ALL-22 REVIEW | Keys to James Cook’s HUGE Day & Bills’ SUFFOCATING Defense In Win Over Steelers

ALL-22 REVIEW | Keys to James Cook’s HUGE Day & Bills’ SUFFOCATING Defense In Win Over Steelers

The Buffalo Bills dominated the Pittsburgh Steelers. How did it happen? We’re exploring what the tape revealed today on Locked on Bills. You are Locked on Bills, your daily Buffalo Bills podcast, part of the Locked Onet. Your team every day. What’s up, Bills Mafia? It’s Joe Marino, author of the herd mentality substack, co-host of the Lockdown NFL Scouting Podcast, co-host of the NFL First Read Podcast, and I am your host of Locked On Bills. Locked on Bills is a proud part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, now the number one sports podcast network. I want to thank you for making Locked On Bills your first listen every day. And a big welcome and shout out to our everydayers. You know who you are. Those of you who never miss a single episode, I appreciate y’all being here very, very much. Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you’re going to get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Well, folks, welcome in. It’s time for the All22 review. I spent all day in the film and I want to share with you my top takeaways and why things went well for the Bills or maybe at times why they didn’t go well. But I want to start with a quick thought because I know that there’s a lot of confusion around this Bills team. They’re eight and four and they’ve been hot, they’ve been cold, they’ve shown you a lot of different things and they’re confusing. And I had some really good conversations today with our Discord community, which I’d encourage you to be part of through Substack or Subtex. Go to the Marmarino.com to learn more about that. And people are talking about this team and trying to get it figured out, especially the offense. And this is where I kind of landed. We’ve experienced all the extremes of this offense. We’ve seen them run the ball extremely well in wins over Carolina and Pittsburgh. We’ve seen them throw the ball all over the yard in wins over Tampa Bay and Baltimore. We’ve seen them look horrible in losses to the Dolphins and Texans. We’ve seen them be two-dimensional in the win over Kansas City. The Bills have shown they can do all the things. All the extremes are possible. Throw the ball great. Run the ball great, do both great, do both horribly. It’s all there. And it comes back to how do they find some consistency? How do they find consistency and play their best offense consistently moving forward as we are now in December and knocking on the door of the playoffs? So, on one hand, you’ve seen it all. On the other hand, you haven’t seen it all consistently. But the fact that they have proven all the different things should give you some level of encouragement. I’m not promising you anything regarding this team this year. Certainly doesn’t feel like the best Bills team that we’ve watched over the last five, six years since they became an upper echelon team. But look at the league. Look at the league. Who’s the juggernaut? Everybody wanted it to be the Rams. Everybody anointed the Rams, me included, and then they went out and lost to the Carolina Panthers. Any team can beat any team. Which team can find consistency? That’s going to be critical because everyone’s shown vulnerability. And I know that we live in Bill’s world and we’re focused on this team. But I’m telling you, pick the team. We’ll go through the problems and they exist. So, let’s play them one at a time and see what happens. All right, let’s talk about this Bills film over the Steelers. I want to start with the rushing offense. Feel like that’s obviously the story of the game. The Bills run the ball 51 times for 249 yards. And the backs were really good. James Cook, Ray Davis, Ty Johnson. I have a lot of praise to give them, but I think there’s more praise that needs to go to the blocking. This was a phenomenal game when it comes to run blocking. On the 51 rushing attempts, the Bills averaged 2.9 yards before contact per attempt. That means they got 148 yards in this game running the football before someone was touched. In fact, I’d argue that the yards after contact and miss tackles forced metrics were really bad. Only 1.57 yards after contact per attempt. That’s 22nd this week in the NFL. Only five missed tackles force when running the football. That’s 0.1 per attempt. That’s 20th in the NFL. This was a blocking game, moving bodies, creating lanes, and then the running back’s doing a phenomenal job of making the blocks right. I love what Cook did. I love what Davis did. I love what Johnson did. I love what Josh Allen did running the football, but the credit to me goes to the blocking and I really think the offensive line deserves a lot of credit, but the tight ends and receivers as well. Tyrell Shavers, Kosha, they were exceptional