Bills cruise to big win over Lions behind Josh Allen magic

Welcome to the athletic football show presented by the US bank smartly visa signature card. I'm Robert Mays. Bill's lion's a banger of a Thursday night game headed into week two. And the bills gave us a banger. My god is the bill's offense humming right now. Phenomenal performance from Josh Allen. More of the same from Dahlkin. Kade the run game really got going. And on the flip side, some worrying stuff from the Detroit Lions. The state of the defences concerning you can explain some of it away by injury, but not all of it. Then the offensive line just got completely manhandled tonight in their current state. We dug into all of that with me, Derek and Dave. Let's get to it right now. I think I can speak for all of us and say that we're all aligned with Josh Allen. Asked after the game by Hayley Kelly Hardtown. What was it like to open a new stadium with that sort of performance? And he said pretty cool. Pretty cool game from the Buffalo bills and their offense and their quarterback tonight and got away with words that guy. He just said pretty cool. And then he kind of paused. He was like, that was kind of all he thought about. He's just like pretty cool, man. And then he had to like actually take a beat and be like, wait, I need to give her more than this. Lions defense. We'll talk about it. Obviously, it's a flawed group to say the least. But for the second week in a row, Dave, we have just an insane performance from the Buffalo bills offense. Just put a little bit of context on it before we start digging into some of those specifics. I was looking at some before we started. The bills had a 57% rushing success rate and a 60% dropback success rate in this game. Per next gen. That happens seven times all of last season. Seven times, including one bills game against the jets in the week 18. There are two week 18 games in there. So we can probably potentially even just throw those out. So other than week 18, it happened five times all of last year and the bills did its night against the Lions. It just I know it's easy to be a prisoner of the moment in these island games when you see something like this. And Josh Allen's one MVP and he's been in the conversation before. But he's as dialed in right now as I've ever seen him. He's absolutely incredible. Like the stuff he's doing the way he's seeing things. And my other big takeaway from this game. I know it can be frustrating when you don't hit on the decisions you make with the skill players. And we've had so much angst about the bills receivers over the years. And ironically, DJ Moore left pretty early in this game. It is so obviously the right way to do this, just making that offensive line as strong as you possibly can. And even in a year where you lose David Edwards. You keep Conor McGovern. They've spent so much money on those guys up front. The Titans have all been heavily invested in for them. And Jackson Haas was a day three pick. But Knox has making a lot of money. Dalton can cade to first round pick and is finally playing up to that level of potential. And the front of this team on offense, not to take any credit away from Josh, but it was just devastating to watch what they were doing to the Lions all night long in terms of giving him time and just owning the line of scrimmage. I was so excited about what the offense looked like last week, not just in terms of the quality of the production, but what they wanted to be this version of the offense with your Brady as the head coach. How is it going to be different than what we had seen previously when Sean McDermott was there, even if Brady was the play caller, what were how are they going to approach this? Who do they want to be in terms of their identity and offense? And what they're leaning into right now with all of this multi tight end stuff. The how much they're pushing the ball down the field. I don't know. He finished with a fairly forgettable average at the target. I think it was like eight yards. It was like the last time I looked, but it was at like eight by the end of the game. But like through most of the first half, it was up over 10 again, just how often they're pushing the ball down the field. And you know, the 13 personnel stuff coming into the season. I think there were going to be a lot of teams who chased it and were disappointed with the results, where it's not just some magic one that you can wave and it instantly makes your offense better. This offense, it makes them better, Derek. Like what they can do out of that stuff, it works on so many different levels. I think it's the way that it unlocks concade, but also, and we saw this over the course of last season when they were in some of those 12 personnel like why why looks when you're creating more gaps for the defense to worry about with this offensive line and with this running game, use becomes such a problem to deal with. And so when they're in these looks when all the tight ends are on the same side, there was even a play today. It was in the drive where Cook had those two monster runs to start the drive in the 35 yard and then the 20 yard. Oh, where they went 65 yards and three plays. Three plays. The first run on that play, it was 12 personnel, but DJ Moore was essentially where you would line up a tight end. And so now you're not just accounting for the A gap, the big gap, the C gap and the D gap, we're talking about E and F gaps in the run game against this bills team and they're already a problem to deal with let alone when you're really, really