Week 6 Buff Bills Coaches Film Analysis Thread

God bless you for reviewing this s**t show.

Well, I was gonna post some breakdowns, but it looks like tinypic isn't working. Anyone else having problems with tp???

Originally posted by jonnydel:


On to the what the film showed us:


Well - that actually covers all the positions on D, haha. So, there it is. After all that, on to the breakdowns!!!

Good thoughts JD. Don't hurt your mouse hand fixing up your house now.

For the most part. I thought Kap made good decisions with the ball and with scrambling. Not all his decisions were as "on time" as I would have liked but I do understand this is his first game back in a year. One thing I took note of in particular was when he scrambled, or held onto the ball, was there any WR(s) open? Because this season, it's not out of the ordinary that no WR is open. But in the past, I've seen Kap look to scramble when there was a passing option available to him. Oddly enough, the big 29 yard scramble he had was the one occasion that stood out the most to me where there was indeed a passing option available. His problem on some plays were that his decision was a tad late. His best throw was the Corner route to Vance. BUF did a good job covering the WRs and smothered a couple slant routes (Kerley, Patton). I only saw one occasion where Kap should have kept the ball on the zone read - that 4th down play. Makes me think it was a HB dive all the way. I'll try to show Kap's scrambles and how I felt he made good decisions with when to scramble.

BUF ran some nice stunts to stifle the 49ers inside run game and the 49ers adjusted by attacking the edges on a few plays. On the drive where the 49ers got stuffed on 4th down, Mike Davis should have moved the chains on 3rd down, but got fancy and tried to dance into another hole that was not there. That was frustrating to watch because it was a pivotal point in the game.

I thought coverage wise the 49ers defense did okay. Much of Taylor's success in the passing game was from buying time, scrambling around, and finding an open WR once coverage broke down - very Russell Wilson like. The run defense is just more of the same. Shoddy open field tackling, poor gap control, poor play recognition resulting in late reactions. There was a 3rd & 21(?) that McCoy converted that we all remember, but there was another play that came earlier in the game that I felt set the tone that I'll show (McCoy +16 on 2nd and 21) where the 49ers completely neglected a gap and BUF McCoy had a lane about 7 yards in width. It was funny because I'm done with being mad.

Can you elaborate more on the wrs johnny? Id like to know whats the real reason these guys cant get open. Do they run poor routes, are they not fast enough or are the route schemes not complex enough to fool defenses?

Originally posted by thl408:

Originally posted by jonnydel:


On to the what the film showed us:


Well - that actually covers all the positions on D, haha. So, there it is. After all that, on to the breakdowns!!!

Good thoughts JD. Don't hurt your mouse hand fixing up your house now.

For the most part. I thought Kap made good decisions with the ball and with scrambling. Not all his decisions were as "on time" as I would have liked but I do understand this is his first game back in a year. One thing I took note of in particular was when he scrambled, or held onto the ball, was there any WR(s) open? Because this season, it's not out of the ordinary that no WR is open. But in the past, I've seen Kap look to scramble when there was a passing option available to him. Oddly enough, the big 29 yard scramble he had was the one occasion that stood out the most to me where there was indeed a passing option available. His problem on some plays were that his decision was a tad late. His best throw was the Corner route to Vance. BUF did a good job covering the WRs and smothered a couple slant routes (Kerley, Patton). I only saw one occasion where Kap should have kept the ball on the zone read - that 4th down play. Makes me think it was a HB dive all the way. I'll try to show Kap's scrambles and how I felt he made good decisions with when to scramble.

BUF ran some nice stunts to stifle the 49ers inside run game and the 49ers adjusted by attacking the edges on a few plays. On the drive where the 49ers got stuffed on 4th down, Mike Davis should have moved the chains on 3rd down, but got fancy and tried to dance into another hole that was not there. That was frustrating to watch because it was a pivotal point in the game.

I thought coverage wise the 49ers defense did okay. Much of Taylor's success in the passing game was from buying time, scrambling around, and finding an open WR once coverage broke down - very Russell Wilson like. The run defense is just more of the same. Shoddy open field tackling, poor gap control, poor play recognition resulting in late reactions. There was a 3rd & 21(?) that McCoy converted that we all remember, but there was another play that came earlier in the game that I felt set the tone that I'll show (McCoy +16 on 2nd and 21) where the 49ers completely neglected a gap and BUF McCoy had a lane about 7 yards in width. It was funny because I'm done with being mad.

Agreed, I too thought there was an open passing option on that play and thought, "well, can't complain, 29 yard gain".

Agree on the lateness of some of those throws. It's always been one of my complaints against him and I was looking for him to be more on-time in this game. It might be rust and not being used to the live-game speed. However, it's also something he's struggled with since 2012.

As for some of the other zone-reads I was talking about, check out 13:08 3rd quarter, 1:40 3rd quarter and :21 3rd quarter. Those were one's I saw that looked like he should've kept it. Which is why I was wondering if those are truly zone-reads. Kaep's never really struggled with the right reads on the zone-read. So, it makes me wonder if they're just designed runs with a QB action fake.

Originally posted by 49glory:
Can you elaborate more on the wrs johnny? Id like to know whats the real reason these guys cant get open. Do they run poor routes, are they not fast enough or are the route schemes not complex enough to fool defenses?