with their run blocking on the edge. Jackson Haw exceptional. Dawson Knox, exceptional. And then I think you call out Alec Anderson and Osiris Torrance and Conor McGovern as the three guys in that offensive line from a run blocking perspective that really created a ton of space. The Bills ran the ball 51 times. Get this, 40 of those 51 runs went to the right of the center. That means 11 went to the left. And when they went to the left, it was 11 rushes for 23 yards. When they went to the right, it was 40 for 226. That right side did some really good things. In addition to those perimeter blockers in Haw and Shakir and Tyrell Shavers, the Bills ran duo a good amount. You’ve probably heard a lot of people say, “Yeah, they ran the same run play over and over again.” Well, Pittsburgh didn’t know how to stop it. And what is duo? That’s probably a good question. duo is when you have two inside double teams with your offensive lineman that work vertically to the linebackers. You have a playside tight end. And when you double and then get north to the linebackers, you get vertical to the linebackers. What that does for your running backs running back with the ball is it allows them to read the playside backer and work off whatever he does. And conceptually what this does is it forces corners to have to tackle running backs, right? And you heard James Cook say after the game, they didn’t think much of their quarterback’s ability to tackle. And the Steelers tried a bunch of different things, but they were always wrong. They they slanted inside and shot gaps. They overloaded with bodies on the edge. They rolled a safety down. didn’t matter because you had James Cook’s vision and you had this combination of Shaver, Shakir, and Haw that sorted it out every single time. And so, a really just outstanding effort by many people. But it’s it’s not just Cook and the backs. It’s the blockers. It’s the perimeter blockers and the offensive line. It’s Aaron Chromer. It’s Joe Brady. They had the right ideas for how to run the football against this defense and this defense didn’t have any answers. Kind of the game they needed to play. We’re going to talk a lot about the passing offense. There’s some big thoughts that I have about that and some good and some bad there. But based on the way that this game was going and how Pittsburgh just couldn’t find an answer, you stick with it. You stick with it. Especially when you’re down your two starting tackles, you’re down concy. Lean into this and get a dub. And that’s exactly what they did. All right, we’re going to talk more about this passing offense next. I think there’s some interesting things that were revealed to me when studying the film. I’ll share that with you here next, folks. Be sure to stick with me. NFL Sundays move fast. one big play and suddenly everything feels different. That’s what makes live betting. With FanDuel so exciting. You’re not just watching the game, you’re reacting to it in real time. 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When you think about this game and you were considering Josh Allen going up against the Steelers, no Deion Dawkins, no Spencer Brown, no Dalton Concincaid, you’re thinking about TJ Watt and Alex Highmith and Nick Herbig and Cam Hayward and Keanu Benton and you’re nervous, right? I saw a lot of people sending me messages about how they guarantee Josh Allen’s going to get hurt or they’re going to have to carry him off the field in a bag, right? Like, let’s not forget that. I know that in the heat of paddle, you know, you you’re watching the Bills, you’re watching Josh Allen, and boy, you want him to throw crazy good passes all over the yard. And then when you don’t get that, you feel empty and you feel unsatisfied, right? The number one thing that the Bills needed to do in this game was protect Josh Allen. They did. And they also won by three scores. Josh Allen was not sacked. He was hit one time. He was pressured on 33% of dropbacks, which is 20th among the NFL quarterbacks in week 13. And they did this without their starting offensive tackles. Now, there are some things that the Bills did to help with that, but that was priority number one. Keep Josh Allen upright and give this team a chance to function offensively. Sorry you didn’t throw for 300 yards, but they did some good things to help. Josh Allen got the ball out of his hands unbelievably fast. His average time to throw is 2.26 seconds. That is kind of unheard of for Josh Allen. His rate of throws to the checkdown 30%. That’s well over three times more than his season average. His average depth of target, you know, this isn’t very high. That’s 1.9. It’s the lowest of any quarterback in week 13 by a good bit. The next closest was Sam Darnold at 3.6. I think every other quarterback was above four and most of them were above like seven. You embraced what you had to do. This wasn’t a game for Josh