stressing them in that way. And it's funny because that was originally why the ramp started doing this. It was to create more gaps to worry about in short yardage and then it kind of exploded from there. And so to see the bills enjoy those benefits of it in the ways that they have plus all of the passing game benefits of it, we've never seen this version of the offense with Josh Allen when the run game has been good, the passing game has not been as dynamic as it looks right now. And so there is just so much to get really, really excited about with this group. Well, and I think I like the place that you mentioned where it was DJ Moore or they were plays where it was Keon Coleman. They were even a couple of plays where they got into those five man surfaces like the stuff that they had been doing with their three tight ends, but they were doing it out of 11. They were doing it out of 12. They were doing it at which when you watched them play last week against Houston, it was pretty exclusively from 13 personnel, which is what I thought the core of this thing was going to be. And so the fact that on a short week in a week, two, they're already adding wrinkles using all these other personnel and unlocking, you know, 12 personnel in a way that I think is really interesting for them. I thought that that was sweet. And I think what's so kind of mesmerizing to me about the offense right now, one, like Dave mentioned, Josh is just dialed in. And anytime he's dialed in, the offense is going to look insane. I think what they're doing, kind of the beauty of it is it's not a complicated run game. I've said this before, they're getting three man surfaces to one side. They're running weak zone away from it or they're running duo or sometimes this like zone opposite play where they wash everything down and just let it hit to that side. But it's like two plays, but the problem is when they run it weak zone and they run away from all these three tight ends sides, if one guy gets into the backfield, the running back can just cut back behind them and he still has like two blockers in front of them. Whereas if you think about it, if they're if you're running it with only maybe one tight end to that backside and someone gets in your face and then you cut it back, well, now you're just in open space. But that's not the way that they're blocking it. It just makes for such a unique problem that I'm curious if any defense starts to figure it out over the course of the season because it seems like it's very it's given team struggle. I like that you frame it that way where the multi-tight end stuff is creating unique problems and because that's exactly what's happening and I think that they're they're tapping into it in such a cool way. The drive that ends with the not right where they if you watch those plays, the formation was a little bit different, but the action is the same where you have knocks and kind of like a full back type of alignment and then you have a tight end going in motion. And one play they're they're doing that and then knocks is kind of starting to the left and then coming back across and there was a chunk play earlier on that drive where they use that in order to steal back bodies and pass protection, which that's one of the quiet benefits of playing this way. If you're a heavy person heavy tight end team, the amount of ways that you can steal back angles and bodies and protection just gives you an opportunity to really hunt those explosive plays. Well, they did that once on the drive and then on the next time they use this action, they just snuck knocks out into the flat and that's how we score the touchdown. And so the layers that you can create within the offense with these similar sorts of actions and start building on them all, there's just so many different benefits that you can get from playing this way and to see them so dialed in and finding those benefits this early in the season, it's a real just clear vision for what they want the offense to be very early in the season. And there is you can argue, well, that he's been there. Like shouldn't they have this sort of momentum and have this sort of continuity, but it looks different enough that I think they deserve a lot of credit for hitting the ground so fast and so smoothly with a slightly different approach than what we have seen from them over the last couple of years. I mean, we talked about it in August of what this could potentially look like in a bad way between changing thing. I mean, there was turnover on the offensive line between coaching and personnel, Joe Brady stepping in and having more on his plate. I'm I keep reliving the conversation we had about Dalton concave and what this might look like if if he's not better and more productive than he has been up to this point in his career. I didn't I did not envision this happening so seamlessly where I think you said it on a previous show where he is the Terrence Ferguson role in 13 personnel except just supernova where like you're actually, you know, he's getting five six targets a game and coming up with explosives every other time he's targeted. I mean, it's incredibly fun. I wasn't willing to bank on it going into the season as as something you could count on, but my god, this is everything you dreamed of when he was drafted where he was through your whatever it was three, four years ago. Him being this sort of player just unlocks a completely different level for the offense and the ways that they're using him. You look at it. So he played 47 snaps in this game of 69 