about struggling so much in coverage, but they’ve struggled in run defense, too. Especially at linebacker, they have not found a way to get consistent production in the run game from their linebackers. Those guys have to be on it because if you let Rico Dael and Chuba Hub and even Trevor ETN get to the outside off tackle, whether they’re bouncing or it’s by design, you’re going to have a big problem stopping this Panthers offense. Uh J47 in the chat saying, “Yeah, Bryce is dayto-day according to uh Dave Canales.” Um J47’s also saying that he expects Dalton to play. I also expect um Andy Dalton to play in this one. And yeah, you mentioned like how much better the offensive line is right now than it looked to start the season. and it’s looking much more like the top 10 unit that they were last year, especially with them being willing to lean into more heavy personnel stuff. I I I’ll sort of talk about what I think that this means towards this game, but really I just kind of found an interesting stat here or I I I won’t say that I found it because to be honest with you, this sparked my curiosity because I was reading an article from Shawn Murphy who writes for uh Buffalo Rum Rumblings, the the SP Nation site there. And the article was all about how the Buffalo Bills are inconsistent on offense, but specifically the scripted drives that they have. The first drive to open the first half and the first drive to open the second half, right? We talk about that all the time. Hey, the first drive, it’s very scripted or the first 15 plays are scripted. They work on that throughout the week. This is exactly what we’re going to do. This is what we think the other team is going to do. In those opening drives, the Bills are fantastic. Bills on scripted drives. So again, these are the first two drive or this is the first drive of the first half and the first drive of the second half. 0.488 EPA per play. That is first in the NFL by a lot when you were looking at other teams stacking up their scripted drives. 85.1 overall offensive grade on the scripted drives. That is third in the NFL. on the non-scripted drives. So, I I basically the way that I I categorized this because I took the the information that Sean had was more about touchdown conversion and points conversion on those opening drives. I took that point of view and and went to our database and I was looking at overall offensive grade and overall EPA per play. So, it’s a little bit different than what Sean had, but please go read Shawn’s article because it’s it’s fantastic and what laid the groundwork for me to do my own research in our database. When you look at the non-scripted drives from the Buffalo Bills, 75.4 offensive grade, that’s sixth in the NFL. Okay, still good obviously. But then when you look at the EPA per play specifically, negative0.052, that’s 21st in the NFL. So all of a sudden, you go from being number one in the NFL on those scripted drives by a lot to 21st in the NFL in those non-scripted drives, specifically over the last two games for the Buffalo Bills because that is really what matters. You look at the Bills and how soft their schedule was to start the season, you’ve had the Falcons and the Patriots over the last two weeks. So over the last two weeks on scripted drives, 81.1 overall offensive grade, 0.396 EPA per play. So both of those numbers still very very strong even against the good teams. But on the other side of things, the non-scripted drives, 64.3 overall offensive grade, which remember it was at 74.5 against the bad teams on the non-scripted drives. We’re a full 10 points lower here. And then negative0.268 EPA per play. That is much worse than what it was even in the non-scripted drives on the whole season with those bad teams sort of included in that sample size. So I’m I’m I I think that our data really backs up what Sean was saying in that there is a major difference for the Buffalo Bills on the offensive side of the football for when things are scripted for Joe Brady versus when they are not. And something very very interesting that I sort of found when looking up those numbers, the biggest discrepancy in in categorical grades, which we have overall offensive grade, we have passing, rushing, receiving, pass blocking, and run blocking. The biggest difference in team grade when I was going through all that for scripted versus non-scripted actually came in the receiving grade. I was like, “Okay, let me do a little bit more research here.” When I looked at who the Bills were in those opening drives, those scripted drives, they got the tight ends a lot more involved. Dalton Concaid when he has been out there, Dawson Knox running the running backs out of the back field as well as a receiver. Uh Khil Shakir was pretty consistent in that regard, but it was very much leaning on positions that weren’t just wide receivers. And specifically, Keon Coleman has only had two targets this season on those open opening scripted drives. Two targets for 14 yards. And when you look at just the last two weeks against these two good teams, one target, one catch, six yards. But then when you go to the non-scripted drives, Keon Coleman leads the team in targets. He is their number one guy that they are going towards. and the tight end passing game specifically