Allen to execute five and seven step drops and push the ball down the field. That that’s not the right idea for this type of game. And so we figured that Pittsburgh would blitz a lot. They did. They blitzed 54% of Josh Allen’s dropbacks. That’s like a almost a 20% higher rate than their season average. And Josh was nine of 14 for 73 yards and a touchdown and interception when he was blitzed. So they tried to really stress the Bills issues even more, right? sending extra bodies, blitzing, and Josh got the ball out of his hands, and he mitigated negative plays. In this type of game, that’s what was needed. And so, I think it was a a good job of getting the ball out of his hands, taking care of not only the football, but himself, and and doing the best they could to stay on schedule. Now, I will also say that at the same time, I believe there was a good amount of meat left on the bone for this passing offense. And I feel like the first drive interception affected Josh Allen the way he played that game throwing the football. Now, again, I think he did what he needed to do to win it. But as you maybe come away a little discouraged by how the passing game looked, I want to talk to you about some of the opportunities that were there down the field that Josh, he didn’t take them. And I think it was part of this overall idea that hey, this is a mitigate risk game. Now, first of all, let’s talk about the interception. Everything I’ve thought about the interception maintains he started his eyes to the wrong side. And going back and watching the tape and seeing the leverage of the defense, knowing that the player over top of Dawson Knox to his left was a safety that was playing with a ton of depth. They blitz that linebacker at the snap. There’s a wide open window to throw the ball to the left. That’s where his eyes needed to start. It’s not just going back in hindsight and, you know, oh yeah, start your eyes to the left, it’s a better situation. Just like I think the pre- snap pre- snap presentation of the defense told you to start to the left and he throws a pick, forcing it to what I believe was a predetermined throw to Gabe Davis. And Josh Allen told you. He said, “I need to start my eyes the other way.” He said it. So, I know nobody likes to hear me say anything negative about Josh Allen, but he also said that about himself. But that happening on the first drive, I do think impacted the way that Josh Allen played this football game because I thought there were opportunities down the field. I’m not talking about like 80 yard bombs, but down the field throws in that intermediate range, that kind of 15 to 20 range that he didn’t take. I want to point out three plays. And I shared all of these plays, the film, with our substack and subtext community. So, if you get the extra content from me, whether that’s text messages or extra film or written content, you’ve already got this film several hours ago where I showed these three plays in particular that I thought were a direct result of, you know, that that early giveaway. The first was a a a Keon Coleman opportunity where he was number one in the progression. Josh is looking at it. He’s running kind of an outbreaker and Keon has the route leverage the whole time. He has good separation at the route break and Josh he looks at it and says no is an easy read. It was number one. You’re number one in the progressions open. You throw it. He didn’t throw it right. He winds up not throwing that pass where I thought that was an opportunity. Then he had Brandon Cooks a couple of times. once late in the first quarter where he had him on a corner route where the routes were designed to hold the coverage and get Cooks free on a corner. Wide open. Wide open. It’s it’s the first part of the progression. He turns it down. He turns it down. And then later on, it’s that playaction play that they’ve thrown to Tyrell Shavers and Gabe Davis in recent weeks where it’s a play action fake and then you have that the dig route at about I don’t know 10 to 12 yards of depth. Nobody is near Cooks. Josh is looking at it the whole way and he takes the check down to Dawson Knox. So there were good moments of separation and opportunity down the field that Josh Josh has said no to. And so while you maybe are frustrated that there wasn’t more production passing the game, I think you can be encouraged that there were some more opportunities that may have went differently if Josh doesn’t throw that first drive interception and the rushing success isn’t there, right? or they maybe had to go to some of that stuff, but ultimately the game plan or the game script didn’t really force Josh Allen to dial up those throws and and take those risks. And I think he did the right thing with his approach this game and just mitigating those risks against against that defense, especially with just how it was unfolding, how their offense looked, right? How