total. So So we're talking about two thirds of the plays overall, which is a really, really good snapper for Don Kink, considering how limited he was last year. Not only with injury, but just how often they were willing to use him in the ways that they were willing to use him on those 47 snaps in this game. We have six plays in the backfield, 17 plays where he's in line, 15 plays where he's in the slot and nine plays where he's lined up out wide. He's the most important player in the passing game like and that was always, I think, a good approach for this team to take. When you look at the rate stats from last year, he was so dynamic when they used him. It was just a matter of health and viability. And so for him to be so central to their plans, I think that is a necessary component is them reaching the level that they want to is a passing game and they're already doing it. They really are. It's, it's the combination of, like you mentioned, he's healthier like, he had a catch on, they threw like a little quick RPO to the left hand side and it was like kind of high and out in front of him and just the way that he went and snagged it. I was like, I don't know, man, he just looks a little bit snappier than he did last year. But I really like the point that you mentioned just how well they're using him. Like, I thought want is the touchdown where there have trips to the right side and he's like that inside receiver and they run two little five yard and in routes from the one and two receiver. Usually when you get that, you're getting number three, he's going to run a corner over the top of them. And so the safety, you can see him like scooshing over. He's like, dude, he's going to run the corner. He's going to run the corner. Kincaid bends it to a post and it's a touchdown because Josh Allen throws it. And then there was another one they get an empty. They push James cook out to number one and he runs this little like X shallow route. It holds the flat corner down and Kincaid just runs like up to sideline and he's free into that cover to honey hole like they just so many ways of finding ways to access him that is really impressive. And so like you mentioned, they've always wanted him to be the best player. But now he's healthy so he can do it. And there's enough threat with DJ Moore when he was healthy, had looked good for this team. Keon Coleman had one of the best games that he's had in a long time. He looked great. And then the other guy didn't look good. He looked great. He went out and played against Jesse and is just like, man, if we're going to be doing this shit on top of everything else, my god. That was the truly the best that he's looked since week one of last year, which you know, maybe it's just he maybe he's just really good early in the season. I don't know. But I even looked it up during this game. He had like 100 yards in week one of last year and never hit 50 yards after that. So the fact that he did it in this game and it just looked like it was just like the stuff that you wanted to do. Can you just go win like an eight yard curl for us? Can you just go like do some of this like bully ball one on one stuff when we need it? And he could. And so the fact that he can do that and you know, hopefully DJ Moore is, you know, gets better and he doesn't have to be the number one receiver. It's hard not to be like exceptionally excited about where the thing is going. I mean this really respectfully. He's a fantastic football player. It's so refreshing. The number of targets down field and targets in general that are going to people other than Khalil Shakir and like what they're doing cool Khalil Shakir shit with him. Like, you know, they did like they motioned him behind the quarterback and like through a little swing off the motion where he had blockers out in front of him. Yeah, but I want that to be 5% of the offense. Not 25. That's my point. Yeah. Let's do that three times a game instead of feeling like everything has to funnel through Khalil Shakir. That's how you don't have a good time. And now you have, I'm going to wait and see on Keon Coleman. Hopefully DJ Moore's injury is not super serious and, you know, the fact that they were blowing the Lions out contributed to him not coming back. But between Kade, you get a good Keon night. I'm hoping DJ Moore is still going to be a part of this moving forward. It's, it's very refreshing and very exciting. There's one player I want to talk about that I think in transition us to the Detroit defense part of this conversation. And it was 14, nothing early in the game that that 25 yard seam ripped to King Kade running up the left side. And that's another example. We talked about this on Sunday, Derek, where the work that Josh Allen is doing with his eyes against some of these zone looks is just more advanced and we're fine that I can remember him doing it on that specific play. He's keeping his eyes to the left and kind of holding Thomas Harper in the hook there. As King Kade is running up the seam hits him into 25 yard gain. DJ Wannem is dropping on like a simulated pressure on that play. He doesn't get enough depth. And so that brings me to just what it was like to watch the Lions defense in this game where the safeties are all over the place, just completely all over the place. And there's more at play here than their injuries in the secondary. But when we were trying to build an optimistic case for the Lions defense coming into the season, it sounded like this where they were banged up last year in the secondary and they were still an