Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady completes the ever-elusive process of building a rushing attack to complement Josh Allen. The Buccaneers relentlessly attack holes in the Packers’ heavy zone scheme. It’s getting increasingly harder to defend Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, and it’s time to end the Kadarius Toney experiment in Kansas City. We’ll get into all this and more in this week’s best and worst coaching decisions.
Likes
Bills leaning into the run game
“I felt like the kid that didn’t do anything on the class project but got an A,” quarterback Josh Allen said after passing for only 94 yards in the Bills’ 31-10 beatdown of the Cowboys.
If I had told you Allen would pass for less than 100 yards and the Bills would thoroughly beat one of the top teams in the NFC, would you have believed me? Probably not. The Bills offense the last few years has been completely reliant on Allen’s play-making ability. It was odd to see this offense firing on all cylinders with Allen only attempting 15 passes.
The “Cook Index” is measured by “how frequently teams pass the ball on first and second downs in the first 28 minutes of regulation, before time remaining and score differential influence run-pass tendencies.” The Bills had the third-lowest Cook Index rate of Allen’s career. They haven’t had a game more run-heavy since Allen’s second season in 2019. They had a rushing success rate of 62.8 percent on 46 carries (not including kneel-downs).
McDaniel’s creative run game designs
About 10 years ago, NFL schemes were vanilla, generic and boring. Offensive coordinators were all married to their “pro-style schemes,” and everyone was just running different versions of the same offenses. Now, we have outside zone offenses, pass-happy teams, option teams, and then there’s the Miami Dolphins offense. Head coach Mike McDaniel is from the Shanahan tree, but his offense has evolved to find-any-plays-to-showcase-speed. Their ground game is built on the ability to get outside. When you run outside as much as they do, you have to find a way to change up the looks you give a defense. You can’t just keep simply tossing the ball outside because eventually, the defense is just going to spread out and fast flow outside.
Throughout the season, McDaniel has experimented successfully with different actions to get the ball outside, drawing inspiration from everywhere including high school Wing-T teams. Against the Jets, the Dolphins staff looked to have created a new way of getting the ball to the perimeter.
Bucs attacking the seams
Baker Mayfield went into Lambeau Field and dominated, throwing for 381 yards and four touchdowns and finishing with a perfect quarterback rating. The Packers played zone on 81.7 percent of dropbacks against the Bucs, so offensive coordinator Dave Canales repeatedly attacked them down the seams. On plays that target the seams (variations of four verts, hitch/seam combos), Mayfield was six of seven for 135 yards and two touchdowns (19.3 yards per attempt). I liked the variation of plays they used to attack that area of the field.
Dislikes
Tomlin punting the game away
It’s hard to win in the NFL without a good quarterback. Mike Tomlin hasn’t had one since the Steelers were dragging out a shell of Ben Roethlisberger at the tail end of his career. Roethlisberger wasn’t good in his final season, but the Steelers have failed to field a quarterback who could even match his level of production at age 39 since. Tomlin still has his 17-year streak of never finishing with a losing record, but it’s in jeopardy this season. The Steelers were pummeled by the Colts on Saturday, but they had a glimmer of hope of getting back into the game in the third quarter. However, Tomlin punted their chances away.
With 3:25 remaining in the third quarter, the Steelers were down by 11 points. They drove the ball to the Colts’ 29-yard line but committed a holding penalty to back them up to the 39, putting them in a third-and-14 situation. Mitchell Trubisky tried to throw a deep pass that fell incomplete. Instead of letting kicker Chris Boswell attempt a 57-yard field goal in a dome, the Steelers punted the ball, which netted 22 yards. Last week, Boswell nailed a 56-yard field goal outdoors in Pittsburgh, so he certainly has the range. I don’t understand the decision to forgo the chance to cut the lead to one possession.
Time to end the Toney experiment
Kadarius Toney has special movement skills. He can burst and change direction with some of the top athletes in the NFL, but none of that matters because he’s also one of the most unreliable players in the league. Early in his career, he couldn’t stay healthy. Now that he has been healthy this season, he just continues to make game-changing mistakes.
Peak Jaguar-ing
The Jaguars got the ball past the Ravens’ 40-yard line on four separate trips in the first half and came away without a point.