their when I see their I mean Pittsburgh with Aaron Rodgers and looked horrible, right? The the rushing offense for Pittsburgh looked horrible. This was a game where it’s like don’t need to beat ourselves and the Bills settled in after a couple of giveaways and ran away with the game. So hopefully that all lands for you. Obviously the only person that can truly answer is is Josh Allen, but that’s kind of my thoughts on reviewing the tape. One thing that I’d like to start doing on our All 22 reviews is recapping my keys. Now, I put a lot of time into preparing for these games and I give to you in our primer episode anywhere from three, four, five, sometimes keys that I think are important for success. And I want to start incorporating them into our all 22 review conversations to kind of reflect on what I said and how much it mattered and what the Bills did or did not do about it. So, let’s start doing that. Now, I had three keys for the Bills offense against Pittsburgh’s defense. Number one was you had to have the right protection schemes. You couldn’t just go fiveman protection with your two reserve tackles against a group of really good pass rushers. Obviously, the Bills did a good job with handling that. Josh Allen not sacked. He’s hit once. Only pressured on 33% of drop backs. So, good job. You had the right protection schemes. Number two, as I said, that the Bills receivers would have to win some matchups on the perimeter. We talked about the coverage presentations that Pittsburgh gives a lot of one high middle of the field close, which dictates throws outside the numbers. I would say that the Bills did not win a ton of matchups on the perimeter, but I also don’t feel like they ultimately needed to based on the way that they ran the ball and the way that this game script unfolded. So, I think the success that they had running the football mitigated the necessity to win matchups on the perimeter. Number three is I thought this was a big run the ball game, right? This was a let James Cook game that obviously happened. We talked about Pittsburgh how they were susceptible to giving up explosive runs. Their run defense metrics were middle of the pack. They were without Derrick Harmon. And then you think about the circumstances of the Bills offense with their tackles out and shaky passing game, those types of things. This was a let James Cook game and and surely that happened. He had 30ome carries over 140 yards. So they obviously did an amazing job with that piece of it. All right, let’s talk offensive snap counts real quick. 74 snaps of offense for the Bills. Josh Allen all 74. At running back, James Cook 45 of 74. Ty Johnson 20, Ray Davis 13, Reggie Gilliam nine. It’s nice to see Ray Davis provide a spark. U I thought he did a good job coming in with his nine rushes. There were some times where you could tell he’s he’s not he’s not James Cook, right? That’s what it comes down to. He’s he’s not quite the decision maker. He doesn’t necessarily uh press and feel uh carries to the same degree that James Cook does. And so he had some some runs where I thought there was a lot of meat left on the bone, but obviously a lot of production. A really good kind of game where I feel like it could propel Ray Davis moving forward, but I would say wasn’t wasn’t perfect. I think he’s going to look back at his tape and feel like there were some decisions with the ball that he wish he would have made differently. Reggie Gilliam had nine uh snaps played. One note here on James Cook just to give you the full picture. He did fumble twice in this game. I thought it was only once. Uh it was a loss fumble of course that you saw, but there was another one where uh the ball came out and he he landed right on top of it, but he did fumble twice in this game. At tight end, Dawson Knox 53 snaps out of 74. An amazing job blocking on the edge. Jackson Haw 52. Ki Ki 24. At wide receiver, Tyrell Shavers played the most snaps at 45 and he was a killer blocking. Uh Gabe Davis 43 snaps. K Shakir 36. Keon Coleman 33. Now we’re talking appropriate, right? That’s He can’t be the guy that plays the most. 33 snaps is the fourth receiver. There you go. That’s what you do. It was an amazing ridiculous situation early in the year. That’s what I talked about before the buy. Like there this this role that they have for Keon Coleman is completely unjustified. But if he’s the number four receiver that plays the fourth most snaps and gets a couple of targets, it’s a lot more digestible. We we normalized here. Thank God. Brandon Cooks played 17 snaps. Um, obviously had the the really nice comeback route for a catch on a third and long and there were some other opportunities to get him the ball. There were He was open and so I’m curious to see how those are capitalized on moving forward. The offensive line, all five starters, played 74 snaps. Ryan Vandermark, David Edwards, Conor