acceptable average defense for the most part for a good majority of the season. I don't think I really appreciated the fact that not having Brian Branch as part of this because he played most of the year last year would be the tipping point part of this. We're not having either of the starting safeties that play to King Kade as an example of it. But the best example is the Palmer touchdown. Like what are we, what are we doing? Like what? It's covered three like why are you taking the cheese on that underneath route? It just makes absolutely no sense. On third and 11 like play deepest of the deep man like you got to make sure you're not giving up the big plays there. So that that part extremely frustrated me. But I think to like safety is always such a position where you want one guy to be like, can he be a fixer for us? Like we can use him in this way and it'll solve this problem. It's why Kyle Hamilton is as good as he is Brian Branch at his best is kind of that for Detroit. So the fact that he is not out there. It makes it really tough. Obviously a vantamatics who is already a backup technically and not really a safety because he's been playing nickel the last handful of years for a number of different teams. He gets hurt and goes down and that's why Harper has to play like it's just it's kind of one thing after another for a secondary that was already like the oldest and just not a lot of like starting quality guys going in. All right. Before we move on, let's take a quick break. The secondary, I think we can excuse how this looks without banged up there, especially at safety, not excused, but understand I get why we've landed in this place. Perfect sense. When you look at what happened in the front seven in this game there and then getting pushed around the way that you did, do you leave this a little bit worried about what the Lions defense is going to look like over the course of the year or is this a scenario where it's a short week. You're playing the bills on and on their turf. I can excuse this a little bit. I do think the front will look better than it did this game. I do think that this was a combination of you obviously catch a team that I mean the bills at this rate are going to be the best offense in the NFL and so I think they're just going to be able to do this to a lot of teams. You say that now. I refuse to accept that after watching the Jags, the Bears and the Ravens last week. It's going to be a robust conversation. I have them in the wind pool. So I need to say this for about the bills, but so like it maybe they can just do this. I do think though a team that can just smash mouth you in the run game is kind of a bad match up specifically for like Aiden Hutchinson because I think that you can just run at him and this was just not a good thing. I also think it's too kind of like I mentioned earlier. I just don't know if defense has have like a good answer for this like five man surface thing that the bills are doing. And so we'll see how defense is kind of a just to it and maybe the lines are just at a point where like it's so early in the season, nobody really knows what they're doing against it. So I think that they'll be better. I think more than the run defense, I'm a little bit worried that the pass rush outside of Aiden Hutchinson in this game really did not give them a whole lot. And you know credit to the bills like some of their pass protection plans and obviously being all the downs and distance they are is a big part of that, but I think that you would hope that someone other than Hutchinson can really step up in that department at some point. It's kind of ironic. Hutchinson almost turned this game on its side really quickly like the second or third snap of the game. He strips act Josh just bull rushed Spencer Brown right back into the pocket. And you're like, all right, we're cooking with something. And then the rest of the way, I think last time I looked before garbage time got out of control without when they weren't blitzing, the Lions had a 13 and a half percent pressure rate, just abysmal, nothing doing. And the other thing I wanted to say about the run defense. So yards before contact, the best teams in the league, typically over a large enough sample size. You're talking about north of two yards before contact per carry. The bills were north of five yards, Jesus, 5.15 yards before contact per rush. So I am worried about it. And that's that we were talking about it right before we came in here. The secondary really doesn't concern me that much because we talked about it all summer. And I do think there's a psychological thing where you can brace yourself for it to look like this all you want. And then when you're watching it on an island game where there's nothing else to look at, it just has an impact on you even like we've known Kirby Joseph and Brian branch. We're going to be here for months, but watching that happen is still just really striking. I think over a long enough timeline, I think that'll be fine. But there's nothing meaningfully wrong with the front that should have it looking this poor. And that part is really concerning to me. I mean, people, there was a moment in the summer where I was thinking about the lions. I think we could say this about most of the teams in the Anderson north outside of Minnesota where the offense has a ceiling that's in a top five in the top three. Are they going to have to win all of these shoot us because the quality of the defense? And because they were able to hang on a little bit last year, even they were banged