Some of it is poor route running. Patton struggles running corner routes. He'll get good separation to begin with but slows down to a snail's pace when he turns back for the ball and I remember seeing Gab overthrow him a number of times on those routes. But, if Patton had kept running at the same pace, it would've been right now. Instead, it'd look like an other-throw into tight coverage.

Some of it looks like defenders are expecting our receivers' routes on some plays. There were some plays where Buf would be in zone and the moment they read pass would look right to where our receiers were running and would play perfect leverage on their routes.

One thing our receivers struggle in doing is defeating leverage and getting defenders to turn their hips. Not sure if it's the limited route trees out of some formations or not - I'm not that deep into our system. But, our guys have a hard time getting their defenders to turn out of position. So, the only way for them to defeat their man-coverage is for them to just be quicker and faster than the other guys - very rare in the NFL. We also haven't been able to create a credible outside threat. I see a lot of teams taking away the middle of the field. That was Buff, game-plan. Which has been one against CK since about 2014. Teams try and take away the middle of the field against him. So, our receivers weren't beating their men on the outside with their routes.

Buff's defenders did a good job of maintaining outside leverage, knowing they had 2 lurkers over the middle - for most of the game. They were, of course, instances where they went quarters coverage or cover 2 zone, but they played a lot of cover 3 and cover 1 with either 2 lurkers or one deep safety and a "spy".

This is Kap's first dropback of the game and it made me smh watching it live. Dropback, look around, look confused, take off scrambling. Same ol Kap. But this is why the TV broadcast doesn't tell the whole story.
Listed below are the progressions to my best guess. I might be wrong but, on this play, what I listed makes a lot of sense and Kap's head swivel jives with what's listed.
vs Cover 1 robber


As Kap executes the playfake, he's looking to Torrey's Go route. There isn't much separation there and the safety is looming overhead.


Kap then moves to the Sucker concept which is a High Low read (17 to 11). Both those routes are covered with a mess of defenders in the underneath middle of the field. It's the red defender that is the one defeating Kerley's Dig.


Kap moves to the 4th read - Vance's Corner route. The defender has outside leverage, attached to Vance's hip, and defeats the Corner.


Kap makes 4 reads then takes off. That's a good job of exhausting the play concepts. This scramble was justified.


He could have tossed over to Hyde, but if there's a scrambling lane, Kap's legs are a sufficient "checkdown". +5 yards, moves the chains. I'll try to show his other scrambles tonight.

Originally posted by thl408:
This is Kap's first dropback of the game and it made me smh watching it live. Dropback, look around, look confused, take off scrambling. Same ol Kap. But this is why the TV broadcast doesn't tell the whole story.
Listed below are the progressions to my best guess. I might be wrong but, on this play, what I listed makes a lot of sense and Kap's head swivel jives with what's listed.

you're able to post with tinypic??? It keeps saying, "failure to upload" when I try and upload any pics...

Originally posted by jonnydel:
you're able to post with tinypic??? It keeps saying, "failure to upload" when I try and upload any pics...

I use photobucket.

So, here's the failed 4th down play



Notice there are 2 outside defenders and then...no one. The Bill are compressing inside on 4th and 2.


Here's at the point of the read. You see the two outside defenders are crashing in. If this were a true read-option, CK should keep the ball.


From the all-22 you can see that there wasn't anyone outside that could've stopped CK from picking up the first down. I'm more inclined to think that this was a HB dive, but if so...CHip Kelly, what were you thinking???!!!

Can you guys comment on whether that floater throw to I think it was Draughns, in the redzone was a catch-able throw or was it too far out?

I thought it should have been caught from the game angle but from coaches film it should show the proper angle to know for sure.

Film is so bad Johnny is hurting himself

Johnny and THL can we get a few screen shots of the ends running up field and allowing Taylor to just step up in the pocket?

Here was one play where I thought CK had a play to be made but bailed out a little too soon.


One thing I wanted to see was how quickly he could recognize the coverage and understand where the throw would go by trusting the concept to work. We're going to run a smash concept to the 2 receiver side and max protect. This gives only the right side of the field to defeat any type of zone coverage. It doesn't look like a typical smash, but since we motioned Torrey inside, he has to run an out instead of a curl to get a smash concept. Buf comes out with a cover 2 zone with a "spy". 3 man rush against 7 man protection.


At his dropback, CK needs to recognize the 2 deep safeties and know the corner is his key read. WIth a flat-footed drop, he needs to know, right here, that the corner route is going to be open. He can even look the underneath defender off with his eyes - though he should really look the safety to teh middle of the field. At this point, he needs to trust taht his 7 man protection will hold up to the 3 man rush. Kilgore gets pushed back a little, but he's got help and I don't think the rush would've gotten there in time to do anything before he can make this throw.


CK gets a little phantom pressure and bails out to his left. After that, the CB turns toward the corner route. But, Patton had ran a good route to turn the safety and there was an opening for corner route. The concept worked - he's just gotta trust his protection and the concept. As he rolls out, he's got no where to run with all the underneath defenders and spy, he actually has a small window to throw to Kerley but that's a tough throw, running that way and he's not able to set his feet and get enough on the throw and it falls short.

I'm hoping that as time goes on that he can get more trust in his O-line to hold up against a 3 man rush. But, he needs to recognize those coverages really fast and then just execute the play. He's got the arm talent to make this throw.