McGovern, Osiris Torrance, Alec Anderson. Of course, a big shout out to Vandermark and Anderson. You know, Vandermark’s played a lot more like traditional tackle obviously in the NFL. He’s had a couple starts lately, moved over to the left side, and you could tell that he’s comfortable over there, and they didn’t have to help him to the same degree as they did Alec Anderson. Um, and so I think that’s a big deal that Ryan was able to lock down his side over there where the attention could go to Alec Anderson. And with all due respect to Alec Anderson, hadn’t played right tackle in a game in a long time, and he had the tougher assignments, right? He’s the he’s drawing TJ Watt over there. And so, um, I thought I thought it was a big deal that Ryan Vandermark and Passpro could kind of hold his own. And then on the right side, you can give Alec Anderson a little bit more help. All right, we’re going to talk defense. A lot to say about the defense here on the other side of it. And I want to really celebrate Christian Benford and Tradavius White. We’ll do that here next, folks. Be sure to stick with me. The holidays are officially here, which means gift hunting season is on. And if you want something meaningful, personal, and guaranteed to get a reaction, Aura Frames is the gift that delivers every time. It’s not just something you wrap. 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Promo code locked on. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell fast. Order yours now to make sure you get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. terms and conditions apply. Let’s talk about this defense. Boy, it’s playing well. It’s playing well. There’s no doubt about it. I think uh there’s a lot to say about the Steelers and their offense, and they got a whirl of problems there, but the defense for the Buffalo Bills played great in this game. Let’s talk about the run defense. And I want to reiterate this, and you know this, like if you if you’re an everydayer, you hear these crossover discussions. These hosts come in every single week and they’re like, “Uh, well, the Bills just give up running yards, right? You can just run the ball all over them.” And and yeah, like they’re not wrong. Not in this game, though. Not in this game. 18 carries, 58 yards. It’s 3.2 yards per carry. Buffalo Bills did it. They stopped the run in a very meaningful way. Now, let’s talk about some of this. Now, one thing that I think was very helpful was Aaron Rogers and his wrist injury, which did not allow him to take under center snaps. So, you had zero under center runs for Pittsburgh. They ran a lot of pistol. They of course everything was gun, but sometimes it was pistol. And the Steelers had a 33% success rate on runs, second lowest of any team in week 13. They had a 56% stuff rate, the fifth highest of any team. The Bills did not miss a single tackle against the run. Pause. That was true. I I said something factual. They did not miss a single tackle against the run according to the Fantasy Points data suite, which I think is comfortably without question the best analytics source that you can find. They didn’t chart a single miss tackle against a run. And the Steelers only got 1.39 yards after contact per attempt, which is the fifth best or the fifth lowest mark in the NFL in week 13. The Bills run defense met the moment. Shaq Thompson, I I’ll call him out in a big way. It’s a It’s a real Mike linebacker right there. Guy that can play in coverage, can play downhill, play off contact, make tackles, physical tone setting, throws his body out there. He’s a dude. Wish he was 10 years younger so we could build around him. He elevates this team. There’s no doubt about it. It’s undeniable. That’s your best middle linebacker. He should play every snap as long as he’s healthy. He was so good defending the run, sniffing it out, getting downhill, making plays. Christian Benford was phenomenal against the run in this game. Phenomenal. And I’ll be honest with you, I thought the whole front mostly played really good run defense with the exception of one player. That would be Larry and Joby. getting rooted out, standing up, not not playing good ball. I thought he had been playing a little better, but he’s been pretty disappointing to me, especially this is like his former team. He thought he might have a little juice for this one. Didn’t play well, but I thought everyone else really did a good job of maintaining their run fits, squeezing gaps, staying leveraged, making tackles, and getting it done. When it comes to pass defense, boy, the Bills looked really good here. The Steelers combined uh with Rudolph and uh Rogers, they go 10 of 24 for 117 yards and a pick. And look, this wasn’t a game where the Bills pass rush was the reason they were very good at stopping the pass. This was much more of a really outstanding coverage game for the Bills. And and of