It’s been a long NFL season, but the postseason. Now, you probably didn’t get to study the entire playoff field in-depth during the regular season. No worries. We’ve put together guides that will help you become an instant expert on all 12 teams making up the field.
These guides will tell you how each team uses its personnel on both sides of the ball, what its strategic tendencies are and how efficient the team is based on several advanced metrics.
In this guide, we’ll be looking at the Buffalo Bills, who cruised to the top wild-card spot in the AFC with a 10-6 record. Let’s get to know them…
BILLS OFFENSE
While offensive coordinator Brian Daboll can throw a bunch of different personnel combinations at an opponent, the Bills have typically stayed in their one-back, three-receiver sets over the second half of the season. That helps spread things out for Josh Allen and create space in the running game. In the passing game, John Brown is the main threat. He has no problem getting open deep but hasn’t had the best connection with Allen on those deeper throws. Cole Beasley has been Allen’s security blanket all season.
Allen is known for his big arm, but the Bills offense has leaned more on the quick passing game to help the second-year quarterback. He’s not taking a lot of deeper drops, and when he does, he typically attacks the intermediate areas, where’s he’s been at his best all season. Allen’s short accuracy hasn’t been ideal, but that hasn’t stopped Buffalo from utilizing a lot of RPO concepts. If this passing game is going to do damage in the playoffs, it will need a bigger threat on the outside. That could be Duke Williams, who played well in Week 17 but wasn’t on the field a whole lot before then.
The Bills boast an average run game, but they certainly have big-play potential now that Devin Singletary has taken over the starting running back job. Buffalo is primarily an under-center run team, but they’ll also go into the gun and get Josh Allen involved.
BILLS DEFENSE
The Bills have a stacked secondary and rangy linebackers, so it’s not a surprise that they spend almost all of their time in nickel personnel. They are the one team in the field that hasn’t played with six or more defensive backs on any play during the 2019 season.
This is your typical Sean McDermott defense. The Bills play a lot of zone coverages and do a good job of switching up those looks to prevent the defense from picking up any tells. The same cannot be said about Buffalo’s man coverages, which are typically played with one safety deep and the other lurking over the middle. In Jordan Poyer and Micah Hyde, they have a pair of versatile safeties capable of executing any concept McDermott wants to dial up. The same can be said about CB Tre’ White.
The secondary, unsurprisingly, has been the rock of the defense all season long. There have been highs and lows for the defensive front. The linebackers aren’t consistently stout against the run, and the defensive line has gone through periods where they haven’t been able to put pressure on the pocket. But as long as the secondary is intact, the Bills defense will be formidable.
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