up. I was open to the idea that the lions wouldn't have to score 35 points in all of these games in order to be a good team. After watching that tonight and after watching what it looked like in the second half against the Saints, I think your worst fears might be realized with that that the defense might just be one of the bottom eight unit over the course of the year. And you're going to need the offense to be hyper elite for you to be the sort of team you want to be. And the problem is with how banged up the offense is, that's just not going to be possible right now. It's not going to be possible. I'm worried about the offensive line, obviously. with Detroit. I don't know if you guys felt this. There was a point in this game where I was like, man, if it's going to look this rough, and I do think the offensive line and run game will be better, but if it's going to look this rough and Gibbs is going to get hit this hard this many times, I kind of worry about how that's going to hold up over the course of the year. I think that this needs to be look a little bit because I was watching, I was watching the game with someone and they were like, through the first quarter, it was like has almond Ross St. Brown seen the football. And like obviously he did as the game went on, but just it doesn't feel like the offense should have stretches like that where it's if Jimier Gibbs does not get us five yards here, we are completely screwed. The Lions that their best look so dynamic because I mean the skill players are amazing and Jimier Gibbs is incredibly fast, but like the offensive line makes them look dynamic and it was really striking watching what the Bill's offensive line was doing and then flipping over and seeing Larry Borum incur flag after flag and the line just collapsing and getting pushed around Jared Goff not comfortable moved off his spot. If Jared Goff's running for his life, and I know you've made the correct point that he's been better with pressure over the last few years and he gets credit for he still can't do anything outside of like I was going to say outside our structure. He can't move if he's running for his life on any sort of regular basis. Just it's silver. He's pocket movement is really nice, but when he has to do anything where he's making guys misconsistently or having to deal with traffic plays. That's just never going to happen. He's a player that has very real limitations and you have to put him in a circumstance where he's well protected and that there are enough things. That's why Jared Goff isn't a hyper elite quarterback. I think Jared Goff is a very good player, but the things around him need to be a certain level of quality in order for you to see the best version of Jared Goff. It's a gap between him and the guys that we're watching like the one in Buffalo tonight and right now that situation is about as bad as it can be. I mean, the offensive line and its current state is not functional. It's just not a functional group and there's a lot of contributing factors to that. You have a backup center from week one, a backup center that had a bad staff tonight. That's you're already dealing with the backup center. You have a backup left guard in there in this game that had a couple really important else. You have a backup right tackle in this game and he may figure it out over the course of the season. Penaisou was not penaisou right now on the left side. That is not happening. I was tough to see him just, I mean, chub schooled him on that. I think it was the third down to the sack. Yeah, I mean, barch lost quicker than than it was still. It's still striking to see. He still does not look like an all pro player right now at left tackle, even if he is a still a good player. And so if that's the current situation where you've got three backups, a decent right guard and a left tackle that is fine, but is not a needle mover in the way that he is at his best, that's a really rough place to be. And that's exactly where the lion's offensive line is right now in a 33% rushing success rate in this game. There are a lot of 42% pressure rate in the first half. If that's going to be how you're off. If that's going to be where your foundation, the foundation of your offense is built on. That's a complete non starter with this quarterback and with the type of offense that you need to play. Yeah, that's the perfect way to put it with the type of offense that you need to be. This is not going to be good enough. I think once Blake Miller gets back and penaisou will get enough reps at left tackle. I do think that they'll they will be fine. I mean, they looked excellent and we want and obviously the same defense. I don't think is super special, but they did look better when they were a little bit healthier. And I think the flip side of that. I think maybe there's a chance the bill's D line is just nasty. Like Greg Russo looks like the defensive player of the year already. And Walker. Greg, Greg, Greg Russo and Dale Walker look really good. I actually, I mean, Walker is worth pointing out because I mean, obviously I had the battered passes, but his, is there a player in the league like him? Like him and Russo together, the fact that you have these two trees that have some juices past rushers, like they are kind of unique players in the way that they operate just with the body type and the frame that they're bringing to the table. It's really cool to watch. And how crazy does this sound? If at any other point over the last like five years, if you said Ed Oliver was about what got hurt