course, Pittsburgh’s own limitations. Let’s be honest, like Aaron Rogers, Mason Rudolph, not it, right? They don’t really have a meaningful receiver outside of TK Mechaf, there’s not a whole lot to be afraid of, but the Bills pass rush was pretty much non-existent in this game outside of the Joey Bosa strip sack, which of course was a huge moment. But the Bills only pressured these quarterbacks on 24% of dropbacks. That’s extremely low. I was celebrating it being 33% for the Bills. It’s 24% for Pittsburgh. And get this, Steelers average time to throw was 2.95 seconds. They’re holding on to the ball. The Bills just weren’t pressuring them. The Bills had a minus5.26 pressure rate over expectation, which factors amount of rushers and how long the quarterback holds the ball. Minus5.26%. Pass rush is ice cold. Now, the other the good side of that, the thing to celebrate here is that the coverage was phenomenal. And let’s go right to 47. Christian Benford. He took care of DK Mechaf. Had 10 man coverage reps against DK. Had three more zone reps where Mechaf became his primary responsibility. That’s 13 coverage snaps against DK Mechaf. Did not allow a single catch. Had an interception. Of course, the scoop and score on the Bosea strip sack and the run defense was elite. It’s not just the one play that was on the first drive where he came in and made the tackle. There were multiple times where he was able to trigger and make a big time tackle at or near or behind the line of scrimmage. Christian Benford has absolutely turned it on and people could not wait to be mad at him earlier in the year when you kind of felt like he started slow. He did. There’s no there’s no denying it. There’s also no denying that he has turned it on. Since week six, he has gotten right back to being that elite corner that we’ve been enjoying for the previous two seasons. Since week six, opponents have thrown the ball against Benford 17 times. He’s given up nine catches for 121 yards, no touchdowns allowed, and has an interception. Let me give you some more metrics here. Among the 62 cornerbacks with at least 175 coverage snaps since week six, Christian Benford ranks number four in passer rating against 51.3. The second fewest coverage snaps per target at 10.9 and the third fewest coverage snaps per reception allowed at 20.6. Elite level play is back for Christian Benford. And that doesn’t even get into the run defense. He’s arguably the best run support and tackling corner in the NFL. It’s good to have him back. And let’s also give some love to Trey White. Since week six, Trey White has played 122 coverage snaps. He was He’s been targeted 12 times. He’s given up two catches for 20 yards. Boy, the first four weeks of the season, Trey White was everyone’s punching bag. Well, he’s turned it on. So is Christian Benford. And it’s nice to get Max Harrison working in there as well. I’m not saying that the Bills defense is amazing or perfect or anything like that, but you got to you got to give some love to Christian Benedford and Trey White for how they’ve turned their seasons around. But ultimately in this game in particular, the Bills just did not give up much. 10 completions and two of those were garbage time completions to Darnell Washington over the middle of the field. They had the miracle Kenneth Gainwell shoestring catch. They had a nice completion of DK Mechaf where he was the Bills were in cover two and he finds a little space in the hook curl area where Matt Milano is supposed to be covering and they found a completion. What’ they get a six-yd completion to John Smith? The Bills took care of the pass and it was coverage. Much more coverage than pass rush. The pass rush is about non-existent. All right, let’s do my keys recap. My my keys for the Bills defense against the Steelers offense. Number one is that they had a tackle. Talked about how this the the Steelers were number one in percentage of receiving yards that come after the catch. Fourth and miss tackles forced per run. The Bills missed a total of four tackles in the game, none against the run. They did an exceptional job tackling in this game. We talked about how important it was to defend tight ends. Uh it’s a tight end centric offense. more than any other offense in the NFL. 61 of pass 61% of passing plays for Pittsburgh this year featured two tight ends on the field. The Steelers tight ends had three catches for 50 yard 51 yards and two for 45 of that was Darnell Washington in garbage time. None of their receiving production to tight ends mattered. So, the Bills obviously took care of that. And then my big question, my third question was how are you going to manufacture pass rush? Well, the answer there is they didn’t. They blitz six times and Aaron Rogers went one for five for 26 yards or this the the the whole team went one of five for 26 yards and the interception. But uh yeah, they don’t allow much