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Buffalo Sports
It took the Buffalo Bills some 96 minutes of football during this exhibition season for the offense to finally get into the end zone – though the starting unit of Buffalo has failed to put the pigskin into the end zone in two games. It’s hoped it won’t carry into the regular season.
No touchdowns against Tennessee in the opener; no touchdowns in the first half against the Chicago Bears and, thanks to some turnovers, the Bills finally managed to hit pay dirt on their way to a 27-20 win over the Monsters of the Midway.
That gave the sold out house at the Ralph something to cheer about. They could also cheer the fact that Trent Edwards was 10 of 10 passing and that the Bills, maybe, found a solid backup in Fitzpatrick who did a good job in his appearance in the turnover filled game.
There are a couple of things to note. Against Tennessee and throughout most of the Bears game, I was thinking something throughout the contests before analyst Steve Tasker read my mind and came out with it.
Turk Schonert's No Huddle offense can never be compared to the one run by Jim Kelly. The beauty of the Kelly led offense was that once a play was over, those teams got to the line quickly and snapped the ball as quickly while the defenders were still scurrying to get into position.
On the Schonert designed no huddle – the players don’t get into position as fast and when they did, many, many seconds ticked off before the play is run – allowing the defense to get into position.
So the message to Schonert is – “If you’re going to run the no-huddle, hurry it up. The purpose is to keep the defenders rushing to get into some kind of position, allowing the offense to really open things up and really tire out the defense.
In the post-game comments, both Trent Edwards and coach Dick Jauron implied that they would like the no huddle speeded up.
We mentioned turnovers and Buffalo managed 5 of them – four interceptions and one fumble recovery, helping the Bills get some points, even though the Bears managed to close within 7 in the 4th quarter.
Oh yes……fans probably can’t wait for the regular season to begin so that Roscoe Parish can be out there fielding punts. Hall and Moore each muffed a month in the two games played and those muffs resulted in opponent points.
OK, with all that out of the way, the Bills looked much better against the Bears than they did against the Titans evening up their exhibition mark to 1-1 before a full house.
Even without the "hurry-up" offense that gave Buffalo 4 straight Super Bowl appearances, the quarterbacking was pretty good for the home team.
Edwards played 3 series, completing all 10 attempts for 78 yards; Fitzpatrick hit on 13 of 16 for 143 yards and then Hamden and Baker completed 6 of 8 combined. That’s a tremendous completion rate of 29 grabs out of 34 tosses by the Bills QBs.
Another big positive out of the game was that the tight ends got into the action, grabbing a third of the completed passes (10 of them) with Jonathan Stupar leading the way with 6. The drafted tight end Shawn Nelson – all 6’5 of him – grabbed a TD toss over a much smaller cornerback indicating that maybe – after all these years – Buffalo's TEs might be getting some looks for the first time since Pete Metzelaars made such a significant impact. This could ease the load off Lindell, who has 5 field goals in the two games played thus far.
As for the running game, it was surprising that the Bills ran outside the tackles maybe only a couple of times. Nobody really lit it up, meaning that the OL is not opening up the holes. Lacking that, the Bills could face a lot of 3rd downs and fierce blitzes unless that line opens up the holes.
Lynch carried 5 times for 16; Jackson 8 for 17 while Bruce Hall mopped up with 9 carries for 21 yards. All told, around 2 yards per carry isn’t going to scare many defenders with numbers like that.
The secondary came to play. Ellis Lankster picked off a pair of passes; McKelvin got one off a Jay Cutler toss; and Lydell Sargeant got the 4th pick. On the 5th turnover, Bryant forced a fumble that was recovered by Ellis. That made it a good night for Buffalo’s defense.
As for the Bears, Jay Cutler's debut with the Bears, who gave up some huge draft picks to get him, was so-so, completing 5 of 10 passes for 64 yards in a 3-series workout.
Next up – a trip to the Green Bay Packers as the Bills will hope to keep getting things in gear and do what they did Saturday night in Buffalo. That is playing a much better game than they did in the opener 6 days earlier.
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