By CHUCK POLLOCK, Wellsville Sun Senior Sports Columnist
(Early last week, Bills coach Sean McDermott held his pre-bye press conference. This piece summarizes his thoughts.)
The timing of Buffalo’s bye week couldn’t have been much worse as it followed consecutive losses to New England (23-20) and Atlanta (24-14) that dropped the Bills to 4-2 and into second place in the AFC East. The Patriots, now 5-2, lead the division and have the advantage of the head-to-head win.
BUFFALO’S losses were marked by two quizzical offensive play calls — one in each game — and an horrendous first half of defensive football in Atlanta.
Bills offensive coordinator, Joe Brady, came under fire for those hard-to-explain third-down calls.
Against New England, Buffalo faced a 3rd-and-four in the first quarter of a scoreless game, when quarterback Josh Allen and Dawson Knox botched a tigh-end-around at the Bills’ 33.
The Pats recovered the resultant fumble and left Buffalo fans with question marks over their heads.
Brady pointed out, “Nobody complains if the play works” and McDermott defended, “That’s one Joe probably would like to have back.”
A Monday night later, Buffalo, trailing 21-14 in the final quarter, faced fourth-and-one at its own 45. Brady called a wide receiver end-around to Elijah Moore. Once again the exchange was fumbled and though Moore recovered, the Bills were forced to punt wasting a chance to tie the game.
AND EVEN though those two gaffes were in the rear-view mirror, McDermott still got questions on them at his presser.
“I’m confident in the people we have in this building, number one” McDermott said. “Two is, you know, we can certainly perform at a higher level, and we need to. We need to do our jobs, know our jobs.
He pointed out, “No one’s gonna be perfect. You go through a game, and there’s always calls you want back.
(Brady) knows how I feel about that situation. We talked about it … had a great conversation again this morning. Those are ones in the heat of the moment that you’re like, I want that one back, and…
McDermott continued, “At the end of the day, whatever play we call, we gotta execute at a higher level as well. So, that’s a piece of it. But, I remain confident, very confident in Joe and his ability to put us, put us into the right situations and… and put our players in good positions on offense.
He continured, “We’ve discussed them before, and then we had to revisit them. We revisited them this morning again, and as an offensive staff, we talked about it collectively … sometimes it’s just Joe and I.
We meet as a full staff offensively, and it’s, just making sure tthat we’re clear on philosophically what we believe in, and… and how we want to get it done.”
OF COURSE, it wasn’t all about the offense. There was also the little matter or surrendering a galling 331 yards to the Falcons in the first half of the loss at Atlanta,
“That’s my responsibility to this team and this organization, to make decisions like that,” McDermott said if it came down to making a change at coordinator. But he quickly added, “At the end of the day, I have to put the team first. That’s my job, and that’s what I owe to this community as well. Bobby (Babich, defensive coordinator) is young in this position, he’s working… he works extremely hard, he’s gifted, and, play-calling is one of the harder things to do in this business.
“He’ll learn from it … some things he wants back, but again, I thought the adjustments in the second half were really, really good for ua,” McDermott maintained.
“I have a lot of confidence in Bobby and our defensive staff. I thought they made some real good adjustments (against Atlanta) in the second half in particular. At halftime, we came out and played really well after half.”
McDERMOTT also touched on the bye week.
“When you go into a bye week in particular, you have a little bit more time on your hands to really hunker down and study things, study scheme, study all the hotspots,” he said. “That’s what I’ve asked the coordinators to do … let’s identify the problems, and then let’s get together on it … figure out the solutions and the best way forward … evaluate personnel and make sure that we’ve got the right people in the right places that can get the job done for us.”
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