takes a big time dip in terms of threat percentage and how often they are getting it involved. So I I’m not trying to say that like this is totally a Keon Coleman isn’t good stat. Like that’s not what I’m trying to say here. But they are much more diverse in where the football is going on those scripted drives than they are on the non-scripted because it feels like they go to Keon Coleman much much much higher. And obviously there’s a lot more drives than just the first two, but the rate in which he is targeted versus the diversity that they have in those scripted drives, that was really what stood out to me. So I don’t know exactly how that’s going to play out. I I I I found that information this morning, so I wasn’t able to go back and like watch all of Keon Coleman’s targets and so I haven’t gotten to the film quite yet, but those numbers were very very interesting to me. And in this matchup specifically, I wonder if Buffalo sees that and just gets more diversity in the offense of where they are distributing the football throughout the entire game instead of that just being an emphasis on those first drives of the first and second half. So again, I don’t know specifically how much it will go into this matchup, but this is an overall philosophy thing for the Bills for everybody to just keep an eye on, and I’m certainly going to keep an eye on moving forward of how much they are getting everybody else involved throughout the rest of the game rather than just going, okay, let’s just throw it to Keon Coleman now because that feels uh like it’s it’s just a major difference in how often they’re willing to do that with those successful drives versus unsuccessful drives. I am still going to take the Bills in this one. I do still think they bounce back. I’m gonna go Bills 28, Panthers 24, but I do think this is a close one. What do you think, Dton? I think every bit of that is a great call that you just mentioned because the Bills offense has operated at its best, I think, this year when it’s been in 12 personnel, 13 personnel, right? Those tight ends, Daltton Concincaid, Dawson Knox, Jackson Haw has been a big part of that. They’ve been able to run the football and have balance and use play action. And I also think it speaks to their weakness where on offense, their weakest position unit is wide receiver. They do not have a number one wide receiver. They would love for Keon Coleman to become that guy at some point as the first round pick, but he hasn’t become that a year and a half in. I like Khalil Shakir. A lot of times they kind of limit him to after the catch opportunities and don’t use him vertically down the field. Josh Palmer, couple of solid targets a game, but he’s not a guy to take it over, right? Elijah Moore and guys like that getting snaps. This Bills team when they have three or four, even four wide receivers on the field, they’re just not as good because it’s not a loaded receiving core. I do think that can be a problem at times for this offense. But you make a great point about the tight ends. I would lean more into the tight ends, especially in this game with sometimes the Panthers having issues covering over the middle of the field, especially their linebackers. I I do think this going to be a competitive game. I think the Panthers physicality plays up. I do think the run defense is better, and that’s going to be a big factor early in the game as well. Can they slow down James Cook to the same extent they’ve stopped the last few teams running the football? I think they’ve done a nice job of that lately, and that’s really been an X factor in their success. I I’m going to take the Bills. I think Josh Allen just kind of gets them through this one. I think you’ve got a competitive game and the Panthers, this this game really to me is going to come down to who gets ahead first, who gets to score first and who gets out ahead and which team has to abandon their running game sooner. I’ll take the Bills 2723. I think this is going to be a good one. Yeah. And and just one final point on kind of what I was talking about there with Keon Coleman. It does feel like to what you mentioned, they want him to be this wide receiver one for them. And from what I read during the preseason in training camp, he was playing like a wide receiver one, but I saw someone sarcastically say this on Twitter, but it might kind of be true. Like he was playing as a wide receiver one in training camp in the preseason. He might have just been going up against a Bill secondary that we now know is not good. So now they are playing other teams and they’re saying, “Okay, Keon, be that wide receiver one that we saw you be during the summer and he’s just not as effective as he was going up against a Bills secondary in a quarterback group that we’ve seen so far this season is really struggling.” So I think these are very interesting things to keep an eye on moving forward with the Buffalo Bills. But uh all that to say, get the tight ends more involved, be a little bit more diverse. Come on, let’s get some more guys in there because I think that’s when the Buffalo Bills are truly at their best.

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Buffalo Bills and The Carolina Panthers.

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