The Buffalo Bills defense has been among the league’s best units over the past three seasons under head coach Sean McDermott and defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier.
It’s looking good once again for the Bills defensive unit in 2020, according to Football Outsiders.
Football Outsiders examined each team’s offensive and defensive trends over the past decade. Prior to the McDermott-Frazier combination, the Bills went through several coordinators with varied success.
Football Outsiders uses its data metric DVOA (defensive-adjusted value over average). This figure takes in a wide variety of data points to order to measure “a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent.” It’s complex, and it provides a nice figure of comparison for teams and players across various time frames.
For the Bills, they started the decade poorly, ranking no better than 24th, which occurred in 2011. Mike Pettine entered the fray in 2013, molding Buffalo’s defensive profile to a top unit, ultimately finishing fourth in DVOA that season. Jim Schwartz continued the trend, as the Bills ranked second in DVOA the following season. Things fell backward for Buffalo’s defense during the Rex Ryan seasons, ranking 24th and 27th during his tenure as the head of the Bills.
The defense found its footing under McDermott, transitioning to the middle of the pack in 2017 (15th) and then taking a major step forward the next two years, tying their decade-best second-place finish in 2018 and following up with a sixth-place ranking last year.
Here is what Football Outsiders sees for Buffalo’s defense this upcoming season:
The Bills had an excellent defense in 2019 without depending heavily on turnovers, meaning there will likely be less regression than you see from most strong defenses. Football Outsiders projects Buffalo to have a top-three defense again in 2020.
Buffalo added several pieces to the defense this year, including defensive linemen Quinton Jefferson, defensive end Mario Addison, defensive tackle Vernon Butler, and cornerback Josh Norman via free agency. Buffalo selected defensive end AJ Epenesa of Iowa with their first pick in this year’s NFL Draft.
While adding many new pieces, in terms of continuity, the Bills have the best overall all as a team in the NFL next season. Much of that is on the offensive side of the ball, however, the defense is up there, too. According to snap counts on defensive from a year ago, the Bills return the seventh-most in the entire league even with all these new, talented players in the fold for 2020.
[lawrence-related id=64633,64628,64647,64620]