in hour before the game, I would be like D line can't play games over. They've got nothing. And the fact that they're D line without Ed Oliver an hour before the game, absolutely shredded the Lions. I was like, that is a very different feeling. Bill's defense. And we've had it a long, long time. I hadn't thought about it because it was such an afterthought, but they cut to Ed Oliver on the broadcast often in the early going. And then I don't know midway through the second quarter. It was like, okay, not having Ed Oliver is probably going to be fine for the bills tonight. The my favorite play of the whole game. It was the brusso sack at about eight minutes in the first quarter. If you go back and you watch that game, I'm really curious whether it was actually called this way or just unfolded this way. And they did this a couple times in the game where they were in a format front. They were overloaded to one side. And on this play, if you watch it happen, Walker is lined up as this second for this guy outside. So Michael Hoyt is over. I was watching it from the side view. So I don't know which gap exactly it was, but Michael Hoyt's like in the a gap. Walker's one player over and then the defensive end who I can't remember who it was. I think it was chub was lined up as the defensive end. So Walker picks the center and Hoyt kind of folds around. And then there's another stunt where then Walker becomes the looper because chub picked the guard. And so I don't know if they were doing that on purpose. But if you watch it happen in sequence, it's really cool. And so if that's actually a called thing and they pulled that off, like those are the layers to the past rush plan that I was excited to see which him Leonard. And we've seen a lot of that show up so far already for the bills. They've done so much impressive stuff. And that's the other it's it's the fact that now they've brought in a guy like Leonard who was willing to try and like throw all these and again, I don't know if that's like exactly called that way. Yeah, exactly. He does and the talent. It's all the best versions of themselves like the on Walker was good last year. He was not this Gregor so has been good before. He was not this. I think I think chub he's not like a star anymore, but I think he looks like the best version of what they could have possibly hoped for when he signed. I think TJ Parker has looked fine when he's had to come off the bench for them. Like this was a unit that we've complained like man, I don't know if they have enough juice for three or four years now. And now between both the plan and the talent, they look like they've got it. It's only been two weeks. And I don't know if we know how good either of these offensive lines are in their state, but the fact that they're like man handling some of these spots is really impressive. I was gonna I mean they were incredible, but I'm gonna keep the state of the lion's offensive land the back of my mind. I think it's more about again, it's similar to the conversation about the offense. It's the plan. I just like the plan. I like what they're trying to do. And this is you can be a team that I mean, it's similar to offensive lines where you can carry over most of the same talent from one year to the other and the way that you deploy those guys and the structure of the offensive defense can make them feel like a different sort of group. The bills were not a dynamic pass rush point team. There are four down team. We're gonna let those guys go. And that's what it's gonna look like. It looks like the opposite of that right now. It's just so much more creative in the ways that they're trying to unleash these players. And they're gonna play better offensive lines in the current state of the Detroit lions, but at the very least I like what they're trying to do. And that extends to both sides of the ball. This is a new staff with a new version of Joe Brady and a new defensive play collar. And I think through two weeks, you have to be pretty happy about the returns that you have seen so far from this group. All right, that is all we've got for bills lions. We will be back here on Sunday nights. If you are listening to this in the podcast feed on Friday morning, our week two preview is available right now, dug into a bunch of games on the week two slate. Encourage you guys to check that out. If you're watching this on YouTube, encourage you to like and subscribe, especially if you are new to the channel. We've got tons of great stuff coming to the YouTube channel this week, along with all of the podcast episodes. All three of us have bespoke video first series that we're doing over the course of the year. My first did you notice comes out. I think today on Friday about the Niners run game, which looked awesome in week one and the just shit they're doing with use check like that's where we're we're into caution and nonsense one week into the year. Derek, what is your how it happened this week? I mean, speaking of run games, I think the Baltimore Ravens strong game is back inside. I did a little video about Derek Henry is somehow doing this at 32 years old and they might be activating one more Jackson once again. We gave a sliver of daylight to Derek to talk about Derek Henry and he took it immediately just like just like just like Derek Henry. That is all we've got. We will be back here on Sunday night breaking down all things week two. Appreciate it. Talk to you guys soon. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. 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