pressure and in defense of the Bills, the Steelers are 28th in pressure rate allowed. So they don’t they don’t allow much. They only allow pressure on 27% of dropbacks. The Bills pressured them on 24%. But I I just I really want to see some life in this pass rush. That’s that’s my thing right now as we get closer and closer to the season. I need to see it because that’s been the problem. That’s been the problem in the postseason more than anything is a lack of pass rush. And I don’t I just don’t feel good about where that’s headed right now. Defensive snap counts, the Bills played 43 snaps of defense. Defensive ends, Greg Rouso 28, Joey Bosa 24. He’s got a hamstring injury. Um Shawn McDermott said we’ll see. So I’m guessing he’s going to miss at least this game against Cincinnati, which is not great. You want him against Burrow, but maybe the silver lining there is that gets a little more time to to get his wrist healthy. AJ Panessa 21 snaps, TJ Sanders 19. He played 12 snaps of defensive end, seven of defensive tackle, and Javon Solomon three. It’s pretty telling the trajectory of Javon Solomon. He’s getting some chances and now those chances are gone. They don’t trust him to play the run. TJ Sanders is playing over him. This is why you got to get interested in seeing Morgan Fox and Shaq Lawson because you got TJ Sanders playing defensive end and they don’t trust Javon Sal tackle Dayquin Jones 27 snaps, Dion Walker 19, Larry Aenjobi 19, Jordan Phillips 12. A lot better effort this week from Jordan Phillips. I was hot on him last week. He deserved it. This was a lot better. at linebacker Shaq Thompson 40 of 43 snaps. Matt Milano 35. I thought he played well. I think Matt Milano’s been playing well of late. Dorian Williams 19 snaps. Love the role that they’re carving out for him. Even if it’s not that spy mirror player. Um the Bills are playing a lot of base defense and Dorian Williams is a big part of that. In fact, get this, the Bills are number two in the NFL in defensive EPA per snap out of base defense. It’s been a nice thing to have back in the mix and they’re running it about 20% of the time. Joanne Drees and Balen Spectre for three snaps. At corner, Christian Benford 40, Trey White 33, Taran Johnson 25, Maxwell Harist 13. At safety, Cole Bishop 40, Jordan Puyer 38, Jordan Hancock four, and Cam Lewis eight. They showed some dime looks in this game where Puyer came off, not many snaps, but a couple of snaps where Puyer came off, Milano came off, and Hancock and Lewis came on, and they rushed four. So, your only backer was Shaq Thompson with 60Bs and then the four-man rush. Kind of interesting. They They’re really tinkering with that dime stuff and I I am enjoying that. Studs and duds. I got a long list of studs this week. Studs. Shaq Thompson, Christian Benford, Joey Bosa, James Cook, Ray Davis, Ty Johnson, Alec Anderson, Osiris Torrance, Conor McGovern, Ryan Vandermark, Jackson Haw, Dawson Knox, Tyrell Shavers, Kosha, Joe Brady, and Aaron Comr. Dud’s only one, Larry Aen, Joby. All right, folks. There you have it. A robust all 22 review. We covered a lot of ground here today. Hope you enjoyed this conversation. Hope you’ll come back the rest of the week. We’ve got herd mentality. Then we’re getting ready to for Cincinnati. We’re on to Cincinnati. I blew it. Right. You How do How do you miss that opportunity? You say we’re on to Cincinnati, right, Bill Bich? You know what I’m talking about. I missed a chance there. I’ll I’ll do better though the rest of the week. So, the rest of the week, we’re on to Cincinnati after her mentality tomorrow. Let me get out of here. Uh, thanks for being here. As always, I kindly ask that you share, subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great rest of your day. Go Bills. And I look forward to catching up with you again real soon.

Buffalo Bills overpower the Pittsburgh Steelers with a dominant ground attack, raising fresh optimism as playoff season approaches. Can James Cook and the retooled rushing offense spark a consistent run to postseason glory?
Joe Marino spotlights Buffalo’s 249-yard rushing explosion, crediting stellar blocking by O’Cyrus Torrence, Connor McGovern, and unsung heroes like Tyrell Shavers. The analysis examines Josh Allen’s efficient, risk-averse passing day, the adjustments made without starting tackles, and bold strategic choices from coaches Joe Brady and Aaron Kromer. Defensive talk centers on lockdown coverage by Christian Benford and Tre’Davious White, Shaq Thompson’s tone-setting play, and mounting concerns over the Bills’ anemic pass rush. Key takeaways include snap count shifts, run-stop improvement, and which players are trending up or down as Buffalo prepares for a critical matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Will Buffalo find the consistency needed to contend with the NFL’s best?
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